4 Time Management Tips to Boost Your Productivity

“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing” – Miles Davis.

In a fast-paced world that is fuelled by instant messages and social media, time is of the utmost importance and every minute counts. For this reason, an effective time management can result in better efficiency and productivity and enhance your workplace performance.

It helps you accomplish more in a shorter period of time. The additional time can be spent on valuable experiences, which opens up the horizons of learning opportunities and reduces stress.

Here are 4 time management tips that can help you save time and boost your productivity!

1. Establish a 15 Minutes Rule

The 15-minute rule calls for dividing your working hours into 15-minute sprints and allocating specific tasks within those time slots.

If you have six hours of work each day, you end up with 24 slots of  15-minutes each, and so on. A 15-minute time slot is taken because it’s long enough to get things done and short enough to easily fit it in your routine.

Men checking the time - time management

For example, when scheduling a meeting that would typically take an hour or more, start it about 15 minutes past an hour and end it when the hour ends. This theory was created by Workplace Performance expert Jason Womack. He states that people can accomplish in 45 minutes what they think they need 60 minutes for.

It compels you to be focused on the important things, and the extra 15 minutes can be utilized to complete other tasks!

2. Eliminate Distractions

Distractions creep into your day without you even noticing. The best way to deal with them is to identify them first, and then strategically avoid them.

Assess how you spend your time. You might notice how minor distractions – such as a chatty coworker – can eat hours of our valuable time every week!  

Distractions can also be very basic and unnoticeable, such as a cluttered desk or a phone that buzzes too loud whenever there’s a new text. Distracting, right?

Hence, identifying your distractions and minimizing them is a great way to get the most out of your time.

team working on laptops - tome management

3. Sort your priorities

Raking your tasks in the order of their priority is a great way to reduce the amount of time that is wasted when you mix up tasks of varying importance.

Go through your to-do list and sort tasks that are urgent or heavy in terms of workload. This helps you to take your time away from non-important tasks that you might have considered important otherwise.

This will slowly reduce your urgent priorities in number, and will also reduce the amount of stress and tension that you might face due to the same 🙂

notebook with a to do list - time management

4. Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!

Scheduling is, perhaps, the most effective way of time management.

You need to schedule your time, record that schedule (so that it can be followed) and actually stick to it! Determine the time of day when you are most productive and do the most important tasks at that time. This is a great way to improve your performance.

Scheduling gives you a clear direction and a certain amount of confidence because you know what you are doing and when you are doing it.

Don’t forget to keep some buffer time in your schedule for unexpected emergencies and add breaks at regular intervals. This will help you avoid mental and physical exhaustion.

calendar - time management

Time Management isn’t merely an impressive skill that you can present in your resume.

It has a wide applicability that spans even outside of your workplace and improves other aspects of your life! But like almost everything in life, you can only develop this skill with practice and discipline. The best way to learn is always with a hands-on experience.

If this blog helped you in any way or you know any more time management tips, let us know. We would love to hear from you 🙂

If you liked this, you may also like How to prepare for an internship interview!

Top 5 Parameters Recruiters Are Looking For

In the contemporary recruitment environment, competition is cutthroat. To get the attention from recruiters you need to show more than just the required qualifications, you need to be outstanding.

Social Media channels, for instance, have become one of the most common mediums for recruiters to select potential candidates.

They provide an insight into not just the technical qualifications, but also soft skills of a candidate. Besides, they reflect the personality of an individual and can, hence, make or break your career.

However, that’s not all.

From your résumé to performing well under pressure and being a team player, here are the top 5 parameters the recruiters look for before hiring a potential candidate!

1. An Impressive résumé

‘First impression is the last impression.’ This statement fits the brief well, as your résumé represents you and whatever you are willing to bring to the company. It plays a pivotal role in the process of a candidate’s hiring.

a cv together with a report

Presenting your qualifications in a striking manner is as important as your credentials and experience.

Hence, picking an appropriate template that is relevant to the industry or the field of specialization you’re applying in, is absolutely crucial. You must also keep in mind to regularly update your résumé to remain relevant in the market, and to get efficient and desired results.

