This occurs when a manager or employee fails to prioritize their tasks based on their importance and urgency. These factors greatly affect the quality of work. There are deadlines that need urgent attention. If you don't meet these deadlines, it will turn into a nightmare, unless you learn how to be more productive without needing more time.
Deadline itself is a scary word that makes you nervous. Research at Missouri Western State University found that haste leads to making more mistakes. Additionally, being overly busy keeps you from seeing things from a greater perspective, gradually pulls you away from creativity, and is the biggest enemy of productivity.
“Hasteness often hinders your decision-making ability, leading to poor decisions,” said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Robert Trumble.
Tips to finish your work on time
1. Start with the Time Management Matrix
In his book First Things First, American author and writer Stephen Covey emphasized that not every project aims to meet a deadline. Some of them require achieving goals and upholding values. Using the Time Management Matrix, you will be able to prioritize all your tasks based on their importance and urgency.
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Urgent tasks Unurgent tasks Important tasks Unimportant tasks |
Set priorities by completing important and urgent tasks in the first quadrant. Proceed to the second quadrant after that. Prioritizing your tasks will be easier if you divide them up and arrange them in the quadrants.
2. Work less and delegate more
You can't do everything yourself, even if you know how. If you use a task management tool, you will be able to prioritize your projects and finish them on time. One good feature of these tools is that you can use a queue to assign tasks to employees who have finished their assigned work and can start working on new tasks. As a result, you will be able to utilize every employee's potential without having to take on all the work yourself because you will exert more effort than you are capable of.
Put off the difficult tasks until tomorrow, finish the ones that require your involvement, and assign the rest to the appropriate staff members.
3. Do the most important tasks first
Before you start your busy day at work, it is recommended that you complete the most important tasks first. Determine a few tasks each day and follow the principle of completing the most important ones first. You can work on one or more tasks. All you have to do is arrange your tasks so that urgent ones get priority. Prioritizing your work will free up more time in your schedule for other tasks.
4. Use the Pareto Principle
The most successful individuals devote their time to the top 20% of things, which enables them to produce 80% of the outcomes. Determine the 20% of things that will have the biggest impact on your work.
For example, if you have to do three tasks, identify the two that are least important at the moment—that is, those that are not urgent. After that, invest all your energy in the remaining task. In the long run, this will reflect on your work when it is properly executed. It can be challenging to eliminate unproductive tasks, but doing so can help you find the ones that will benefit you the most.
5. Apply the Results Optimization Model
This is the perfect solution for managing deadlines. Every deadline comes with a set of challenges. To handle these challenges, you can divide each deadline into three parts:
- Creating the idea.
- Reinforcing the idea.
- Choosing and implementing that idea.
Before you start working on any new deadline, take some time to follow these three steps. Brainstorm ideas, consolidate those ideas into a single task, and finally, find the solution that works best for you.
In Conclusion
You can't do everything yourself. So, start your day with setting a to-do list, divide your tasks into a quadrilateral matrix, accomplish the most important tasks first, and finally, use the Results Optimization Model to finish solving the problem.
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