Manage Your Day

Career growth always means taking more responsibilities within the team or company. The more responsibilities you have, the more tasks you need to manage. At some point of time, you may feel like a squirrel on a wheel—constantly responding to incoming requests, issues, one after another, with no time for actual work.

Do not let external requests manage your work. Manage them yourself. This sounds simple, but everyone who has been in this situation knows it's not so easy to do in practice.

Simple tips that might help:
✏️ You don't have to respond immediately to every question you receive. In most cases, nothing bad will happen if you check your messenger or email once in 2-3 hours.
✏️ You don't have to go to every meeting you're invited to. Review invitations carefully and decide which ones are really important. It’s ok to decline or ask to reschedule.
✏️ You don't need to execute any task immediately as you receive it. Ask about priorities and deadlines, estimate impact on other tasks, discuss and plan accordingly.
✏️ If a task takes less than 2 minutes, just do it (That's the only principle from Getting Things Done that really works for me).
✏️ Book time on the calendar to work on important tasks. Try to reserve at least a few hours a day for focused work.
✏️ Set task priorities. I like Covey model, that groups all task by importance and urgency. Choose an approach that works for you.
✏️ Do not try to keep everything in the head: write down all important ideas, tasks, agreements, requests, whatever is important to perform your job.

Additionally I recommend to read Time Management Techniques That Actually Work. The article also contains a bunch of useful recommendations for the same. Try different tools and methods, and see what works for you.

Also, please, feel free to share other recommendations that work for you in the comments.

#softskills #productivity