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Time Management in The Workplace: 5 Quick Tips for Newbies in the Workforce

As a newbie in the workforce, time management in the workplace is an important skill that you must possess. It can determine the not just your career success but your work life balance.
Being new in the workforce, sometimes it can get quite stressful especially when you are learning new roles and responsibilities. You need to juggle a few things at the same time and you also seek to have a life out of the office.
Completing jobs assigned in the workplace in the highest standards is a key determinant of career success. This is where time management in the workplace comes into play.
These are some time management in the workplace tips you should be conscious of if you want to increase efficiency:

1. Understand Roles
Be sure you understand your own role and responsibilities in the office. This helps when work is assigned to you. Being new in the workplace - you may not know what is needed and expected of you. This can cause delays and hence hamper your efficiency.
Have you been given a job scope? If it is a special project for which you have been pulled in, do you know what are the expertise expected of you? Clarify to avoid wasting time. The first time management in the workplace advice is to understand your roles and those of your colleagues.

2. Do The Important And Urgent First
The second time management in the workplace tip is to prioritize your tasks at hand. Inevitably, you will be asked to complete a few tasks at the same time. There will also be situations where colleagues or clients would come in with last minute requests.
Prioritize your work. Do not overwhelm yourself with too long a to-do list. Many newbies pursuing career success make the wrong assumption that the more they complete at work the better it is for them. This is not necessarily so. Too long a to-do list may cause you to procrastinate on starting the work.

3. Do Not Waste Time
One of the biggest mistakes with a to-do list is that there is no time allocated for each task. I often make this mistake early on in my career - a list of to-do things but without an estimated time attached to complete each of them. Hence the list becomes a source of stress at the end of the day.
 I also realize that it wastes a lot of time. You end up pending too much time on a task that may have needed less time than what you have spent to complete.

Time management in the workplace includes being conscious of time robbers. For example, taking long tea breaks, long smoking breaks, chatting on the phone and surfing on the Internet. Realize that these ‘luxuries’ have a price tag attached to it – your career success.

4. Do It Right The First Time
How many times have you seen fellow colleagues fighting mini crisis that can be avoided if only someone gets it right the first time? Whatever you are doing, get it right the first time. Have a high personal standard that says nothing leaves your hand unless you know you have done your best.

This time management in the workplace tip while easy to understand, is not easy to practice. Chances are that as a newbie pursuing career success you will have a tendency to rush through your work assuming that speed is a surrogate measurement of efficiency. Not so, quality of work is important too.

5. Do It Now
Another common time management mistake for those new at the workplace is procrastination. There are many causes of procrastination. If you feel you have the necessary time management skills but still find yourself procrastinating then you may want to find out the causes and address them.
One quick and simple way of time management in the workplace is to do the task immediately. Do not over rationalize and craft the perfect plan. A good plan executed today is better than an excellent plan not executed at all.
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