How to Manage Your Time Efficiently and Effectively

Looking back at my working career, I must say that Time Management is one of the key fundamentals to running an efficient and effective office or merely just getting that “task” done.

Being a Virtual Assistant for VA Connect demands good Time Management as one juggles many tasks and more than one Client. When starting out as a Virtual Assistant with only a single client on your hands, you probably didn’t anticipate that there would be a time when you’ll get to be so busy.

Getting more work as a Virtual Assistant is a blessing, but it also brings with it several challenges. The biggest challenge of all is managing your time properly when you’ve become inundated with work.

The definition of Time Management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity. Time Management is essentially the ability to organize and plan the time spent on activities in a day. The result of good Time Management is increased effectiveness and productivity. It is a key aspect of project management and involves skills such as planning, setting goals and prioritizing for a better performance

Good Time Management enables you to work smarter not harder so that you get more done in less time, even when time is tight and pressures are high.

Tips for efficient Time Management: –

  • Complete the most important tasks first
  • Learn to say no
  • Sleep for at least 7 – 8 hours per day
  • Devote your entire focus to the task at hand
  • Get an early start
  • Don’t allow unimportant details to drag you down
  • Turn key tasks into habits
  • Delineate a time limit in which to complete task
  • Leave a buffer-time between tasks
  • Don’t think in the totality of your to-do list
  • Exercise and eat health
  • Create organizing systems
  • Do something during “waiting time”
  • Commit to your plan to do something
  • Batch related tasks together
  • Find time for stillness
  • Eliminate the non-essential

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting things done is motivation, or, more accurately, the lack of it.

So how do you get motivated to do things, particularly things you must do but don’t want to do?

There are three key areas where time management and motivation relate closely to each other:

  • Getting things done that you believe you must do
  • Getting things done that you want to
  • Motivation to improve your time management itself

If one thing is for certain, we are all given the same amount of time in a day, 24 hours, 1440 minutes and 86400 seconds, how we utilize this time is important to how effectively and efficiently we manage our time, so plan your life wisely.

In the words of the inspirational Karen Wessels, our CEO: –

“I’m sure we all know the term ‘multi-task’ – well, let’s chuck it out the window, let’s be savvy and make use of the resources around us.”

Thank you again to Karen Wessels for putting forward this challenge to her Team and for continually challenging us to be better individuals and to think outside of the box.

VA CONNECT has a team of Virtual Assistants just waiting to be of service to you, to lighten your load! To FREE up some of your time!