What do you do if your time management as an IT professional is falling apart?

1 Assess your situation

The first step to fixing your time management problem is to understand what is causing it. Is it a lack of planning, unrealistic expectations, poor communication, distractions, or something else? To answer this question, you need to track your time and analyze how you spend it. You can use a tool like Toggl or RescueTime to record your activities and see where your time goes. Then, you can identify the sources of inefficiency, waste, or stress and decide what you can change, delegate, or eliminate.

2 Set SMART goals

The next step is to set clear and realistic goals for yourself and your projects. A good way to do this is to use the SMART criteria, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. SMART goals help you define what you want to accomplish, how you will measure your progress, whether you have the resources and skills to do it, why it matters, and when you will complete it. By setting SMART goals, you can avoid ambiguity, confusion, and procrastination and focus on the most important and urgent tasks.

3 Plan your work

Once you have your goals, you need to plan how you will achieve them. Planning your work involves breaking down your goals into smaller and manageable tasks, prioritizing them according to their importance and urgency, and scheduling them in your calendar or to-do list. You can use a tool like Asana or Todoist to organize your tasks and sync them with your other apps and devices. Planning your work also means setting realistic expectations, communicating your availability and status, and leaving some buffer time for unexpected issues or changes.

4 Work smarter

Planning your work is not enough if you don't execute it efficiently and effectively. To work smarter, you need to adopt some strategies and habits that can boost your productivity and performance. For example, you can use the Pomodoro technique to break your work into 25-minute intervals with short breaks in between, or the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize your tasks based on their importance and urgency. You can also use automation tools like Zapier or IFTTT to streamline your workflows and reduce manual tasks. Additionally, you can limit distractions, avoid multitasking, and delegate or outsource tasks that are not within your core competencies.

5 Review and improve

The final step is to review your results and evaluate your time management skills. You can do this by comparing your actual performance with your planned goals, measuring your outcomes and outputs, and collecting feedback from your clients, colleagues, or managers. You can also use a tool like Clockify or Harvest to generate reports and insights on your time usage and productivity. By reviewing and improving your time management, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, learn from your mistakes, and make adjustments for future projects.