Creating a work-life balance and time management is easier said than done for working women in India. According to a latest “Women in India Inc HR Managers Survey” report, 34% of women leave their jobs due to work-life balance, while only 4% of men are affected by it.
Challenges faced by working women are endless, and no matter how much we argue, women in India have to handle more responsibilities to handle apart from just domestic chores. And this takes a substantial toll on their mental and emotional health as well. A recent report from mental health platform YourDost, titled “Emotional Wellness State of Employees,” found that nearly three-quarters (72.2%) of female respondents reported experiencing high levels of stress, a stark contrast to the 53.64% of men who felt the same.
While we are still waiting for change to come at social and organizational levels, we decided to ask renowned Leadership Coach & facilitator, Shyamli Rathore to share some time management and time saving tips for working women.
These are some tried and tested tips of a Leadership Coach that work for her in not just managing her time better, but also help her create a better work-life balance.
Some tried-and-tested time management tips for working women:
There are three fool-proof time management tips that have worked well for Shyamli Rathore –
#1. Get in the habit of reflection
Identify the important tasks at work and even at home and allocate time for them very clearly. You should get in the habit of doing this every week. This would help you to identify the tasks that are non-negotiable and to prioritize them.
#2. Create your ‘To-Dos’ list
Yes, everyone tells you this, create a ‘to-do’ list to manage your time better. But to this, Shyamli adds that it is best to do this a night before, rather than in the morning. When you are set the night before with your task list, you are able to get started in the morning without struggling with identifying what needs to be done during that day.
#3. Set your DND time
We all have our own bio-rhythms. As Shaymli says she feels most productive in the morning between 7-9am. This is the time of the day when she can get most of her work done. So it is best for you to identify your “most productive” time of the day. Set it aside as “Do Not Disturb” time of your day when you can check off most of the tasks from your ‘to do’ lists.
So, what is a great morning routine to stay productive all day long?
A good morning routine can help you not only start your day on a fresh note, but also help you to stay productive. While Shyamli says that morning routines can vary for different people, she shares 2 important tips for working women:
#1. Meditation or Exercise
Shyamli believes to start her day with some form of meditation or exercise, gives her day a positive start as well as a sense of control.
#2. Don’t begin your day with screen time
Do not look at your screen first thing in the morning. And this is not limited to just social media, it goes for your emails and WhatsApp as well.
But, how to stay away from distractions such as social media?
Staying away from distractions of social media and streaming apps is easier said than done and often eat away into a lot of our productive time. This is something that Shyamli Rathore found for herself when she found herself spending almost 2 hours of her productive time just scrolling through social media without even realizing.
With this awareness, she decided to spend her time on social media very consciously. Shyamli now allocates 15 minutes every morning and 15 minutes in the evening to go through social media.
She shares three tips to stay away from distractions:
- Be mindful of the time you are spending on social media. Sometimes we don’t even realize how many hours we can spend scrolling through posts and loose on very productive time of the day.
- Try to do it in Chunks. Instead of being on social media throughout the day, consciously decide to do it chunks, says a few minutes in the morning and few in the evening.
- It is important to have a strict sense of discipline for yourself when it comes to spending time on social media or on Netflix and such.
How to manage personal and professional life while WFH?
Work-from-home has become quite a norm for many ever since the pandemic. While working from home, lines between personal and professional life and time often blur, so in that case what can be done?
Shyamli Rathore suggests that it is important to – Create your structure of “support” and “boundaries.” Even if you are working-from-home, realize and maintain your “boundaries.” So you need to create a structure of support for that. If you are working-from-home, it doesn’t mean that you have to be the only one to answer each and every bell that rings.
Shyamli also says that there is no running from the fact that working-from-home has certainly taken a toll on Women professionals more so than anyone else. So it is important for them to nurture their own inner wellness – physical, mental and emotional. This is why; women should maintain a morning routine that energizes them. It can be anything from physical exercise, meditation or even maintain a gratitude journal, etc.
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Save Time by Chunking!
Along with time management tips for working women, Shyamli Rathore also shares an amazing Time Saving hack that can help a lot – Chunking!
What is Chunking? It is the ability to club together tasks of similar nature. So it is about creating a sequence of events and club them together, for maximum results in a minimum amount of time.
Look at your work from a broader perspective. Like Shyamli Rathore does starting from a “monthly perspective” and plan it in advance.
Ability to breakdown and club together tasks of similar nature leads to a lot of efficiency. Like Shyamli shares with her own personal example as how she sets aside one day in the week to do all her client posts, she keeps aside one day in the week or a time during the day when she works on creating her own research and articles. Even if there are some different tasks that need to be done every day, it is best to chunk them together during a specific time.
Another benefit of chunking…
If you try to do multiple things at one time, this multi-tasking can hamper your productivity as well. There is a switching cost that comes in when you move from one task to another while managing everything at the same time. It can lead to almost 20% lack of productivity.
Women Leadership coaches are great mentors when it comes to sharing advice for fellow working women. They are well-aware of the social and institutional challenges that women go through. So, these are tips for women from a Leadership coach are her own tried-and-test experiences and realizations as a working woman trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
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Know the Expert: Shyamli Rathore is Global Leadership Facilitator and Coach (ACC) for CEOs and Senior Leadership. She is the CEO and Founder of Sidman Learning Solutions. She is consulting with premier leadership brands like Harvard Business School Publishing and YPO.