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Effective Time Management While Working Remotely During The COVID-19 Pandemic

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Effective Time Management While Working Remotely During The COVID-19 Pandemic

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Embrace that meetings are increasing.
Over the past few weeks, he and his company had a bird’s eye view into how many of us have shifted our time management while moving into a full, work from home operating model. Within the first week of ‘shelter in place’ Clockwise saw a 12% increase, 1.5 hours per person, in meetings in their clients compared to just a week before. Without the ability to have the organic conversations that in-person offices allow, virtual meetings, whether impromptu or scheduled, will be the lifeblood of how people engage with one another.
Pay attention to fragmented time.  Fragmented time occurs due to the small pockets of 15 to 30-minute blocks of time that exist between scheduled meetings. These can work well as breathing space if planned for intentionally. But most of us are very passive with our calendars. Clockwise saw a 17% increase in the amount of fragmented time per person per week (blocks of time less than 2 hours) and a 1.27-hour (8%) decrease in the amount of focus time per person per week (blocks of time longer than 2 hours). People tend to schedule us for meetings based on what works for them and the open space they spot in our calendars. But that may leave you very little time to actually get work done and the fragmented time ends up sucked up in busy but unproductive activities. It’s important that you get intentional about the ratio of fragmented to focused time you allow in your schedule.
Hone your boundary setting skills. This will have to be done both with your work team and your home team. If you are sharing a living space with roommates, spouses, children or just a gang of hyper dogs, you will need to get structured about space and work hours. On the work side, discuss with your manager and team members what hours should be focused time and what needs to be available for meetings and impromptu calls.
Proactively manage your calendar. Instead of leaving your calendar as a blank open slate for others to populate, set your time up to support getting work done. Every Friday, spend time plotting chunks of focused time in advance for you to meet the demands of the projects or responsibilities you’re managing for the next two weeks. Treat the time as a locked meeting the same way you would if you were meeting others. Don’t tag it as tentative. You can always change the meeting if priorities are pushing for that time but you want to stick to holding it for focused work as much as possible.
Manage your work from home guilt.
The popular issue that circulates when the topic of working remotely gets brought up is how will managers ensure employees aren’t abusing the system. In reality, most employees end up working way more hours than they did in the office.
Prioritize energy management. Being sensitive to one another’s energy helps us all work more effectively. Pay attention to when you are the most productive and focused. It may be the first few hours in the morning, when you’re fresh from a night’s sleep. Or it may be towards the afternoon when you start to get a sense of what really needs to get done. Work to schedule your calendar to align with those energy windows. Discuss how to coordinate those energy windows with the energy windows of the others on your team.

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HOW TO MANAGE WORKLOADS WHILST DEALING WITH PANDEMIC

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Top 10 Workload Management Tips - Management Training

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How to manage an overwhelming workload | Life skills

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8 Ways to Help Your Employees Manage Their Workload

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8 Ways to Help Your Employees Manage Their Workload

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Throw the Idea of Multitasking Out of the Window
Unless you have a group of extremely organized employees, you should encourage them to avoid multitasking. The business community has taught and encouraged the art of multitasking for years, but if you are looking for work to be completed in a timely fashion, and to be done correctly the first time, multitasking can actually be counterproductive. If you take the time to think about what multitasking actually is, you will realize that employees who choose to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously aren’t doing any of them any justice. You wouldn’t want someone texting and doing their makeup while they are behind the wheel of a car, so you shouldn’t ask your employees manage more than one important assignment at a time.
Prioritize the Work

Encourage your team members to sit down at the beginning of each workday and review all of the tasks they need to complete. Have them organize them by level of importance. There will always be things that will need to be handled at the beginning of the day, but there are also things that can wait until the end of the day. Prioritizing tasks will provide a guide for employees to follow, and increase their efficiency.
Flexibility and Adaptability Will Serve You Well
One of the most important assets that an effective manager has is the ability to actively listen to those around them. If you are like most managers, you have stepped into your leadership role and your responsibilities are quite different from those of your subordinates. The way that you might have approached the work may not be the most effective way for your employees. Ask for input from your employees and take their lead on the processes that work well and work with them to correct those identified as ineffective. Give your employees some room to get the work done, monitor their progress and step in and offer guidance as needed.
Communicate and be Clear
One of the things that you must always be cognizant of is the way you communicate with your staff. You should always remember, not all communication is effective communication. When you are working on a large project and the clock is ticking, clear, concise communication could make the difference between you meeting your deadline or missing it. When giving directives be sure to clearly state what your expectations are in terms of timelines and the work product.
Be Reasonable
When you are working on a timeline there are things you have no control over, but as a manager you do have control over the weight of the workload you place on your workforce. Don’t set your expectations so high that you set yourself and your team up for failure. Think about each of your employees and what their capabilities are, and assign tasks and the complexity of the workload based on your assessments and each employee’s abilities.
Keep the Door Open
You should establish the kind of working relationship with your employees which allows them to feel comfortable coming to you to discuss the projects they are working on. If your employees feel they are overworked, overwhelmed and find you unapproachable, they are not going to be nearly as productive as you need them to be. Establish and maintain an open door policy within the staff.

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5 Tips to Skillfully Juggle Multiple Tasks at Work

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5 Tips to Skillfully Juggle Multiple Tasks at Work

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Find out What’s Important
When everything is supposed to be equally important and need to be done, you need to think carefully and decide which ones to start first and how you divide your time. Relax, think and find out what tasks are really important and need immediate action and what you can put off.
Reach Out to Others
One of the major responsibilities of any project manager is to help his resources understand what is important and what is not and what they should be working on first. But in the end, you are responsible for your own work; no one else is going to tell you that saving your data is more important than having a conversation with your peer. It’s your job to understand what is most important. If you have a lot of tasks and you are prioritizing them that involve other people interaction, like your boss, colleagues, talk to them and finalize all the things immediately.

Manage Your Time
You might have an idea of when your tasks are due, when you will most likely get them completed and how much time you need to complete each task. It is advised to start working on the tasks that are urgent, considering the effort and time you need to invest in each of your task and how much input you actually need from others. Analyze carefully what you should be working on right now and what task you should have already started.
Setting Your Boundaries
Once you have a clear picture of what is really important and settled them on the basis of priorities that you need to deal with first. It’s time to set deadlines to get your work done, set expectations when you will have time to work on your project. It is important in a workplace setting but can also work for your non-work to-dos.
Lead with compassion. If you’re a manager, it’s easy to get obsessed on whether people are taking advantage of this time at home or actually working. As mentioned earlier, these are strange and stressful times. Now is the time to extend compassion, assumption of good intent and a culture of support. “Your employees are your best asset—whether they’re coming to work every day, working remotely, or unable to do their jobs,” says Miri Rodriguez, author of, “Brand Storytelling.” “Companies need to create a trusted space to acknowledge how team members may be feeling anxious or down during these times.”