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Stay in control of your workload

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, September 9, 2005

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Sometimes the most difficult thing to accomplish at work is work. With telephone calls, meetings, visitors, and faxes, not to mention the deluge of mail, e-mail, and internal memos, it can be almost impossible to achieve your goals. The following are some tips to help you stay on track:

• Keep a log for a week. As you evaluate the tasks that consume your time, ask yourself: Do I really need to do this? Could I have delayed this task in order to work on a task of higher priority? Could someone else have done this?
• Determine which times of day are your most productive and schedule your most challenging jobs for those times. If you're a morning person, set aside time in the morning; if you come alive after lunch, block out time then.
• Make appointments with yourself. If you have a big project that you need to start, set aside time for it and write it on your calendar.
• Build flexibility into your schedule so you can adapt when things don't go according to plan or when new opportunities arise.
• Estimate how long you need to finish a certain project; it will help you manage your time. (Always anticipate that projects will take longer than expected.)
• When you return a phone call, minimize phone tag by including a time you can be reached when you leave a message.
• Review tasks to determine whether any of them can be delegated.

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the new online course, "Nursing CE Series: Time Management & Delegation for Nurse Managers." For more information on this and other courses in our library, go to www.hcprofessor.com and click on Nursing CE.

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