According to recent findings, senior managers spend a minimum of 23 hours per week engaged in meetings.
On the other hand, companies waste up to 16 days annually searching for paper documents.
A surprising thing to observe about the B2B world is how despite its focus on productivity, it still struggles to prioritise the importance of time & its management.
Managers & teams seem unable to notice how unnecessary steps in workflow processes may lead to the wastage of dozens of hours every month.
On top of it all, issues such as apathy, chronic procrastination & adhd procrastination make things even more challenging.
In this blog, let us look at some time management tools & methods that can help managers battle procrastination & encourage them to manage their time better.
Zeigarnik Effect – A Remedy to battle Procrastination
Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was dining at a restaurant one evening when she noticed something interesting about the waiters who were taking orders.
Watching them interact with customers, she observed that the waiters seemed to remember incomplete orders much better than those that had already been paid for. This intrigued her, as she wondered why this might be the case.
She conducted research on this phenomenon & discovered that the human mind tends to retain information about tasks that are left incomplete.
This came to be known as the Zeigarnik effect, & it explains why people are often better at remembering unfinished tasks than those that have already been completed.
In the case of restaurant waiters, this insight could help them to improve their performance by focusing on incomplete orders & making sure they are completed before moving on to the next task. By doing so, they could improve the overall efficiency & quality of service in the restaurant.
It goes without saying that procrastination is the thief of time. This psychological phenomenon helps us break its cycle.
How To Apply Zeigarnik Effect as a Manager?
Learn the practical way of applying Zeigarnik effect through the following method:
- Divide your study/work time into small sessions (say, 20 minutes each).
- Set small goals for this time & then set a timer for 20 minutes.
- Start working to achieve your 20-minute goals.
According to this effect, unfinished items get stuck in your memory more than the complete ones. Hence, chances are that you would pick up the unfinished tasks & divide them into 20-minute time periods & work towards their completion.
The idea is to ‘start’ & to be driven towards completion by the discomfort you feel from having your work left at cliffhangers.
Transition Into a Productive Version of Yourself
After breaking free from the shackles of procrastination, you need to fix your relationship with time.
Time is equivalent to money. Those who do not value time invariably do not value money.
It is a resource which, when lost, becomes irretrievable.
Time constitutes our lifespans. In a way, a human being is nothing but a collection of a fixed number of years, months, days & hours.
Thus, in order to thrive, we need to learn to manage our time better.
Here is one technique to help you manage your time better: The Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique, which was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, believes in the following simple steps:
- Put down a to-do list & get yourself a timer. Jot down all the tasks that you have to fit in during the day, starting with the most urgent & the ones that can be completed by end-of-day (EoD).
- Set a 25-minute timer for yourself & focus on just one task on your to-do list for this period. Block out any & all distractions. Close your room to work in silence. Put your phone on silent or on flight mode to halt phone calls, social media notifications, etc. for this period.
- Take a 5-minute break after every 25 minutes (1 such 25-minute work session + a 5-minute break is called a Pomodoro)
- Repeat these steps till you have completed 4 ‘Pomodoros’. That means you have worked for 100 minutes, without interruptions, interspersed by four 5-minute breaks.
- After having completed 4 Pomodoros, enjoy a longer 30-minute break & let yourself do something rejuvenating. Have a snack, listen to music, scroll through social media- whatever helps you relax & refresh.
Are you taking steps to boost your productivity, battle procrastination & find your way to success?
