How to use your time more effectively
The following tips tell you what you can do about it.
1. Time management tip: Curb your perfectionism
How do you feel about perfectionism? Is something rarely good enough for you? Do you often criticize yourself for seemingly imperfect tasks? Then you should consider whether this assessment is correct at all! In most cases it is always your own attitude towards things that makes you try everything to be as perfect as possible. If you’re struggling to find a wording that works for you, or if you change a report a dozen times just because you think your boss might pick at it, ask yourself if you really need to.
Try out a new variant now: Good is good enough. Set yourself a deadline by which you want to complete a certain task – and stick to it. Otherwise you will never get done and on top of that you will neglect other things that also need to be done. This automatically puts you under time pressure and gets on your nerves because you are always looking for the supposedly even better version. Aside from the fact that in most cases they don’t exist, your schedule gets completely out of whack. The result: You achieve exactly what you originally wanted to prevent.
2. Time management tip: Show more self-confidence
To put it bluntly: nothing against a willingness to help, because it contributes to good cooperation. Unfortunately, there are often enough situations in which this willingness to help is exploited – by acquaintances, colleagues, but also friends. At the latest then it turns into its opposite. Your good nature is being exploited and you are in (time) pressure unnecessarily. This is then explained to oneself in such a way that one does not want to offend colleagues or friends.
But that is an erroneous assumption. Make a move to allowing yourself to be persuaded or persuaded only in situations where it is actually necessary. In this way, the supplicant quickly learns that you don’t say yes and amen to everything and begins to respect your opinion. You can avoid relapsing into the old days if you practice saying no and consider in advance how you will justify your refusal.
Because the fact is, as soon as you help others, your work stops. With this picture in mind, you will become better and better at determining when your helpfulness is appropriate and when it is not.
3. Time management tip: Pay attention to your performance curve
In short, your power curve gives you information about when you are in top form and when you have less energy available. Knowing this will help you get complicated and demanding tasks done during your peak energy times, and defer less important stuff (email, filing, mail) to the off-peak times. Just paying attention to these different performance levels can help to significantly increase your productivity.
Just look at the last fourteen days: At what times were you able to uproot trees and at what times didn’t you want to succeed at all? For many people, the performance curve reaches its peak in the early morning, then drops sharply after lunch and only slowly rises again in the late afternoon without reaching the level of the morning. Others, on the other hand, only reach their peak performance in the evening hours. It is therefore crucial to select the tasks to be completed according to your own personal performance curve. This saves you a lot of time and lets you work much more efficiently.