5 Tips to Improve Your Time Management

Time is everything in project management. The project needs to be completed by the deadline, resources need to be delivered, and everyone in the project is paid on the basis of worked hours. Your responsibilities extend far and wide in the project, but you cannot micromanage the project.

If you do, you will encounter delays and encourage animosity throughout your project management team and skilled workers. Fortunately, you can improve your time management skills by following these five tips.

1. Create a Personal Schedule

As a project manager, creating schedule is one of your best assets. You understand a schedule builds on today’s schedule. Create a personal schedule for what you need to accomplish today. For example, you may schedule meetings, reviews, and updates to the project schedule in your personal schedule. Only include what you can accomplish today. If there is something you would like to accomplish, add it to a “wish-list” schedule.

2. Actually Use the Reminders and Alerts on Your Smartphone

Practically everyone has a smartphone. However, many of us do not use the reminders and alert options throughout the day. Improve your time management by pairing your personal and professional schedules to the alerts on your phone. This will help you avoid spending more time on a given activity or task than you planned.

3. Take Time to Relax and Rest

As a project manage, you rarely rest and relax. You have responsibilities to manage, schedules to create, risks to review, and upper-level managers to please. However, everyone needs to take a few moments out of the day to recharge and rest. This could be as simple as blocking out a section of your schedule for small, 15-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon.

For Example, project managers should avoid having unofficial business lunches. An unofficial business lunch is when a project manager is off-the-clock and continues working while having lunch. If the project manager is not being paid for it, the project manager should not be working.

4. Focus on Small Parts of the Project

The big picture of the project is an important thing to remember for project managers. Yet, project managers can’t focus solely on the overall scope of the project. Project managers should focus on accomplishing small, digestible bits of the project. This helps a project manager ensure the project on schedule and meets quality requirements.

5. Reassess Your Schedule Frequently

Your personal and professional schedule will change over time. Sometimes, events may, and project managers must adjust the schedule to meet these changes. Project managers should continually reassess their personal and professional schedules to ensure the responsibilities and the project stay on schedule.

Since time management is everything in project management, project managers who build better time management skills will be more likely to succeed. Try implementing these five tips in your plans today.

Key Takeaway

• Create a personal schedule.
• Take advantage of alarms and reminders on your smartphone.
• Carve out time to rest and relax.
• Focus on one part of your project at a time.
• Reassess and adjust the schedule as needed.