Jobs, where you get autonomy over what you do, are great if you don't like being told what to do and offer a lot of satisfaction. However, with freedom comes the need to organize and manage your own work.
This requires time and task management skills, and it isn't something that necessarily comes naturally. Let's look at some reliable ways you can solidify your abilities in this area and start taking charge of your own workload effectively.
1. Get in the Habit of Using a Calendar
Relying solely on your memory to keep track of your schedule is open to massive amounts of human error. The easiest way to master good time management is to use a calendar for everything and do this regularly.
There are many digital calendar applications you can utilize, such as Outlook and Google Calendar. Additionally, you can opt for Tweek, if you prefer a task-based planner.
The aim is to put everything into your calendar, including meetings, pieces of work and events, and basically anything that you know you need to do. If there's something you know you may forget, put it in. It is good practice to fill your calendar as much in advance as you can, so block out some time at the start of your week to do this.
2. Organize Your Emails Into Folders
Keeping all your emails in your Inbox can create chaos, especially if you need to find an important inbound email at a later date. To remedy this, you should organize your emails into relevant folders.
The folders you create should be specific to your work and role, and make it so that you can find information quickly. This might include folders for projects, company announcements and updates, team members, emails you need to follow up on, and so on.
It's best to avoid deleting job-related emails, because even if something doesn't seem pertinent now, it doesn't mean it won't in the future.
You may not immediately see the benefit of organizing communications in this way, but in the long run, it will help you stay in control of your workload.
3. Organize Your File Drive
There's nothing more damaging to your productivity than a file drive that has hundreds of loose files. Doing this makes it difficult and overwhelming to find what you need, resulting in procrastination and avoidance.
Just like with your emails, it's important to arrange your files into folders so that you can stay on top of your work. In essence, you shouldn't have any files that aren't stored in a dedicated folder.
Doing this won't automatically make you better at workload management, but it will help you with time management and keep you consistent. Ever heard the saying "a tidy home is a tidy mind"? The same applies to your digital workspace!
4. Keep Track of Your Work
Having autonomy at work means that you're expected to keep track of your own ongoing tasks, and how that fits into the wider team effort. Therefore, it goes without saying that you require a practical way to do this.
You can create a spreadsheet that lists all your work progress, from clients you're working with to project planning. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have lots of templates you can use, or you can make one from scratch. Ideally, your spreadsheet should give you oversight on:
- What the piece of work is.
- Deadlines.
- Progress indicators.
- Tasks associated with it.
Alternatively, you can employ work management software, like Asana, that does some organizing for you. No matter how you choose to track your work, if you have sole responsibility for your workload, it's essential that you have some kind of visual overview.
5. Prioritize Your Tasks Effectively
When you don't have someone telling you what to do, you need to figure out which tasks have priority over others. This skill is often the one that people have the most difficulty with because it requires thinking about the bigger picture and anticipating future outcomes.
Fortunately, there are some tried and tested methods of doing this, to help you out. The MoSCoW Method helps you to arrange tasks into must-have, should have, could have, and won't have. It is a tiered system that enables you to ascertain which tasks are essential, and which ones aren't.
The Eisenhower Matrix is another method that categorizes your tasks into a 2x2 grid: urgent, important, not urgent, and not important. Therefore, if your task falls into the Urgent/Important box, it means you need to do it now. Whereas if it falls into the Not Urgent/Not Important box, you could probably ignore it, for now.
6. Save Time on Repetitive Tasks
People spend about 25% of their time at work on repetitive tasks; this is a huge portion of time, and it is incredibly inefficient. These could be emails that you send where the content is identical or blocks of text you write out in reports.
The good news is that you can automate routine work like this by using the Magical Text Expander Chrome Extension. It's a free application that allows you to create up to 10 shortcuts instead of writing the same text out, over and over.
The shortcut trigger could be a combination of symbols and letters. When you type them, it automatically produces the full text you need. For example, typing #report will produce the full skeleton report, and you can just go in and edit any relevant details.
Stay on Top of Your Workload
It's very easy to become unorganized and make mistakes when it comes to managing your own workload. Therefore, ensuring you have everything in place to minimize this is essential.
As humans, we can only store so much information in our brains, so don't burden yourself with trying to remember everything. Using the tips explored here, you'll be well on your way to managing your own caseload effectively, and with time, it will become second nature.