Administrators: How to take control of your day

It is always a good day to improve your time management skills, learn how to take control of your day and increase your productivity.

Your morning defines your day, so do something that will make you feel good, and you will tackle the rest of the day with confidence and with full control. It could be a jog, a walk, the gym or even your morning coffee from your favourite place. At the start of COVID, I made a promise to walk each morning, what a great time to exercise and visualise how the rest of your day is going to be. Now six months on, I am still getting up early for my morning walk and my days are so much better for it.

Once at your desk the next step is to plan ahead and prioritise. Take the first minutes to check your to-do-list and use the A, B, C method. A for the most important, high priority, the items with close deadlines; B is for the less important tasks and C is for the least important tasks. Once you have assigned a letter, you can further prioritise using numbers 1, 2 and 3.

It is also a good time to set some daily goals for yourself on what you plan to accomplish that day. Using your perfect week, you should schedule times to check and reply to emails each day, refrain from checking again unless you are waiting on something urgent. Don’t let your inbox rule your day, take control and practice these three steps: Action - however if the task requires more time then diarise it into your calendar for a later time, File - if the email is required for reference save it somewhere logical or Delete - if you don’t need it.

Focus and avoid multitasking, even though most Administrators are great at it, you will accomplish more and increase your overall productivity by doing one project at a time. This is why we group similar tasks together when we build our perfect week, your brain doesn’t then need to jump from one type of thinking to another. The transitions become smoother, you will gain momentum and actually speed up the process.

A perfect way to take control of your day is to lock in important meetings. The morning meeting should have a time limit, have a list of items to discuss, and remember to prioritise the most important items first. The stand up huddle at 3pm was always my favourite, a five minute meeting standing away from your desk and phone. It is amazing how much you can get through and it is the perfect time to find out what needs to be finished for the day and no one will ever be late to evening appointments again.

Remember, the key to taking control of your day is to constantly think about how you allocate your time, the 18 minute daily workout is a great tool. As I mentioned earlier, five minutes in the morning to plan your day, sit down and think about what you need to do today to make it successful. One minute per hour to refocus, set an alarm every hour and when it beeps - take a deep breath and ask yourself if you have spent your last hour productively. Then at the end of the day for five minutes review how the day went and plan for the next.

Let today be the start of something new.

Leesa Paull
BDE - Administration
Ray White Queensland
0408 779 766
lpaull@raywhite.com