Jun28

Get Your Best Work Done With These 6 Time Management Strategies

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Get Your Best Work Done With These 6 Time Management Strategies

Time management is about managing your daily tasks in order to make sure that you are spending your time as effectively and as intentionally as possible. The best benefit of efficient time management is the ability to prioritize your day in order to have room for self-care. Here are 6 time management strategies that can help you get your best work done.

1. Timeboxing

This is a time management strategy where you aim to complete targeted goals within a ‘timebox.’ First, you have to figure out how long it’ll take you to complete a body of work. Then, you create a ‘timebox’ for the said task. For example, block 9am to 11am in your calendar to write a copy for the next social media campaign. Start working within the timebox and focus on the task until the timebox is up. Take a break once done. 

2. Time Blocking

Very similar to timeboxing, time blocking is also about setting aside a ‘block’ of time to complete your work but with one slight difference. In time blocking, you block off set periods of time in your calendar to work on tasks. For example, “Monday to Wednesday: work on the latest social media campaign.

3. Pomodoro

Pomodoro is a time management strategy that helps you complete tasks within short time frames and incorporate breaks in between. The breaks are a must. In Pomodoro, you set a timer for 25 minutes and focus on the task at hand, carefully avoiding distractions. Then, you take a 5-minute break after. Repeat. Know more about the Pomodoro Technique in this article: That Tomato Shaped Kitchen Timer.

4. Eat the Frog

My personal favorite time management strategy is Eat the Frog. This means getting the hardest stuff out of the way first before proceeding to complete the rest of your tasks. You would have to think hard about which tasks to prioritize. The rule is to complete the important AND urgent tasks first because those are usually high-value jobs. Learn more about Eat the Frog strategy here: Eat That Frog And Drink The Coffee!

5. Get Things Done (GTD)

In this time management strategy, the first step is to write down everything you need to do and then you sort them out in order of priority to find the low-value jobs and the tasks that you can delegate or even get rid of completely. Find out more about the GTD strategy in this article: How To Get Things Done.

6. Pareto Principle

This time management strategy is sometimes called the “80/20 rule.” The Pareto principle has one fundamental rule: you spend 20% of your time on 80% of your work. This is the reverse of Eat the Frog where you are encouraged to get the quick tasks out of the way in order to get quick wins as a motivation to complete the rest of your work.

Do any of these work for you? What is your favorite time management strategy? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

Jun21

How SMEs Can Retain Top Talent When A Salary Increase Is Not Possible

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How SMEs Can Retain Top Talent When A Salary Increase Is Not Possible

Global lockdowns have affected a lot of businesses. Small to medium enterprises, Mom n’ Pop business, and Start-ups are among the businesses who took the hardest financial hit. Most of these organizations aren’t in the best commercial position to retain their top talent. However, they also cannot afford staff turnover and would need to increase retention.

Making sure that staff feels validated and rewarded for a job well done is an important part of keeping your best people. It is also a great way to attract top new talent as a good reward system improves your businesses’ reputation as a stellar place to work. When employees feel properly rewarded, they are happier and generally more productive. They also opt to stay with the organization for longer.

A salary increase isn’t the only way for your business to reward and retain your top talent. If traditional salary options are not possible in this financial climate, you can still reward your employees with non-monetary benefits. Here are a few examples of non-monetary incentives:

Work From Home Arrangement

In industries who can afford to allow their employees to work from home, this working arrangement has been mandated to help enable physical or social distancing. This helps quarantine the workforce and reduce the population of people who can be at risk of catching the Covid-19 virus. Once the restrictions were lifted, the workforce was allowed to go back to work and back to the office. For organizations who are able to allow their employees to work from home, this arrangement can be one of the non-monetary benefits used to reward top performers. 

