My top 3 tips on how to manage your time more effectively

It feels like ever since the lockdown began, I have lost all sense of time. People ask me what day it is and I genuinely don’t know. Weekends and weekdays have become one and therefore time doesn’t seem to play such an important role as it once did – especially when working from home full-time.

However, it’s super important to get the right balance of work and life to ensure you don’t get burnt out and demotivated. It’s taken a bit of time and effort to work some of these things out, but these tips are working well for me and I hope they might help you too:

1. Plan your day – this has always been an important one. Either the night before or on a Sunday evening or the morning of every day, just write down or type (I use sticky notes) the tasks you want to complete and if possible write them in order of importance. MOST IMPORTANTLY, once the task is done, delete it! It is extremely therapeutical to see your to-do list go down and it makes you realise how much you can get done. When you keep it all in your head it’s easy to forget but it also contributes to the burnout phase which we want to try and avoid!

2. Take regular breaks – when working from home it can feel like taking breaks is a bad thing, especially for those who are used to working in an office. I am lucky to have a Fitbit which reminds me to take a minimum of 250 steps an hour, so I use this as my break time on a regular basis. If you don’t have a Fitbit setup a regular alarm on your phone. Step outside and get some fresh air (if the weather allows it) or just walk indoors. Get away from the screen and enjoy the short break – you deserve it! Just think of it as 50 minutes of hard and dedicated work followed by 10 minutes of rest! The same scenario with lunch – take an hour off, change your status on your messaging tool to tell people you’re away and recharge. The last thing you want is to work non-stop and feel unproductive!

3. Theme your days/hours – Depending on your job and other commitments you may find ‘themeing’ your days or hours quite useful. For example, Monday could be catch up on weekend emails/admin day, Tuesday could be spending the day on LinkedIn connecting with relevant people, writing articles day, Wednesday could be connecting with current clients, checking in with them, and so on, I think you get the point. You can apply this to your hours i.e. mornings I will do XYZ and afternoons I will do ABC. Whatever works for you! I find this extremely useful. One tip, if for example Friday is your admin day and there is usually a lot of it, don’t book calls or anything that could potentially distract you!

Good luck!