When you are moving close to a deadline you may start to feel anxious. This in turn can reduce the quality of your work. Believing that your remaining time is enough for you to produce a quality product can speed up the time with which you can accomplish your task, and improve the quality of the end product. Using lack of time for an excuse for not thinking straight is not helpful, we can accomplish much more if we believe in the quality of our work and our ability to perform. It can be useful to shift your perception of and relationship with time. Try some of the techniques below:
- Look at your relationship to perfection and procrastination think about whether fear is the source of your problems
- Watch busy people and learn from them, how do they manage to accomplish things effectively
- Set up basic and effective methods that work for tasks that occur routinely
- Use specific times for reading/writing emails
- Learn to say no
- If you still find yourself saying yes when you mean no try delaying your response “I’ll let you know”, “I’ll call you back”
- Be realistic about what you can achieve in a give time space
- Ask for help, delegate
- In your schedule allow time for the unexpected
- Use templates for administrative tasks that you do regularly
- Organise your workspace and keep it in order, don’t waste time looking for things
- Believe in yourself and your instincts, make decisions quickly
- Back up your work!