Flexible Work Schedule

Allowing your top talent to manage their schedule, within reasonable limits, can also be a non-monetary incentive. For example, staff can be allowed to start work anytime from 6 am to 10 am as long as they complete the number of work hours needed for the day. Another flexible work arrangement is to allow employees the ability to start and stop work whenever they want within their daily schedule as long as the4y are available for team meetings and collaborative sessions. This could prove especially practical for parents who have young children at home.  

Medical Benefits

This one could arguably be a very popular employee retention benefit. Understandably, employees would want to receive the best health care. Employers could offer to cover an employee’s health insurance or at least subsidize a portion of staff’s private health insurance. Employers can even offer to extend healthcare coverage to an employee’s family members. 

Wellness Packages

Because of recent events, there is a growing interest in mental health and wellness programs. Employers can offer access to therapy or counseling sessions. They can even offer access to physical wellness programs like gym memberships, training sessions that are supervised by personal trainers online, massage sessions, chiropractor sessions, etc. Coaching sessions from financial advisors also count under wellness coaching.

Have you used non-monetary benefits to reward or retain top talent in your company? How did it work out? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

Jun14

What Is Your Productivity Style?

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What Is Your Productivity Style?

Most people nowadays are obsessed with productivity. We’re always trying to get the most things done in the least amount of time it humanly takes. It’s like a badge of honor. No wonder a lot of people feel burned-out at work.

There are quite a few productivity styles and if you’ve been paying close attention to the articles on this blog, you will find most of them. You may have even tried out a few of them to see which one/s works best for you. That’s great! The point is this…Maybe we all should stop trying to make things happen and start to organize our life and work based on our natural productivity style? What does it mean to find your productivity style? It means using productivity techniques that work with how your brain is built.

The Four Different Productivity Styles are:

1. The Prioritizer

Are you highly efficient and very decisive? Can you zoom in on a focal task? Can you go through a huge amount of work in the quickest way humanly possible? Prioritizers know how to gauge the level of importance of each given task, thus the term prioritizer. While they do have a tendency to be competitive and value speed more than excellence, they are data-driven and are good at analyzing and solving problems. They are very goal-oriented.

2. The Planner

Are you conscious of regulations and protocols? Are you a stickler for details and deadlines? Do you like schedules and lists? Planners are often superb at project management. While they could be rigid and not very spontaneous, they have a keen eye for spotting flaws in a project and love creating processes and plans. They also like to organize data.

3. The Arranger

Do you love collaboration? Are you keen on getting everyone’s input on team decisions? Are you supportive and expressive? Are you a team player? Arrangers are among the best communicators. While they could sometimes be too involved or take too much responsibility in a project, they have a strong intuition and awareness of other team member’s emotions. They are very skilled in persuasion.

4. The Visualizer

Do you hate being bogged down by details? Are your eyes always focused on the bigger picture? Do you like connecting the dots and finding ways to solve a problem? Visualizers are creative and open-minded. They love to innovate and think out of the box. While they can’t be bothered too much with details and may at times fail to plan ahead, they like more holistic approaches to problem-solving.

After reading these four work styles, does any one style in particular call out to you? Can you relate to any of them or do you feel like you have characteristics for more than one work style? Don’t worry if you do, this isn’t a one-style-fits-all guide. Most of us are a combination of any of the four. If you want a more accurate test to know your productivity style, you can take the assessment here. Share your productivity style with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

Jun7

Bosses Experience Burnout Too

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Bosses Experience Burnout Too

There’s a running joke among employees about reliving the same day over and over for over a year – a lot like groundhog’s day but in a pandemic setting. COVID – 19 has surely caused major disruptions in the way we live and elevated stress is one very clear sign of the times. 

With many people still working from home, the lines between personal time and time for work have become blurry. This is why a lot of remote workers feel overworked. But it’s not just the employees who feel this exhaustion, whole companies feel the dip too. With that, managers, bosses, and business owners feel burnout as well. Leaders have to make changes in order to improve the company’s resilience to stress and burnout. Bring back focus and clarity and avoid burnout with these 4 tips for managers:

1. Create a dialogue

Leaders should create an atmosphere where all parties feel comfortable speaking up about their challenges and experiences without judgment. Not only should managers provide a forum for employees to air their grievances but also a venue to share best practices, experiences, and triumphs as well. Good communication and respect for others will go a long way towards reducing burnout for both you and your employees.

