Have you ever tried multitasking? Multitasking means doing several things all at once, so theoretically it allows you to complete more tasks during the short period of time. This is not easy activity, it probably made you very tired after all, but have you paid attention how many of your task you managed to finish?
People around might see you as very busy and hardworking person, you were trying to combine different activities, writing report and talking by phone at the same time, or for example keeping conversation with your friend and writing mobile message. But at the end of the day can you say, that you have done all the things you planned to do, and are you sure you got the best possible results?
Well, of course, there are a lot of things that you can do at the same time easily, such as doing sport exercises and listening to music, or reading a newspaper and eating or drinking something. These simple things are also an example of multitasking, but they are so easy to do, because one doesn’t need to concentrate on both tasks. It is needed to focus only on one activity and second comes so natural, that you don’t even think about it. But in the first examples given in article, the person has to focus on both things: writing report and talking by phone, so the attention is divided. It means it is impossible to do your best if you are trying to focus on more then one activity. In this case doing more and more things brings less and less result.
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But keep in mind that not only new projects are to be started with planning. It is needed to look through your schedule every day. Some people prefer doing it in the morning, when the day just begins, some find it more suitable to create plan for following day in the evening after all work in office is finished. While creating your time management plan, don’t forget about the following points:
First of all determine whether the task you are going to do belongs to your responsibilities or not. Figure out if there are people whom you can delegate these tasks as their job description is more accurate to it. Acting in this way you will have more free time for completing tasks which are really important and lie within your responsibilities. In some cases work load can be divided into two parts for instance in order one part to be delegated. It means that interaction between workers and managers becomes highly important; sometimes the results of negotiations depend on communicational skills to great extent. But don’t forget that the highest attention should be paid to your own responsibilities.
Secondly, when you determine, how much work will you take to have it done, ask yourself is it really possible for you to handle this entire work load. One has to work hard, but there is a certain limit, after which each additional project you take is of lower and lower quality. But the aim is not to complete as many tasks as possible; the aim is to provide service of high quality, to be highly effective. And one has no right to sacrifice quality of products and services, to sacrifice reputation just to have one more task done. If you feel that you have reached your limit, that you have no physical or mental ability to maintain the demanded level of your work quality, you have to inform your supervisor about the situation. Determining your work load is an important part of time management process, more over one needs to act to improve the situation, when this work load is out of limits. Being able to see the problem and ask for help definitely shows your strength, not weakness.
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