Time management efficiency is essential for remote teams. That is if you want to achieve your goals. Juggling with different people’s responsibilities, backtracks, and issues can lead to a destructive path filled with missed deadlines and arguing. Do you want to prevent that from happening? Then you need to write a time management action plan.
A time management action plan will map out your tasks and milestones. Having it all written down will ensure that everyone is on the same page. A clear action plan is crucial for maintaining a productive remote team, and now we’ll cover how to create one.
This is what you should keep in mind when writing a time management action plan for your remote team.
Set Goals
Knowing your quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily goals are the foundation of proper time management. Define your team’s goals and write them down in your action plan.
To avoid setting impossible goals, discuss with your team what you can achieve for a specific period of time. Talk with them about the milestones and what they can realistically accomplish.
Being open about your possibilities is a crucial aspect of goal setting. If you overestimate your team, you will end up changing your plan every week.
Develop a Daily Time Management Action Plan
Setting daily milestones will help your team keep track of their responsibilities. Knowing what they need to accomplish daily will eliminate any chance of procrastination.
Some think that monthly or quarterly plans will do. But when you have to work with a remote team that can leave too much room for lack of control and procrastination.
Once you’ve set your weekly plan, go one step further, and delegate the tasks day by day. You can consult with your team members on what works best for them (and for the project). In that way, you’ll have them on board for completing those daily tasks.
Prioritize
When it comes to time management, prioritizing is golden. Taking on the most important tasks first will maximize your team’s productivity. Research proved that taking harder tasks first makes us more productive.
Just think of it like this. It’s much easier to shift an easy and less urgent task for the next day than to stress the significant obligation that they didn’t have the time to finish. However, you need to let your team know what their priorities are.
In your action plan, order the assignments by the level of priority. The team should always have an insight into their most essential tasks. Giving them clear instructions on what they need to work on first will eliminate any confusion. Here’s how you can mark the tasks’ priority in the schedule:
- L1 (Level 1): Top priority
- L2: High priority
- L3: Important (needs to be done today)
- L4: Can be done tomorrow
- L5: Low priority (could be done in the next few days)
Use Symbols for Readability
If you want to make your action plan more readable, use symbols. The beauty of symbols is that they will take the excessive text out of your plan. An idea that is concise and clear is easier to follow.
For example, the symbols you can use are:
- send an email
- give a call
- deliver a report
One glance at the schedule will provide you and your team a hint about your daily or weekly obligations. Always aim for simplicity as that will contribute to better time management.
Get Inspired with a Template
If you don’t know how to start, taking a look at a time management template is a good idea. There are lots of excellent time management planning templates online. You can find everything you need from a 90-day calendar template to daily planners.
Templates can also serve as an inspiration for creating your time management plan. After you look at some examples, take the best of each and create your personalized template.
If you need help with organizing the plan and making it more comprehensive, you can always hire a non fiction writer. There are affordable writing services like those for best essays that can make your plan more understandable and well-written.
Set Regular Meetings
Meetings are essential for staying updated and clarifying any misunderstandings. Regular meetings are a big part of time management. This is why you need to include them in your action plan.
Bridgette Hernandez, a content editor at ClassyEssay and a project manager, shared why you need to include meetings in your time management plan, “Working with a remote team can be challenging because there is no daily face-to-face conversation to discuss drawbacks and change in schedule. What helps me and my team stay productive is our virtual meetings. We get together two times a week, and we talk about our plans and make rearrangements if needed.”
Hold video meetings at least once a week. They can be held at the end of the week to summarize your achievements and possibly make changes to your next week’s plan.
Use Collaboration Tools
Instead of going back and forward with emails, use a collaboration tool that will streamline your communication. If you share your plan on a collaboration platform, everyone can track the changes or make adjustments on their own.
For example, in Google Docs, you can allow your team members to be editors of the documents. Therefore, if they move their task for the next day in the schedule, you’ll see it as well as everyone else. Being caught up with changes will help you to rearrange your plans timely.
Final Thoughts
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” That’s what time management is all about. Help your team make the most of their time, and you’ll never have trouble with achieving your goals.
Since you aren’t able to motivate them with your presence, you can provide them with an efficient time management plan that will give them direction. Be their guide to maximizing productivity just as these tips guide you on writing the action plan.
BIO:
Nicole Garrison is a freelance writer and contributor at several platforms. She is a dedicated and experienced author who pays particular attention to quality research. Currently, she works as a technical writer at SupremeDissertations, where she also helps with writing my dissertation requests. Nicole consistently attends different courses, seminars, and conferences that keep her knowledge up to date.
