Time management: how to be more efficient in the office

Spanish employees spend, on average, 9 hours and 19 minutes at their workstation every day. However, are only productive for 6 hours and 34 minutes., according to the 2nd Study on the Working Behaviour of Spanish Workers, The WorkMeter report, developed by WorkMeter, shows that professionals need to improve the time management of human capital.

As Lord Chesterfield said: “Look after the minutes and the hours will look after themselves”. This lack of productivity during the working day means that many employees have to deal with tasks outside their working hours. Specifically, 30% of Spanish workers say they have to devote their personal time to work at the weekend and 16% say they attend to work matters during their holidays., according to the Annual Barometer of Employee Well-being and Motivation, in 2015 by Edenred and Ipsos in 14 European countries.

The consequence of this poor time management at work? Reduced motivation and satisfaction. In fact, 41% of workers admit that they are unhappy with their work-life balance.

What are we wasting our time on?

According to a study developed by Salary.com in partnership with Microsoft and America Online, of the 45 hours a week in an average working day, 16 hours are unproductive, i.e. around one third of the time is wasted.

However, we must point out that “wasting time” does not mean taking a break between meals or taking an hour-long lunch break., These stops are advisable and healthy to reactivate concentration. The real thieves of time are, according to the report:

• Talking to colleagues on non-work-related issues (the 43%).
• Browse by internet (the 28%).
• Send and receive text messages (4%).
• Consult the social media (4%).
• Attend calls (4%).
• Perform online shopping (2%).

We must also not forget that it takes an average of 120 seconds for anyone to regain their concentration after a break or when changing from one activity to another. This causes us to involuntarily waste another 60 minutes a day in micro-pauses., according to the Workmeter study. In the case of Spanish professionals, employees do not spend a minute and a half on a task uninterruptedly.

How does time work?

Albert Einstein already formulated it: time is relative. However, a number of scholars have further elaborated on this perception and time management, The results of this study are a series of generalised conclusions on this concept.

Thus, there are a number of principles that will help us understand how the human mind works with regard to time management.

• Carlson's law or principle of homogeneous sequences: This principle holds that if we carry out a task continuously, we will need less time than if we carry it out in an interrupted manner.  
• Pareto Law: According to this researcher, any task will be extended to occupy the total amount of time available, i.e. the more time we assign a priori to a task, the more we will devote to it.
• Law 20-80: According to this paradigm, 20% of our work produces 80% of results, which highlights the importance of focusing our efforts on strategic tasks.
• Laborit Law: As professionals, we tend to do work that we enjoy before other work that we find more tedious, easier work before other work that is more complex, and urgent matters before important ones. Hence the importance of knowing how to prioritise tasks so as not to get carried away by this principle.   
• Fraisse's Law: Each individual has a different way of carrying out optimal time management at work, so each employee must study and establish his or her own rhythms and moments of greatest efficiency.

Guidelines for proper time management

Knowing these principles and having detailed the main time thieves, it is logical to ask ourselves how we can improving our time management at work. In this respect, the following tips will help us to be more efficient:

• Set aside some time to analyse our objectives. It is about taking a few minutes to consider what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it, which helps us to prioritise tasks and focus our attention on what is really important. For his part, Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, advises using the first half hour of the working day for this planning of the day, as our minds will be at full capacity after the previous night's rest.
• Draw up a to-do list. Making a to-do list allows our brain to concentrate on each action, without having to keep track of remembering what the next step is. In addition, this technique gives us a global and summarised view of our objectives, which also increases efficiency. However, we must be careful not to become obsessed with crossing off missions, as this will lead us to prioritise simple and quick tasks, leaving aside other more complex but also more strategic ones.
• Set aside time for the most important objectives. It is not enough to write down a task in the agenda, but it is also convenient to close how and when we are going to carry it out, reserving that time for it. In this way we avoid falling into procrastination or suffering interference during its development.
• Divide more complex projects into blocks. As we have mentioned, when faced with a large objective, we may be overwhelmed, opting to move on to other simpler but less vital tasks. To do this, we can segment the project into smaller, more manageable objectives, taking it one step at a time.
• Delegating to improve efficiency. One of the most common mistakes in the workplace, especially among superiors and managers, is to think that if we dedicate ourselves personally to a task it will take less time than if we entrust it to someone else. Although the first few times, you may have to spend more time teaching and explaining how to do something and supervising the result, in the medium term, empowerment saves a lot of time and effort.
• Planning meetings. According to Workmeter, 19% of professionals consider that the biggest distractions in the performance of their duties come from holding too many meetings in the office. However, the problem lies not in the meeting itself, but in its execution and development. If we plan it correctly, identifying the issues we are going to discuss, the objective we want to achieve and the questions we need to ask, these meetings between colleagues help to generate high-performing teams.
• Resting is not wasting time. Breaks for a breather or going out for lunch during the working day do not mean that we are wasting time. In fact, experts advise taking breaks of a few minutes every two hours to help our brains recover.  
• Analyse how we waste time and take action. To overcome bad time management habits, there is nothing better than first finding out where we waste our working day: are we interrupted too much, do we check our email too often, are we unable to concentrate on an activity for more than two minutes at a time, etc. Once we know what's wrong, we can adopt specific solutions.

Apps for better time management at work

Although technology (internet, social networks, whatsapp...) is, to a large extent, one of the factors that generates more distractions at work, it is also true that we can turn it into a great ally.

On the market we can find numerous applications for mobile devices that will help us to improving our performance. Here are some of these time management apps:

• Flipd. This is an example for iOS of bdistraction blockers. These applications allow users to block emails, alerts, incoming calls, social network notifications... for a period of time, allowing them to concentrate on a topic without interruptions.
• MoneyPenny. It enables real-time monitoring of the work carried out by each professional and/or task, their performance and efficiency from any computer device. It also offers reports, notifications via Slack and HipChat, an invoicing register, project tracking or live monitoring of tasks.
• 18 minutes. Inspired by Peter Bregman's book of the same name, this tool helps us to strengthen our ability to concentrate. It consists of staying focused on the app for 18 minutes, without doing other activities, to train this skill.
• RescueTime. Do you want to know how you spend your time on your computer? With this app you can monitor your activity on your device and receive reports about it. To correct possible deviations, the software also sends alerts, blocks pages or programs and allows you to write notes on the goals achieved.    
• Tomato Timer. Francesco Cirillo developed the pomodoro technique in the 1980s, which consists of dedicating 25 minutes to a single activity. This application helps you to exercise it by means of a timer that alerts you when the time is up.  
• Mindfulness APP. Every day we need to meditate and analyse what we have done, what we have to do and how we are going to achieve it. To help us in this introspection, there are different apps on the market specially designed to strengthen this reflection.