2. Ambition, confidence, and credibility

A recruiter looks for these two indispensable qualities in a one-on-one interview.

Confidence plays a major part as it shows if you can put your skills and qualifications to practical use. Credibility plays an important role, as employers want people in their companies who can work their way up, and ensure that they grow with the company and vice versa.

team work

So, if you change your job annually, or biannually, red flags might go up.

When asked where you see yourself in 5 years or so, it’s best to say that you envision yourself at the company at a sustained successful track. Show that you have the ambition necessary to do great things for the company and build your own path to success.

3. The appropriate skills and training

Your résumé and personality can only help you if you have the relevant and required skills and training for the position you’re applying for.

In today’s competitive economy, you will struggle to find someone who will hire a candidate that needs too much training before they can start their job. Moreover, lack of experience also contributes to slower growth for the company, and recruiters do not want that!

Hence, before you apply, make sure you have the technical qualifications that actually make you a viable candidate, and boost your chances of getting selected.

4. Being a Team player

Even though you apply as an individual, one of the most important things that recruiters look for when they look for potential candidates for a job is a person’s ability to get along with others and work in a team.

work mates celebrating together

Hence, your social and communication skills are put to test, offline. You should be able to engage with a variety of people, and not just work, but also grow with them.

The employer would also want you to enjoy your workplace. Employees who have a sense of belonging in their workplace and with their fellow co-workers tend to happier and more productive.

5. A Good Online Presence, especially on Social Media

Social Media is one of the latest parameters that employers keep in mind while hiring, because of various reasons.

First, it showcases your personality outside of work, your likes and interests. This can aid them in deciding whether you’re good or bad for the company.

Second, it can be used to validate the credibility of your résumé.

It also helps them to establish whether you’re up-to-date with the latest issues and your stand on them.

social media icons - recruiters may check your social media

Hence, it is best advised to regularly update your social media and lock it to people who are not your friends. If you choose to keep it public, or if you have your employer as a connection, the ideal is to limit opinionated and extremist comments, which might hamper your chances of getting hired.

It is very essential, however, to have an online presence, as employers may not even consider someone who doesn’t have any social media presence at all.

You get a head start once you know what recruiters are actually looking for in potential candidates.

The awareness helps you to craft your resume and prepare for interviews, doing any research necessary. The secret is to set yourself apart from the crowds, build up some experience and enhance your CV!

Keep these things in mind, and you’ll definitely increase your chances of success 🙂

If you like this, check out “How to be brutally honest in your résumé and crack the deal”!

5 Out of the Box Career Options for You

Gone are the days when Engineering, Medical, Law, and Administration were the main career ways one picked after completing school.

As we approach the new decade, we can look back at the past and see how far we have come.

Thinking out of the box is really the mantra of today!

Odd, remarkable and unusual career decisions are staying for a long term.

Offbeat careers are getting to be popular step by step. A majority share of youthful people is deciding on these fascinating, challenging and new options, as a zeal to prove themselves.

painter – career out of the box

If sitting in an office workspace from 9 to 5 isn’t what you’re looking at, then presumably the following career alternatives may interest you.

The following are the 5 careers which are amusing to seek. If passion and power along with hard work is placed in can likewise bring success:

1. Environmentalist

The world environment is going much worse day by day, as we use our natural resources indiscriminately and fail to manage our waste.

Our total environmental conditions are deteriorating in everyday life. Yet, we do not concern ourselves to save us from different types of natural calamities and avoid the extinction of several types of animal species groups.

It’s true that only human are responsible for polluting environment, but if we have a little bit of concern then it will make us a positive thinker to save our environment.

woman holding a leaf - career in environment

Environmentalists are those who work for the protection, preservation, and conservation of the environment.

They deal with the conservation of land and water resources and protection of the environment from pollution and industrial wastes.

Globally the demand for environmentalists is estimated to be around 11 percent by 2020. As the need for the solutions related to environmental issues is increasing, the demand for environmentalists is increasing too.

