Can time management help me to meet deadlines at work and get a good night rest?

by Raja
(India)

I am finding that my life is simply full of work. I work all day and by the time I get home I have about 6 hours sleep before I get up and go for work again.

I am finding that I really need my sleep to get everything done, but I just can't get it all done without reducing the sleep time. I work on weekends, which I hate.

I am looking for help from others who have to manage work deadlines and ensure they also get enough sleep. How do you meet your deadlines and keep working productively?

Thanking you in advance
Raja

Kell’s reply: AJ,
Hi Raja,

It sounds like you are doing the work of two or three people.

If this is the case then your schedule is unsustainable and you are likely to suffer from fatigue, job burnout, and a poorer quality of life.

It is hard to give time management advice without specifics.

However, first and foremost you need to diagnose whether you can do things better.

If you are a knowledge worker I would download a time keeping software program that runs in the background of all the work that you are doing.

Whenever you open a document, move to another web page, or change your activity, the time keeping software will pick it up.

Do this for about a week and then analyze your use of time.

Are you spending time on your top priorities?

What are your distractions? Are you spending too much time on email or are interruptions that are pulling your focus from your top priorities. Here are some time management activities that you can use with the data that you collect.

Determine if you can use your time better and set small time management goals to do so.

If your workload is unsustainable then you can use this objective data to point out to your superior that they need to hire more staff or work needs to be re-distributed.

Working collaboratively with your boss is the key here.

The second thing that you need to do to improve your time management is to throw away your to-do list. While a to-do list will do a better job than not keeping a to-do list, in today’s world of work keeping a to-do list will just mean that it will get longer and longer as you carry things over from one day to the next.

Why?

Because it today’s world of work there is too much to do and not enough time. The first step is to recognise this, the second is to plan for this in your time management. I talk more about this at effective time management .

All the best,

Kell