By managing your time use, you reduce stress and achieve more results. Read tips from our blog and use your time to work more efficiently.

Are you in a hurry? Do you feel that many important things are left undone when the working day is full of meetings, phone calls, and other ad hoc activities? What can be done about these things? Here, I will discuss many familiar things that I find useful.

1       What do I need to accomplish?

Many people are familiar with Pareto’s law, which states that 20 percent of the work makes up 80 percent of the results when it comes to time use. These jobs or tasks could be called A-tasks, and they are the ones based on which I and my results are evaluated. A-tasks typically take 60–120 minutes at a time, and there cannot be many of them during the same day. What are your A tasks?

Then there are the most essential B tasks, which typically take 30–60 minutes. Third-level jobs, or C-tasks, are routine, such as checking invoices, answering emails, and so on. These take 10 to 30 minutes at a time. Often, they are tasks that do not add any added value but have to be done at some point.

Next in the alphabet is D, which stands for delegated tasks. And finally, there are E-tasks, i.e. tasks to be eliminated.

Whenever a new task comes to mind, or you are offered new jobs, bring up your to-do list. Think about what the task represents and prioritize it according to importance and workload.

But life is not that easy. There are also always so-called mandatory tasks that must be handled so your colleague can continue working. Often, these jobs should be taken care of right away, but you must set aside time in the working day to take care of them as well.

2       Interrupters of work

Time thieves interrupt the thought process, and efficiency suffers when you must reorient yourself to the work at hand. Fight time thieves and consider how you can prevent interruptions in advance. Here are some tips.

Knowing the “criminals'” ways of working is essential. If calls constantly interrupt your work, look at what the calls are and who is making them. It may be that your colleague is used to calling and asking you instead of searching or thinking about the answer themself. Learn not to answer a question on the phone but promise to come back later, and you can also deliver your answer through a slower channel, such as email. (However, I’m not much for internal emails.) A time thief may notice that the operating method no longer works, and they stop the calls.

On the other hand, we uselessly set notifications and alarms that interrupt work. Email notifications or other notifications that appear on the side of the screen interrupt or disturb the thought process. Teams has a Do Not Disturb mode, where calls or messages do not come through and the phone can be silent.

Unnecessary meetings are also time thieves. If you spend your time in meetings, think about their necessity and how they support the effectiveness of your work. It may be that you can’t be absent from the meetings, in which case you can try to improve the efficiency of the meetings, for example, in terms of the agenda and the use of time.

3       Calendar to support work planning

We often underestimate the time required for tasks and overestimate our ability to handle them. Calendar your work, at least the A and B tasks mentioned above. With the calendar, you increase control of your work. If you also use color codes for calendar markings, for example, a different color for customer work and a different color for internal meetings, you can see where your time is spent and make your time use more productive.

Using and sharing the calendar within the work community increases transparency and enables a more functional everyday life. Listing tasks in expert work can be practical, but it is often also stressful because the list may seem impossible to implement here and now.

By scheduling the tasks and taking into account the deadlines set for them, you are involved in developing your organization to operate resource-wise and fulfill promises according to the schedule.

4       Plan your working day

Are you a morning person or most efficient in the afternoon? When are you best able to focus on demanding work tasks? If possible, plan your workday according to your energy levels. Don’t cram the calendar too full because different mandatory tasks and changes will otherwise easily mess up your day.

The 60/40 rule is effective in specialist tasks: a 60 percent scheduled day leaves room for changes. For a manager, the same rule works the other way around because there are even more changes and various surprises in management work.

5       Increase work efficiency by developing the competence of the personnel

Time management is a skill that every worker benefits from while the organization’s operations become more efficient.

Offering personnel training that develops working life skills in the form of micro-courses lasting less than 10 minutes brings numerous advantages: employees’ well-being improves, cooperation becomes smoother, and work productivity increases.

Boost employee learning with Academy of Brain’s micro-courses, which last less than 10 minutes on the intranet or the Viva Learning app. The ready-made package of 50 courses offers training to develop the most essential human skills, such as leadership, growth mindset, trust and safety, mental well-being, self-management, and cooperation and interaction.

Read more: Develop your working life skills with microlearning

Marko Koskela
Chief Commercial Officer