Scheduling the work, is also an important tool in time management. If you schedule your work correctly, you will never find yourself running out of time, or going through stress of completing the work.
Once, you have the list of your prioritized to-do list, the next step is to find the time taken to complete the activities. Based on the available time and the time that will be consumed, schedule your activities, allocating the time to start those activities. Some may need to be pushed to another day, while some most urgent may need to be completed on the same day at any cost.
Scheduling all the activities, will help you know, how your day will be spent, and whether you have time to perform some ad-hoc activities.
Some points to remember when scheduling the work
- Always remember to schedule the most important and urgent work first.
- When scheduling, give some time to relax for yourself, in between the tasks. Do not over stress yourself.
- Look at the broader picture first. Schedule the tasks for a week first, later days of the week, and then for hours in a day. This will avoid spending time on thinking about some non-important tasks.
- Schedule your work keeping in mind your most productive time of the day. For eg., some people may not find themselves productive in the afternoon after lunch; at such times, do no schedule the brainy tasks. While some find themselves most productive in the morning; here you can schedule the most important tasks for the mornings.
- When scheduling your work, keep a check on your meeting calendar to avoid any conflicts between your schedule with the meetings which are also important to attend.
- If for some reason, a very important and urgent task is not fitting into your schedule and hence could be completed before the deadline, discuss it with your manager. He could either help you by delegating it to someone else, or may ask you to sit after office hours to complete it.
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