Effective task management consists of both hard and soft skills. Mastering many skills that allow you to see a job through from idea to completion is crucial in the workforce. But did you know that your task management abilities can do so much more than make you a great leader? The vast majority can easily be utilized in your everyday life. Here are a few examples.
Team Building
Team building at work means you have the insight and ability to create teams of individuals that complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Learning how to put together an effective group for your critical projects is essential to your company’s profitability. You can also use your teambuilding prowess as a soccer coach, day camp leader, volunteer organizer, or youth minister.
Delegation
Learning how to delegate means being okay with letting go of tasks and responsibilities that you’ve always had a hand in. This can be tough as a business owner or manager because you know that you will get the job done right. However, it’s not efficient to be a master of all things. A few job functions to slide aside to another include social media advertising services, paperwork, accounting, building maintenance, and customer service. Apply the same principle to your home life by paying someone else to landscape, perform minor home repairs, or grocery-shop.
Organization
Being highly organized is not only for the obsessives among us. When everything has a time and place, you rarely have questions about your next project or duty. Whether you use apps, whiteboards, or a tool like TaskAngel to keep you organized, you already know that this will keep you from multitasking, working harder than necessary, and missing important steps. Make a point to be organized at home, too, and you may find that stress starts to disappear. Something as simple as using a closet organization system can help you get up and out the door quicker each morning.
Prioritization
If you want to boost your productivity, Lanterna Education recommends doing the hard tasks first each day. The idea of prioritizing difficult or undesirable tasks might not sound appealing, but rest assured that you’ll feel better once the worst of your day is done. For no other reason, do what you don’t want first so that you are not exhausting mental energy and dreading it until the end of the day. The same goes for home. Need to have a difficult talk with your spouse or partner? Don’t wait until bedtime. Is the dishwasher on the fritz? Fix it first to avoid a pile of dishes and the stress that goes along with that.
Humor
We can’t all be Ricky Gervais, but we can take our sense of humor with us everywhere we go. You likely don’t want to be known as the jokester at work, but humor does have its place on the time clock. For one, having a fun work environment boosts productivity. It also relieves stress and can lessen the risk of burnout for you and your employees. Furthermore, having a little fun here and there will strengthen your office relationships and may even enhance your ability to solve problems. All of this is true at home, as well. Having a sense of humor, especially when you have teenagers, will help you hold on to your sanity and come up with effective solutions for whatever comes your way.
Task management skills fall into many different categories. From staying organized to learning how to laugh, these abilities will make you a better boss. But you can also apply the same methodologies to your day-to-day life. Take the time today to evaluate your task management skills, and refine them if you find that you fall short. And if you need help staying on top of your workload, get TaskAngel today!
Author
Stephanie Haywood, Guest Author
Stephanie Haywood is happy to be living her best life. Personal development and self-care gave her a boost when she needed it most, and now she works to share the gift of self-knowledge, self-care, and self-actualization with everyone who visits MyLifeBoost.com.