2. Creative Photographer

Are you one of those people who’s famous for snapping pictures at parties? Or who enjoys capturing various shades of life through a lens?

If you want to earn a living using your creative side, but need more information, than this may be the best option for you.

A career in photography offers the following options:

– Photojournalism
– Fashion and advertising photography
– Nature and wildlife photography
– Event photography
– Still photography
– Travel photography

photohgrapher taking a picture - career out of the box

If you have a passion for photography, there’s no reason why you can’t make it your profession — be wise and practical and go for it!

3. Travel Writer

Wanna get paid for traveling? Travel blogging is a dream job for most of the people.

You get paid to travel and live at adventurous sites like Alaska, Sahara Desert, Ecuador, Brazil, Ghana and Zimbabwe etc and share stories.

Every day is different and exciting!

You’ll never get bored of this job. But, it’s not easy!

girl writing on a landscape - career out of the box

In all honesty, travel blogging comes with its challenges. Becoming a full-time travel blogger requires TREMENDOUS hard work and commitment. Besides putting in long hours, you need to keep at it for a long time that could be years too before you see any kind of return.

But is it worth it? Hell yeah!

4. Social Media Manager

Are you among the Social friendly people who are being taunted by their parents for being active throughout on Social Media?

Do you have a passion for operating Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and finding innovative ways to connect with people?

Then this is your type of job!

social media icons - career as social media manager

Being a Social Media manager goes beyond just posting updates to your company’s social media profiles. It also includes engaging with your audience and looking for new opportunities to increase reach and visibility. 

Great communication skills are also a must since you will have to do a lot of interaction every day. 

Evaluating, examining and adding to activities on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Google additionally, Pinterest and Instagram is a day by day undertaking for the manager.

5. Data Analyst

Every business collects data, whether it’s sales figures, market research, logistics, or transportation costs, but not everyone can actually understand what these numbers mean, correct?

A data analysts translate numbers into plain English. It’s a challenging and very much needed profession nowadays.

If you have a knack for picking apart collected data, drawing up actionable insights, and putting together pieces of the big data puzzle, check out the growth path of a data analyst.

You have to extract meaning from and interpret data – which requires methods from statistics and machine learning.

professionals analysing data - career out of the box

Do You Have What It Takes to think out of the box?

Jobs for creative people abound. Whether you’re agile with a camera or can write like Shakespeare, there’s a career field where you can excel. These are just 5 careers but there are thousands more and I wish I could put them all in this blog.

With new startups coming every day and the marketplace becoming more competitive by the day, the advancement of a person (and the company) rests on the ability to think and act creatively.

Apart from being creative, we should always be positive and learn from our failures. Even successful people that we admire have failed several times. But, they always learned 🙂

Do you know any other odd and amazing career? Tell us about it!! We’d love to know it 🙂

We at AIESEC have many projects with startups around the world which brings out the creativity in you.?

If you’re interested and feel that you can contribute, check more about the program here.

If you like this post you may also like: “Great things never came from a comfort zone”


Written by

Anisha Bhawanani is graduated in Marketing and Finance and loves writing. She is a happy go lucky girl with a head full of dreams, very passionate about traveling and exploring different cultures. One day she wants to win a man booker prize.

3 Leadership Concepts from Jeff Bezos

Are good leadership skills quantifiable?

Well, in Jeff Bezos’ case, they are. Bezos grabbed the title of the “Richest man in the World” this year, but it took him a lot of work and passion to get there.

It was his love for engineering and computers drove him to start his own business, and his first office was his garage. In 1994, he founded Amazon, which is today the world’s largest online retail site.

His idea was simple: providing everything to everyone anywhere in the world.

One of the best values that have been instilled by him at Amazon is customer care. Hence, his business strategies are customer-centric, not competition focussed.

As a leader, he believes ideas are birthed out of passion, not trends. He gave Amazon the following vision, back in 1999:

“Our vision is to use this platform to build Earth’s most customer-centric company, a place where customers can come to find and discover anything and everything they might want to buy online.”

