Who doesn’t always want to improve work productivity and optimize time management? Productivity is a delicate subject to many of us. We must face deadlines, stress, reports and procrastination while remaining productive and working efficiently. Anticipation and your ability to work with time management are essential for making the most out of your working schedule and projects. You can perform and complete more tasks in less time by using a tool as simple as the printable calendar.
Below we will outline the main methods to optimize your time and avoid work excess with a paper planning tool which you can access and use always. We have chosen the printable calendar for a few reasons:
- Reliability: The calendar is technology independent, so you can use it even when the power is out.
- Versatility: It can help you organize the next week, month or season. You can save time later by printing now calendars for incoming months. A calendar for the next month is useful especially in the last week of this month. Meanwhile, an August 2018 calendar is efficient for planning ahead the next autumn season.
- Simplicity: There’s no learning process for using a printable calendar. You just organize your data and write on it.
- Time saving: There’s no need to insert a password, log on or open a device to access your calendar.
- Visibility: You and your colleagues know information about your time availability instantly just by looking at the calendar.
Main Steps to Prevent Work Excess with a Printable Calendar
1. Check the Causes of Work Excess
There was a time when working time was optimized to last for as the hours you spend in the office. Work excess appears periodically or even regularly nowadays. When working in excess, you are stressed and more tired than you should be after a day’s tasks. Usually, work excess has a reason. It appears due to:
- Multitasking;
- Meetings held without relevant reasons or results;
- An abundance of technical tasks regarding your work;
- Outdated work procedures;
- Lack of enough employees to cover current work demand.
Evaluate the periods when work excess appeared during the current year. Look into context and discover the causes of work excess. They will lead you to the work management solution.
2. Outline Yearly Goals
There are two types of business goals and objectives you need to set yearly:
- Company goals focus on growth, client retention and profit.
- Employee goals set your professional growth as an individual and within your team.
Once you’ve determined your goals, you will need to set the methods to reach them and how to split your time so that it doesn’t affect your daily work. You may want to begin a specialized course or a business project. Attentively calculate the time you invest in your goals and have a back-up plan to postpone them, if necessary. Mark goals in your printable calendar only when you are sure that you have time to focus on them.
3. Cut Out Your Free Time
Weekends and vacations are essential to have a balanced work – family time. Free time keeps you rested and creative when you perform your business tasks. When reviewing your printable calendar for the future marks, cut out potential vacations, weekend and National Holidays.
Time might trick you into thinking that you have enough days to complete a project. Then you realize that you need to cut out a few days and compress the work in less time. This leads to work excess. Prevent it by cutting out free time from your printable calendar from the beginning. You will then have a realistic calculation of how much a project lasts.
4. Think Long Term
You can prevent seasonal work excess by printing out calendar for the entire year from the beginning. Focus on pre-seasonal months to calculate how much additional time you need. Many companies have months or weeks when they work excessively due to increased sales or marketing campaigns. This data is available beforehand to help you analyze and adjust your time.
Request information about specific projects that might come up during the current year and calculate how much of your regular work time they require.
5. Split Tasks in Your Team
According to business studies, the ideal team has a common mindset, a strong support and is interactively involved in all aspects of a project. You can organize your time by splitting project tasks between colleagues. Feel free to use their background to select the right members. Then, let them decide which task they handle and keep them motivated.
You can even ask for regular feedback from your coworkers for maximized results. Go further by adding specific time in your printable calendar for additional briefing or evaluation and updating meetings.
The Printable Calendar Solution
Periodic work excess might become constant if you don’t pay enough attention to eliminate it. Moreover, an overcharged workflow leads to tiredness and risks to make mistakes when completing tasks. There are plenty of other consequences of work excess which might even include stress-generated health issues.
The printable calendar is a reliable tool you can use for months or even years. You will only need to update it monthly and keep copies of the former months’ calendars to make the most of it. Rethink your schedule and avoid work excess by using a printable calendar!
