20 Biggest Time Management Challenges People Are Facing While Working From Home
Robert Trajkovski
August 27, 2020
Recently, I conducted market research for an online class on Time and Energy Management. During the research, I asked 10 questions of the participants. One of the questions that I asked was, “what are the biggest challenges that you’re facing when it comes to time management while working from home?”
The answers were very enlightening.
First answer that I obtained was that answering questions from others and the boss is taking up a lot of time. You have to realize that the number of emails has doubled or tripled since people started working mostly from home.
Second answer I obtained is that these emails are taking time away from the normal tasks and they take up a lot of time to regain their focus. Every time the person is interrupted it took 10–15 minutes to get back to the task that was interrupted. The reason they were interrupted is because the email chimes and they pause to answer right away. They do not want to hold anybody else from their tasks.
Third challenge that they are trying to handle is they tend to be taking on too much, even while working from home. This is a theme that several people expressed. They felt that they still needed to take on more tasks than when they were in the office.
Another challenge that people expressed is that often there’s an increase of going back and forth. It takes more time from the time dedicated to the task. People are often finding themselves, working with other teams. And going back and forth to obtain information is taking more time because you cannot walk over to the other group and have a conversation.
Fifth challenge is how they’re executing their tasks itself required to be changed. People felt that they needed to be more flexible with executing tasks. It wasn’t the usual way that they could just go straight through and figure out how to move back and forth between multiple tasks.
Another reason that people felt like they were being challenged is because they’re personally are getting overwhelmed and not taking care of themselves. It was rare to find one person who has stuck to their exercise routine.
In a related challenge, people are saying that they’re not sleeping, as well. They’re not resting and eating properly. And most surprising they have limited amount of time to be playful with their family. This could lead to severe burn out in the long term.
Another challenge that a few people expressed is that it was easier for them when they were in office to stick to a plan and get it done. But with interruptions at home being a cook, cleaner, dishwasher and educator, it’s often hard to stick to a plan.
People expressed that it was a challenge to be sitting in front of a computer and not just wasting time, it was so easy, without having somebody to look over their shoulder or having the fear of somebody looking over their shoulder, they could just sit in front of a computer and waste time.
In the past, they felt that having blocks of time was very helpful. They still feel that one of the challenges is giving themselves blocks of time during which they cannot be interrupted.
Another challenge that people are facing, is having multiple meetings, they’re attending each day. Meetings that often have no agenda. At times there are multiple meetings during the same time and the ones without an agenda take away from a critical one they have to attend.
In a related challenge, people are having meetings, just be having meetings. And this is very frustrating, non-productive.
One of the people that I interviewed said that after his day is done. He still has to plan the activities of his team of hourly workers that are still in the plant. And after that, he still has to get his assignments done. So his eight hour day has become a 12 hour day.
Another person mentioned that just when they thought that they were set for the day, they had a decent plan that was, there’s always something unforeseen that happens. At the office they might have been able to predict it a little bit better.
One of the challenges that another person mentioned, is that their plan is always been interrupted and time is being taken away from the plan. Now maybe she planned 10 hours to do an activity. The person interrupting does not care about her 10 hour plan. They need something. So they interrupt them, but the person being interrupted is still required to finish the task within those 10 hours.
Another challenge that people have expressed, is that they are having a hard time prioritizing tasks. They have to judge everything by the written word. There’s no verbal communication. There are no facial expressions that they can use to make a judgment on the importance of a task.
One of the funniest challenges that people are facing is “going squirrel”. It’s easy to just sit there and just chase the nut and feel like that’s the most productive thing to do right now.
Often people felt that they were working on tasks that were not an emergency. All of a sudden, they become an emergency.
One of the super performers in the small study expressed her concern that she felt she was even working longer hours than normal. She felt that was just strictly to get her work done.
Because she did not want to slip from being a super performer, the challenges people are having is they’re worried about their ratings and their bonuses. Some were worried of being fired for poor performance even though they were not the cause.
Those are some of the challenges that I heard from the market research interviews that I conducted.
People are worried about answering questions, interfering with their flow, issues with focus, things taking longer than expected, their plan gets thrown out the window, and they have to get back on track. They are finding it challenging to keep productive and to overcome these issues.
In a survey that I conducted on LinkedIn, I learned that about 60% of people have never had a course on time management. The course that I’ve created on time and energy management is helpful to address these challenges. It’s necessary to understand how to manage your time.
In our crazy busy world people are managing their time without a system. Companies are placing demands on them without providing the skills and tools on how to manage their time and energy.
I help professionals balance their time and energy to find joy so that can spend it with their families by teaching Time and Energy Management courses.
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttrajkovski/
If you enjoyed this article, I strongly urge you to follow the link to my course below and sign up. It is being created and a beta group is being formed.
THE ULTIMATE Time and Energy Management course is at: https://robert-s-school-b48a.thinkific.com/courses/time-and-energy-management
