How to improve your time management skills

Time management is one of those skills that you're not taught during your time in education, but is vital in the professional world. The ability to prioritise and organise your workload will differentiate yourself within the workplace. Your colleagues will respect and admire how you keep level headed under pressure due to your organised outlook and colour-coded 'post it notes'! If you struggle with time management, here's our top eight tips to help you achieve this level of recognition:

1. Track your daily activities - Keeping track of your daily activities - what you did and the time frames involved - will help evaluate where you're wasting time and where you need more time assigned. If you use Outlook, you can utilise your calender to do so, or if you prefer a pen and paper, keep a diary.
2. Create to-do lists - To-do lists will prevent you forgetting about tasks and make sure you complete the tasks in order of priority. Soon, you won't be able to start a days work without creating a list! Once again, Outlook provides you with the option to create a task list, or if you prefer, just use a notepad/diary.
3. Avoid leaving e-mails sitting in your inbox - Keep your inbox organised with designated folders. Schedule regular times to check your e-mails, and action them as soon as you've read them - otherwise you'll end up forgetting about said e-mail!
4. Be careful when multi-tasking - Multi-tasking isn't something to take lightly. People often take so much on board they end up becoming overwhelmed and forgetting about certain tasks. Don't be afraid to say no!
5. Keep your website bookmarks organised - Bookmark websites that you regularly visit, then organise them by folders. This will reduce time, and prevent you losing any relevant websites!
6. Be honest with yourself - Assess when you're at most productive. Everyone has a time in the day when they work best. If that's the morning, then prioritise your most important work to do during the morning, that way you will achieve more within your working day.
7. Set time limits - Use your outlook or diary to set time frames for each task. Regularly assess these time frames. If you're running out of times for certain tasks, then make sure you assign a longer time frame the next time.
8. Take your time - People want quality work, not rushed. Don't be afraid to take your time, accuracy is more important than rushing and producing work littered with mistakes. Remember the tortoise and the hare?