Demolish That Mountain of Paper on Your Desk

One time or another, you have felt like you’re losing control in the workplace.  It seemed like that mountain of paper on your desk is growing higher and higher as the clock ticks.  Have you ever experienced this? I know you did!

Don’t worry! You can take back control of this situation. You can cut that mountain down to size and keep it that way by implementing some effective time management techniques,

Effective time management is the absolute way to drastically cut down your existing workload, and manage it effectively on a day-to-day basis. 

Practice these useful techniques to develop effective time management skills in your workplace.

Complete Tasks in the Order of Importance 

If you’re not careful, every task that comes to your desk will be labeled as important and as urgent! They may be important to somebody else, but you simply cannot make everybody’s priority your own. You’ll probably never get anything done that way!

Instead of adapting the urgency with which the project was brought to your attention, choose this sequence of steps:

• Assess the importance of the task in relation to everything else you have to do.
• Advise the person needing your urgent attention that you have a specific window of time allotted to working on their project.
• Stick to completing the tasks in order of importance.

Stick to the Schedule Set for Tasks

As soon as you’ve identified the sequence in which you plan to tackle the tasks, stick to that schedule.

You’ll very likely encounter one or both of the following scenarios when trying to clear your desk:

• You tell yourself that you’ll finish a specific task later because you’re not in the mood to work on it now.
• When something “small” is added to your pile, you drift from the schedule set because you’re just trying to get that task over and done with.

No doubt, both scenarios will lead to the pile of paper growing and growing. Simply set a schedule and stick to it. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. There’s no point trying to conquer the world all at once. Most often, if you try to accomplish too much all at the same time, you’ll end up not conquering much at all!

Make Time for Re-Energizing Yourself 

Re-energizing yourself effectively plays a huge part in being able to manage your time at work. It is true that when you’re burned out and exhausted, it is next to impossible to focus on the task at hand.  And before you know it, you start getting sidetracked by all sorts of interruptions, and finally, you’re further away from clearing your desk than you were before.

Give your brain a chance to breathe and relax. It’s actually very much like a machine that needs servicing every now and then! Remember that a sharper mind is most naturally successful at setting and attaining goals.

Clearing paperwork can really be a daunting task, and without effective time management strategies, it’s a possibility that you might never get it down to size. But the more organized you are, the greater the likelihood that you’ll be able to stay on top of your work, instead of having your work on top of you!