Break Down Your Job to Use Time More Effectively

Breaking down your job in Organisational Psychology is called Job Analysis which involves a trained psychologist describing the observable behaviour of your job, which determines essential duties, tasks and responsibilities. The analysis establishes job specific activities and helps create a precise job description. We have all experienced jobs and you may be in one now where the job description handed to you at the interview stage resembles very little to your actual day to day activities. Normally we end up doing far more than what was described.

In the absence of a trained psychologist observing you, it is a good idea to break down your own job into different components and look closely at the tasks and activities that you spend the most and the least of your time on. It can be quite an eye opener when you become aware of how much time you may spend surfing the net or on one activity that is actually not that important. We often avoid the tasks that are difficult or we like the least. We all do this and it is part of human nature, but just think how much happier you could be for the rest of the day if you get the boring or difficult stuff out of the way. Breaking down your job also provides a means of discovering areas that you may need further training or help on.

If you are not in paid in employment you can analyse how you spend your time at home. For me personally I will do lots of other tasks like updating my blog! writing, general tidying, even polishing before I will hang out the washing! The more honestly aware we become of how we spend our time we begin to use it more effectively.

There is a great little book called 'Eat That Frog' by the leadership guru Brian Tracy about how to limit procrastination, set priorities and get started straight away. He believes that by tackling the most unpleasant job (eating the frog!) first if frees us up for the rest of the day to be far more productive and complete jobs faster.

Go ahead and analysis your own job, you might surprise yourself with just how much you do! If it is far above your job description, it may also be advisable to discuss this with your HR department.