6 Things the Most Productive Managers Do to Manage Their Time

Introduction

If you own or manage a restaurant, chances are you struggle completing all of your tasks in one day and often end the day with unfinished tasks and a list of much to do still.

Effective time management is one of the hardest feats to accomplish, but if done right, it is wildly rewarding.

One of the things you can do to better manage your time is to implement a personal scheduling app into your life. It can help you schedule daily tasks and assign a time estimate presenting when to have them completed by, which helps you plan your day better.

How Important is Time Management?

Time is one of the things in your life you cannot get back.

And because of that, you should always try to make the most of your time. When you waste your time, you are wasting valuable hours in not just your work life but your personal life, as well.

Your time management directly relates to your quality of life. In the end, the goal is to get more positives in your life and rid of the negatives.

When you effectively manage your time, you also

• Feel more accomplished
• Feel more energetic
• Complete tasks much faster
• Enjoy life

One - Stop Procrastinating

This might seem like an obvious one that almost every manager naturally has under control, but that's not always the case.

A lot of managers still procrastinate, even though it hinders their job, and unfortunately, it isn't an easy habit to break.

This nasty habit can sometimes make it feel like driving with the brakes on because you're being hindered while also attempting to move forward. This can act as a demoralizing crutch, causing you to lose ambition, but giving up is not the solution.

If you avoid procrastination, you'll immediately see improvements in both your personal and work life. What's more important is you'll still have time to do the things you do when you procrastinate, but you'll do them after you finish your tasks.

Two - Eliminate Distractions

The world we live in today miraculously provides us with a distraction every time we try to accomplish something. Making sure your mind doesn't wander off into the abyss that is a distraction is easier said than done.

In addition to using a personal scheduling app to plan your life minute-by-minute, other ways to avoid distraction are

• Trying to block distractions and not give in to them
• Work on a method to prevent distractions from appearing (ex. Putting your phone on Do Not Disturb during work hours)

Three - Assign Time Estimates to Tasks

If you're using a personal scheduling app to manage your life, it's very likely that you have the option to assign time estimates to each task. If not, you can utilize a timekeeping tool on your mobile phone to monitor how long it takes to complete various tasks.

By doing this, you will know how long it takes to complete a task, and with that, also know how long it takes to complete the whole project.

Apart from better managing your projects, time estimates also help you better organize your life. If you know how long it takes to finish a task, you'll know when you can start working on the next task.

By working smarter, you are creating a daily plan, and by using a personal scheduling app, you now have the ability to take control of your day instead of being controlled by it.

Four - Break Down Big Tasks into Smaller Ones

If you're a project manager, you're most likely intimidated by a huge project that isn't split into smaller tasks. It's much harder to complete and it isn't really fit for delegating to other employees.

Now if you split up that project into much smaller tasks, it's pretty easy to assign separate work to each employee that later merges into a completed project.

Task you can break down into smaller ones include but are not limited to

• Cleaning kitchen appliances
• Clearing out the refrigerator(s)
• Checking inventory

Five - Create Balance between Work and Personal Life

Maintaining the life-to-work balance isn't an easy accomplishment. You will need to find your strengths and weaknesses and structure your life around them.

If you're more productive in the morning, you'll have to schedule your more complex tasks at that time in order to complete them quicker.

If you're using a personal scheduling app, you plan out your whole day, both work and personal, aiming to complete all the tasks on there.

Six - Prioritize Your Tasks

Both in your personal and work life, you need to know how to prioritize tasks. Some days, you just don't have enough time to accomplish everything and that's why you need to have priorities.

If you're the manager of a restaurant and cleaning the kitchen is one of the tasks your teams should complete today, then that task should be the top priority because, without a clean kitchen, you're risking the reputation of the restaurant.

But it can still become a problem when you can't make your mind as to which task to prioritize. At times like this, it's generally a good idea to sit and discuss the impact of each task and then set priorities that way.

Conclusion

Time management is a vital skill you need in life, no matter what business you're in. By not mastering this vital skill, you're limiting your productivity and setting a point at which you're no longer improving yourself.

You need to remember that the only person that can change you is you.