2. Be specific

Make it easier for yourself and your employees to accomplish goals and hit deadlines by establishing clear processes, coherent instructions, and straightforward guidelines. Having clear instructions works well for both employee and employer. In case something falls through the cracks (as is bound to happen to even the best companies), both staff and/or manager will be able to catch it, flag it, and address it at any point in the process.

3. Let go

Let go of the command and control business model that defines old, traditional work styles. The future workplace should be more flexible and fluid. To enable that, leaders should advocate for autonomy and give their employees control over how to get work done. Employees who are given more autonomy over their work feel more trusted and are happier in the long run. Happy employees stay with the company for longer, saving the company a lot of resources. This is a huge contrast to companies with high turnover and attrition rates who need to constantly invest time and money in training new employees.

4. Minimize distractions

Sure, technology makes work easier. But sometimes, having a lot of tools available makes it harder for staff to focus. There’s getting over the learning curve, then having to choose which tools will be best for the job, then there’s tracking the tasks, and finally, there’s actually using the tools to do the task. Make it easier for everyone to do their work by using agile tools that can streamline employees’ work management processes, therefore eliminating a significant chunk of busywork. 

How about you? How do you, as a manager, prevent or minimize instances of stress and burnout in the workplace? We’d love to hear your tips. Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp

Jun3

Why Consistency Is The Key To Achieving Your Goals

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Why Consistency Is The Key To Achieving Your Goals

When we see successful people, we may think that they probably are able to spot opportunities at every turn and act on these opportunities accordingly. Successful people may have inspirational stories of overcoming adversity, having incredible natural abilities, having access to resources, or having pure luck. Sure, it can be one or all of those. It can also be great genes, the perfect environment, or serendipity. The stars have aligned perfectly for them.

It’s easier to think that the universe conspired to make these billionaires, athletes, world leaders, and any other famous person successful because it takes the responsibility of having to work for our success off of our hands. Here’s an open secret: consistency in practicing goal-aligned behaviors is the key to success. THAT is something we all have control over, and we can choose to practice.

The brain does not like uncertainty. It looks for order, predictability, and regularity. This is why your brain finds comfort in consistency, because consistency reduces uncertainty and makes things regular and predictable.

Don’t get me wrong, your brain also loves things that are new…and easy. It’s wired to learn but also wired to find the easiest path to success. So if you struggle to stay consistent, let these tips help you:

Be clear about your goals

We always hear about creating SMART goals. That is actually based on sound science. When you have goals that are too vague, the brain depletes its resources in trying to figure out things. Essentially, you are not doing your brain any favors by creating vague goals.

Don’t create your own obstacles

To stay consistent, you have to remove all the stuff that makes reaching your goals hard. Make it as easy on yourself as possible to reach your goals. Prepare your environment. For example, if you want to consistently practice yoga every morning, make it easy by laying out your gear and mat the night before. All you have to do is wake up and practice yoga.

Don’t be too focused on the outcome

Outcomes are important when you’re trying to reach a goal BUT you have to allow room for flexibility. It helps you to be able to think on your feet and re-adjust when necessary.

Don’t rely on willpower alone

Routine and regularity help with consistency for this reason – you will never have to use willpower if you establish a routine. Willpower is a finite resource. Conserve for important scenarios such as decision-making etc. Also, help yourself by eliminating temptation. For example, if your phone is causing you to be distracted at work – put it away or download an app that will block certain social media sites for a while. If you have a serious phone addiction, contemplate locking it in a safe that has a timer to help you stay off your phone while you get work done.

How about you, what are your consistency tips? In which instance has consistency helped you successfully achieve your goals? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!

Written by Jaie O. TheHelp