by Christina Pomoni

Created on: July 18, 2010

In today’s competitive job market, where competition is fierce for highly qualified candidates, time management is extremely important. By using your time efficiently, you are more likely to accomplish more tasks during a normal working day and be positively reviewed by your immediate supervisors. However, to achieve that, you need to implement specific strategies that can help you make the most of your time when working in an office.

a)  Shoot for zero emails in your inbox

Having a tone of emails sitting in your inbox for days is totally unproductive and consumes a lot of time when you decide to deal with them. For effective time management, you need to find time on a daily basis to process your emails and organize them in file folders so that you can focus on the tasks that need to be undertaken. If some emails need further elaboration, move them in a to-do-list so that you can deal with them later. Just don’t make later forever. Emails can really hold your job back and distract you from your daily tasks.

b)  Do first things first

Setting priorities is very important in time management. If you start your day dealing with unimportant tasks, not only you waste your time, but you also waste your energy. As the day progresses, you probably feel worn out and fed up because you have spent time on smaller tasks and there is no time left to do the larger tasks. For effective time management, you need to start you working day with the larger tasks because in the morning you have all the energy to complete them quicker so that there is time left for the smaller tasks as well. Or, if you have to interrupt a large task for a smaller task, at least you have done some progress and you can go back with a lighter heart and get done with it.

c)  Make a to-do list from the day before

Before leaving the office at night make a to-do list for the next day. This will help you prioritize your tasks from larger to smaller and get an idea of where to start from when you get to the office the next day. If you are into technology, you may do this list using one of the numerous softwares that are available on the market for creating a to-do list. Otherwise, you can write it by hand and rewrite until all tasks are completed for the week or the day, if possible.

d)  Avoid procrastination

If you are one of the workers who think forever on a task in order to find the best possible way to accomplish it, stop doing it. Procrastination is the number one

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