Are you unknowingly sabotaging yourself at work? The truth is that many of us are unintentionally making our jobs tougher than they are. A short learning programme like a marketing course will prepare you for some of the challenges in your industry, but it can’t teach you how to plan and manage your day. In the systematic way that you execute marketing planning or marketing analysis, you should be applying the same approach to your daily processes which heavily influence what we are and aren’t able to achieve in a day. Becoming more productive depends on improving our own internal processes and working methods.
Whether you’ve chosen a marketing course or another business programme, here’s how you might be making your job more difficult than it should be.
By underestimating how long tasks take
We’ve all been there. You thought something would take three hours until you got started on it and realised that it would actually take up an entire work day. Whoops! By not taking a look at tasks until we begin them, we could actually be placing unnecessary stress on ourselves. We suggest going through each task before you assign time to it. This will help you understand what will be required as well as how long it will actually take you. This will also lessen those frantic late-night rushes to complete the work because you would have assigned it enough working hours to get it done.
By not planning your days efficiently
You’d be amazed at how much you can cram into a single work day if you take a little time to properly organise your time. Wasting time on small tasks that aren’t priorities is a sure way to eat into those valuable hours that should be spent meeting important deadlines. Whilst you might want to help a colleague fix the printer, do you actually have time to? With a clear idea of where your time is going, you can help assign it to areas that need it most. We live in an age where everything is perceived as urgent and as a result, many of us are scrambling when this needn’t always be the case. Define which tasks are and aren’t urgent and then break them up into the days of the week based on which deadlines must be fulfilled first.
By not cleaning up your computer
Organisation is the first step towards efficiency. It’s why your laptop or desktop computer should be organised too. If you’ve got files sitting everywhere, it’s a no-brainer that it’ll take you longer to execute basic tasks. We suggest taking your laptop home or staying a few hours later one evening after work in order to get yourself properly organised. You’ll earn that time back, with interest, when you see how much more effectively you’re able to work. You’ll also send fewer emails to colleagues and clients asking them to resend things. The same can be said for your desk. Less is more when it comes to your workspace and with less clutter to contend with, you’re more likely to feel more positive about your work area. You’re also far less likely to get distracted from the task at hand. .
At The IIE’s Varsity College Part-Time, a brand of The Independent Institute of Education (The IIE), programmes empower working professionals to be competent and confident to address any challenges associated with their chosen industries. For more on what an IIE Marketing Management – Distance short learning programme can offer your career, please click here for more information.
The IIE’s Varsity College Part-Time is a division of Varsity College, an educational brand of The Independent Institute of Education (The IIE). South Africa’s leading private higher education provider that’s registered with the Department of Higher Education and Training and accredited by the British Accreditation Council (BAC).