Avoiding Burnout: Manage Your Time With These Techniques
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Most modern professionals spend at best half of their waking hours at work, but for anyone suffering from workplace burnout, that time still never feels like it’s enough!
Though you probably joined your current workplace feeling nothing but excitement, your workdays may now feel like total chaos, characterized by intense workloads, unproductive meetings, and more distractions than you can shake a stick at.
Though there are many possible causes of burnout, it can often be helped by taking a smarter approach to time management.
Here’s 5 time management techniques you can use to avoid burnout.
Use Sprint Timers
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One of the most popular ways to improve your focus and time management at work is by using sprint timers.
Simple but effective, this technique allows you to break your working hours down into uninterrupted blocks for working, which are in turn broken up by designated break periods.
One of the most well-known sprint timer techniques is the Pomodoro Technique, which uses 25-minute focused work blocks broken up by 5-minute breaks.
However, there are any number of unique ways you can use this technique, with a solution to suit anyone’s working habits.
Whether you use a simple desktop timer, a dedicated time-tracking app, or the timer function in your favorite collaborative workspace, dividing your time into small, manageable chunks of focused time can supercharge your overall productivity, and establish clear boundaries between your work and distractions.
Prioritize Tasks by Complexity
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When managing their own time or delegating tasks to a team, many people tend to prioritize their workloads with the easiest tasks at the top of the list.
Though it may be tempting to keep things simple when the coffee hasn’t had time to kick in fully, allowing these more complex and challenging tasks to be put off again and again will only increase the risk of them hanging over your head after your working hours, throwing off your work-life balance and compounding the effects of burnout.
When you’re faced with a difficult task, don’t defer it and let yourself fall into the trap of procrastination.
By focusing your time and resources on the most challenging items on your to-do as early as possible, you’ll not only get these things out of the way faster, but develop new skills outside your comfort zone that will increase your confidence and competencies at work.
Audit your Tools
Modern teams’ efficiency can live or die based on the tools they’re equipped with. If you’re feeling burnt out, and you’ve started to notice a lot of duplicate tasks, data silos, and similar trends, then it may be time to audit your tech and find out how well it’s really working for you.
Carrying out a thorough audit of your most-used tools is often one of the best ways to ensure you’re making the most of your time, and dull down the stress that can come from insurmountable workloads.
Take some time to think about the key business processes are served by your tools, how those processes could be made more efficient, and the kinds of features your current tech stack may be missing.
As you audit your tech, it’s also important to look for new integrations for your existing tools, rather than focusing solely on ways to totally overhaul your tech stack.
Embracing a CRM system, update your accounting software, revolutionize your marketing campaigns, and other core tools can bring new solutions to your time management, and ensure a greater level of efficiency for you and your team.
Batch your Internal Communications
For many professionals, the things that take time away from pressing tasks isn’t workplace chatter or push notifications on their phone, but the internal communications that are an essential part of every job.
The average white-collar worker receives hundreds of emails and instant messages a day, and with remote working making people feel as if they have to be reachable at all times, many professionals find keeping their mind on a task long enough to complete it increasingly difficult.
Though some of your colleagues may respond like they’re on-call to their email and IMs 24/7, remember this doesn’t mean you have to be.
Batching communications is a technique advocated by productivity and self-help guru Timothy Ferriss. It involves only checking and emails and other communications at certain times of the day, and keeping this kind of admin separated from more pressing and important tasks.
When you see an icon flash on your taskbar, the natural reaction is to check on it straight away. However, with a little discipline, you can stop communications dragging you away from your priorities, having to re-engage, and letting random pieces of admin chip away at your precious time.
Schedule No-Meetings Periods
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Carrying from our previous points, meetings that aren’t particularly productive or informative can also be a major drain on an individual’s time.
While regular catch-ups are certainly important, having too many meetings will rob you of the time you need to get into the groove and deliver your best work.
Though having a whole meeting-free day once per week may not seem practical at first glance, moving recurring meetings, making them optional, or simply negotiating with your manager, clients, and colleagues, can reveal a great opportunity for a less stressful and more productive calendar.
When you start to negotiate for no-meetings periods, one of the most important things is to go in armed with a solid explanation of the health and productivity benefits it can bring the team, and a willingness to be flexible around your colleague’s unique needs.
Though flipping the status quo on its head can be a daunting prospect, and even after establishing a no-meetings period it can be hard to maintain boundaries, these kind of challenging culture changes can work miracles for anyone experiencing burnout, and help to foster a new, healthier way of looking at meetings throughout your department.
Pro Tip: Try collaborating asynchronously to eliminate the need for many meetings altogether!
Final Thoughts…
Though better time management isn’t always the answer to burnout, it can certainly help to mitigate some of the most common sources of burnout in the modern workplace.
As you work to understand and manage your burnout, we hope these time management techniques help you progress towards a happier, healthier, and more productive working week!
About the Author:
Chris Harley is a passionate mental health and wellbeing writer, focusing on sharing his experience and improving the lives of others. When Chris isn't researching the latest holistic and wellbeing therapies, he's spending time with his two cats, usually curled up on the sofa reading a book.
