Pensinsula Business Services are on hand to offer their top tips on how practice managers can keep calm and effectively manage their workload.
A question that’s often asked by practice managers’ is ‘how can I keep calm when my to-do list seems unmanageable?’ – to which the answer is very basic; the more organised you are, the calmer you should feel.
There will always be good days and bad days where work intensity rises and falls, but keeping organised and staying on top of tasks is essential to maintaining positive mental wellbeing.
The consequences of letting work pile up on top of you can have a really negative effect on you and your employees; if you feel under pressure, the likelihood is that your team will feel under pressure too.
A key expectation for most practice managers is to juggle several tasks at once, something that can be difficult and often inherits a certain amount of stress. In order to reduce the amount of stress you may encounter, it is important to develop your task management and organisation skills.
Part of task management is prioritisation – when you try to do everything all at once, you are spreading your attention very thinly over a large area and increasing the potential for mistakes. Eat away at the bigger tasks throughout the day and start them early.
Delegating tasks is another helpful way to stay organised and on top of your work load. However, delegation does not mean shying away from tasks that don’t seem favourable and handing them over to somebody else without any consideration. Delegation takes some thought – who you choose to take over a task is very important. Make sure that you set early deadlines so that you allow enough time for assessment and error correction. Sometimes, being organised is about knowing when you can’t take on any more tasks, so learn to say no – or delegate appropriately.
By taking on more work than you can handle, you are setting yourself up to fail. Whereas, if you can find a threshold whereby you can take on enough tasks that can be completed to the best of your ability, without exhausting yourself, then you can remain positive, productive and prepared.
For more tips and advice from Peninsula Business Services, head on over to our Resource Library.