Having clarity of where you want to reach and being able to inspire people by that is one of the mandatory things for every successful leadership story. But it’s not the only thing, naturally.

Here are the three concepts that Jeff Bezos, as a leader, stands by:

Stay true to the vision of the organisation

It’s very easy for a business person to say “I want to be very customer centric”. It’s even one of the trendy topics on business today, right? So what can a company do to walk its talk?

A very subtle but effective technique that Jeff Bezos uses in his boardroom meetings is the use of an empty chair. He does that to make his team conscious of their customer, who isn’t present but is the most important, the main motive, behind all that.

It diverts the attention of the board to customer care instead of formulating plans to gain leverage against Amazon’s competitors.

Jeff Bezos - Focus on customer

Another unusual way Bezos ensures that he’s being customer-centric is to deliver direct emails to the customers. And he has a public mail for the same purpose. This leads to effective communication and first-hand feedback, which help to get to the grassroots of the problem, done by being approachable and accessible.

These are a few examples of how Bezos daily adheres to the vision he has set for his organisation: interest of the target market first, profit later.

“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” he adds.

Having Backbone

The greatest risk of all is to not risk at all. One of the things that make Bezos memorable among the swarm of billionaires is his rebellion against the socially constructed norms.

“Having a backbone, disagreeing and committing” is a statement that is a part of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles and, according to him, using this phrase can make a team twice as productive.

Bezos is a leader who believes that instinct and intuition lead to creative innovations.

hand drawing a rocket - leadership - Jeff Bezos

He is known for being stubborn enough not to give up, but also flexible enough to be open minded when looking for solutions. He says, “one of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

Being Bold

“If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunities on the table.”

This quote by Bezos sheds light on how he, as a leader, advocates thinking outside the box. He is not afraid of being different, as he believes taking risks to execute unique ideas lead to innovation.

Amazon started as an online book retailer, but with Jeff’s bold ideas it now sells everything you can think of. Anything, from A to Z, as symbolised in their logo.

Jeff Bezos’ recently proposed to use drones to deliver packages to customers. This bold idea has been a point of controversy, as drones are Artificial Intelligence (AI), and are often associated with hostility and destruction. But this is perhaps why this gifted philanthropist wishes to incorporate them in a manner that is more customer-friendly.

According to him, “experiments are key to innovation because they rarely turn out as you expect and you learn so much.”.

Jeff Bezos’ Leadership Trifecta

Leadership isn’t something you learn in books. It is born out of practice.

“The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’”

– Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos developed his leadership style and beliefs during his journey to turn a simple idea into a quantifiable project that impacts humankind for its betterment.

You can also find the leader inside you, all you need to do is take the first step, and practice is every day!

Feeling inspired? Check out “Elon Musk: A series of successful failures” for more!

Elon Musk: a series of successful failures

“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”

This statement by Elon Musk sums up the true essence of his leadership.

Born in South Africa in 1971, he is an American Entrepreneur and Businessman. Elon founded X.com in 1999(now known as PayPal), SpaceX in 2002, and Tesla Motors in 2003.

As of December 2017, his net worth is $20.2 billion, according to Forbes. And he continuously acts towards creating sustainable technology, by investing in projects such as SolarCity.

Very spirited and a self-made billionaire, Elon Musk stirs the melting pot with controversial tweets and mind-boggling innovations. He is an example of a leader that proves that failure is both inevitable and imperative.

“How?”, you may ask.

All it takes is a look at his story, to see how he turned his failures into successes.

elon musk timeline 2

Elon Musk’s journey proves that instead of waiting for a utopian setup, it is better to work with what you have.

Look around, gather ideas and act after making calculated decisions. As a leader, he has led all of his ventures with the spirit of innovation, while not drifting too far from the goal he set for himself: saving humankind.

He also connects with his employees at a grassroots level and never lets failure stop him from trying something bold and new.

His views are best summed up in his signature quote:

“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”

If you liked this, you may also be interested in “How self-aware are you?”.