3 Time Management Tips for Recent College Graduates

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Graduating from college is a very exciting time in a young person’s life. You are leaving school behind and moving to a future full of possibilities. You may feel like you have the whole world in front of you and time to do anything.

While the intention here is not to rain down on your parade, you should realize that time is not infinite. In fact, you only have a certain amount each day, week, year, etc.

Therefore, even if you are young, you should put it to good use. Otherwise, you will wake up one day, five or ten years from now, wondering where the time has gone.

To make good use of your time, here are some time management tips for recent college grads.

1. Plan ahead

One of the best time management tips for recent college grads is to always plan ahead whenever you can. This can be done both at home and at the workplace.

At home

make to-do lists

If you’ve ever found yourself awake with a buzzing mind from everything you have to do tomorrow, try this: Make two to-do lists each night for the next day: one for work and one for home.

Make a list of what you need to accomplish in each one. Then, review the lists and prioritize them by importance or topicality. This will help you plan ahead each day.

plan meals

When you bring lunch to work each day, you make mornings less stressful by preparing meals ahead of time. Attempt do as much prep work as possible at home in the evenings. Prepack cold items and group them in the refrigerator.

The next morning, you will need to take them from the fridge to your lunch box. This will speed up your morning routine and allow you to work faster.

Put clothes on

Now that you’ve graduated, you can’t go to work in sweats like you attended class in college. Chances are your outfit needs to be more professional.

With that being the case, you can put your clothes away at night to make getting dressed quicker in the morning. Check a weather app on your phone every night to choose the right outfit.

get enough rest

Now that you’re out of college, you shouldn’t need to spend all night studying. That means you really have no reason not to. get enough rest most of the time This is a way to plan ahead and better manage your time.

When you are well rested, your concentration is better, which improves your speed of work. The number of errors you make is fewer, eliminating time spent making corrections. Consequently, getting enough rest is a great way to manage time.

At work

Meet deadlines early

Pushing yourself to meet a deadline early is just one way to plan ahead at work. Whether you’re lucky and have the best job of your life or one that’s “meh,” this goal will help you get ahead.

Truth be told, it can even help you in a couple of ways. For one thing, you’ll score big points at work, which could win you favors or promotions. Another benefit is that you can manage last-minute labor crises with less stress.

Obviously, it’s not always possible to meet deadlines at work ahead of time. It depends on what you do and the volume of work you have. But it is something to work towards if possible.

Create meeting agendas

You also can create meeting agendas to plan ahead at work. If one of your functions is to hold meetings with other people, calendars can save you time.

One way is to keep meetings going and click at the right time. Another is to reduce wasted time trying to fill in absent attendees after the fact. Both eliminate wasted time and allow you to work more efficiently.

2. Automate as much as possible

Another helpful time management tip for new college grads is automation. When you automate work processes, you free up your time to do other projects.

calendar organization

Using a calendar to improve productivity and automating as much as possible will save you time. Over the years, calendars have improved and evolved over the years, giving you more flexibility than ever before.

Learn to use your calendar and all the options available to automate your work processes. Then use repetition to get comfortable with what you can and cannot do. This is the key to taking everything off your calendar that you possibly can

email management

When you automate processes, you save time. Instead of repeating the same tasks multiple times, try to automate them. email management is one way to do it.

Did you know that you can create standard email documents and save them? If you send commonly worded emails, insert additions, changes, attachments, and addresses before sending. Using this automation tip can speed up your work by hours each week.

3. Maximize instead of multitasking

All companies want to keep profits high and costs low. To do that, many have to do with multitasking to get more done.

It’s not always a time saver though, which is why you should max out rather than multitask. This is one of the good time management tips for new college grads.

Multitasking can hurt your efficiency more than it helps. You can waste time switching tasks and making more mistakes. You can even repeat actions you wouldn’t have done otherwise by staying on a task to completion.

But there are ways to maximize your time instead of multitasking.

Schedule email and text time

Constantly checking your phone for emails and texts is distracting. You may have been used to keeping such a tight rein on your social life during college.

At work, it’s a different story. Schedule your email and text time to stay on task and stay productive.

For example, look at them in the morning before work, then again mid-morning for a break. You could stop to look again at lunch and in the middle of the afternoon. See a final time at the close of the day.

Of course, if you’re expecting urgent text messages and work emails, this method may not always work. But as a general rule, you can speed up your work.

Use timeout wisely

There is a time management tip that not everyone thinks of. Is use timeout wisely when you’re on the phone.

You can do this in an almost unlimited number of ways. Some examples are planning what you will say when the call is made. Or gather the necessary documents for the call.

You can also file, reply to short emails, check your calendar, and other simple tasks. All of these actions allow you to use time more efficiently after your call ends.

Complete quick tasks quickly

When you have several quick and easy tasks, finish them quickly. This frees up your time to work on projects that take longer. You’ll feel more fulfilled and can block the time you need to work with fewer interruptions.

End up like things back to back

Need another way to save time? Try to finish things that are similar one after another. This allows you to stay in the same apps and spend less time switching.

Also, your mind doesn’t have to switch modes from one thing to another. Believe it or not, that simple act takes a bit of time. The more you change tasks and more complicated, the more time it will require.

As you enter the real world of work, so to speak, you will need time management skills. Use these time management tips to help you be the best you can be in your chosen profession.

Featured Image Credit: Pexels; Thank you!

The charge 3 Time Management Tips for Recent College Graduates first appeared in Calendar.