Let’s face it, commercial construction jobs can be demanding as well as rewarding. With timelines and budgets to keep, you likely stay quite busy. Between your personal life and your professional life, you probably have more things on your plate than you’d like. If you are like most people, you often feel stressed and overwhelmed. Maybe you wish there were more hours in the day. Improving your time management skills can change your life in numerous ways. By implementing more effective time management strategies, you will be able to accomplish more each day, reduce your stress levels, and feel less swamped. Here are four tips to improve your time management skills.
1. Prioritize
Every day you should make a list of all the tasks you need to achieve for the next day. Rank them in order from most important to least important. Make sure to always do your most important tasks first. Make the list reasonable. It isn’t helpful if you create a to-do list so long that you can’t possibly complete every task. It helps to know what tasks you have to address right away and what can wait until later. Prioritizing help you make better lists and help you actually accomplish the most critical tasks on that list.
2. Don’t Procrastinate
Nothing hurts time management more than procrastination. Yet, the temptation can be strong. Many of the excuses we use to justify procrastination sound reasonable, but they really aren’t. Do whatever you can to avoid procrastination so that you don’t get backlogged. This doesn’t mean you can’t have downtime. No one expects you to be productive 24/7. But you can’t schedule that downtime when you have important deadlines hanging over your head.
3. Avoid Multitasking
We often feel like we can accomplish more in a day if we juggle multiple tasks at once. Usually, the exact opposite happens. When we multitask, we become less focused. Our brains aren’t made to do more than one task at a time. Even people who consider themselves good multitaskers will find they can finish tasks faster if they focus one task at a time.
4. Delegate
We often take on more tasks than we can handle; yet often it is avoidable. Sometimes, it is out of our control. In this scenario, delegating tasks is your best option. For some of us, delegation doesn’t come naturally. Many people prefer to be in complete control. Some people feel if they ask other people to help, they’re slacking. But this is a misconception. Delegation is an essential part of effective management. No one person can do everything, and good leaders recognize this. It doesn’t help the team if you are overworked and stressed. So, recognize when you have too much on your plate and delegate tasks.
Most people feel anxious just thinking about all of the things they have to do at work and at home on any given day. It can be hard to say no, so we keep adding to our to-do lists. Unless you practice effective time management, you’re going to end up with more stress than you can handle and reduced productivity as a result. Luckily, these are basic tips you can follow to make things easier on yourself.
How can we help you?
Searching for an opportunity in the construction industry? Contact The Birmingham Group today to discuss your career path or browse our open positions.
Are you a hiring authority needed construction talent? Submit a search request today.
–
