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Top 5 Time Management Skills Every Project Manager Must Know

Good project management is more than just having technical knowledge. It’s also about having the ability to effectively manage one important resource that is critical to the success of a project — Time.

Time management refers to working efficiently and productively. Saving time results in cost savings for the organizations and makes a positive impact on the bottom line. Project managers who know how to effectively utilize time are more efficient, more productive, and more likely to guide the team in successfully achieving project goals.

In this article, we will shed light on the five most important project management skills that every project manager should know to effectively manage projects.

1. Set Deadlines for Tasks

Project managers should establish monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly goals for the project team. The goals should be set after consulting with the project team. The project must be broken down into tasks and a time should be established for each task.

2. Organize the Workplace

The next important skill for project managers is to organize and prioritize the tasks. Every minute that is lost due to missed document, tool, or other important items will have a negative impact on the project. Organizing the workplace will help improve the efficiency and avoid delays.

3. Prioritize and Schedule Tasks

Remember that not every task is important. It’s important to look over the tasks and identify the most important tasks. You should prioritize and schedule important and urgent tasks. Once these tasks are completed should you tackle other tasks.

After prioritizing the tasks, you should next schedule them.

Scheduling should be done based on the priority of the tasks. According to Lisa Quast, career coach and business consultant, project managers should schedule the tasks that are high-priority that week, and then block rest of the tasks. If you multitask by simultaneously scheduling medium- and low- priority tasks with high-priority tasks, it can cause confusion, project delays, and cost overruns.

4. Schedule Proper Breaks

Resting may seem the antithesis of efficient time management. However, it is an extremely important time management skill. While skipping breaks and working long hours can in the short term improve productivity, but in the long run, it will only create exhaustion and burnouts. Apart from emergency situations, it’s important that you avoid the temptation of over working.

5. Minimize Interruptions

Finally, you must minimize interruptions as much as possible. Make sure that the project team is able to perform the job without any delays. While interruptions are inevitable, you must proactively try to predict them and make a strategy to minimize the impact on the project outcome.

The above are the most important time management skills for a project manager. In this respect, an online project management software will prove invaluable to more effectively manage time. An online work management software will help in prioritizing and assigning tasks to the project team. They can easily view the assign tasks along with the deadline for each task. This will eliminate any confusion and result in improved team productivity.