Returning to work after a career break: Time management tips

Returning to work following an extended break can be daunting, but we like to help make the transition as smooth as possible. People take career breaks for many reasons, from starting a family, to travelling or sabbatical, changing career or caring for a family member. These tools should provide you with practical guidance to support your return to the workplace.

Time management

Time management is the art of arranging, organising, scheduling, and budgeting one’s time for the purpose of generating more effective work and productivity. It may be hard at first to juggle workload with the mental load of what you have to do in your personal life, however these time management tips should help frame your mindset to succeed in achieving the best balance for you.

Stress and resilience

Having the perspective and clarity of the bigger picture helps to plan weekly and day-to-day activities much more effectively. If there is no big picture available, then time is spent on urgencies, likes and what others want you to do. Poor time management may make you feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, worried, overworked – you feel these emotions because you feel out of control.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb has a famous quote: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. Thomas Edison made thousands of prototypes of the incandescent light bulb before he finally got it right. His resilience gave the world some of the most amazing inventions of the early 20th century, such as the phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture. Resilience is about bouncing back and accepting when things don’t go as planned, learning from it, and moving forward.

So why is resilience important when it comes to time management? We don’t waste time on tasks that aren’t important: we focus solely on our main priorities. Resilient people have a positive outlook on the future. They have solid goals, and a desire to achieve those goals. They focus their time and energy on changing the things that they have control over.

What can you do to build resilience?

• Look after your body, including nutrition, sleep, exercise, and relaxation/mindfulness. When you take care of your mind and body, you’re better able to cope effectively with challenges in your life.

• Practice thought awareness, known as positive thinking. Be aware of how you talk to yourself when something goes wrong – if you find yourself making statements that are negative, correct these thoughts in your mind.

• Practice cognitive restructuring to change the way that you think about negative situations and bad events.

• Maintain perspective. Resilient people understand that, although a situation or crisis may seem overwhelming in the moment, it might not have that big of an impact over the long-term. Try to view situations proportionately.

• Learn to set SMART, effective personal goals – it’s important to set and achieve goals that match your values, and to learn from your experiences.

The 4 Ps of time management

Pause. Pausing is an essential aspect of time management because it stops you from rushing into a task. This is important because if you rush into a task, you could end up misinterpreting the brief which would result in wasted time working on the wrong thing. Pausing enables you to collect all the necessary information you need to the start next stage, which is the ‘plan’ stage.

Plan. Your plan should solve a problem or fulfil a need. To create a plan, you’ll need to define the problem or need and know what results you’re hoping to achieve. Once you know this, it’s time to create some solutions to act on.

• Include plenty of detail to ensure nothing is missed.

• Start with the task due date and work your way backwards until today, assigning interim deadlines for the small tasks along the way.

• Think about how long each task will take you and if you need to rely on anyone else to perform this element. This will help you allocate time more effectively.

• Schedule some extra time to cope with contingencies and emergencies. Some interruptions will be hard to predict, but leaving some open space in your schedule gives you the flexibility you need to rearrange tasks and respond to important issues as they arise. Experience will tell you how much time to allow – in general, the more unpredictable your job, the more contingency time you'll need.

Prioritise. Tasks are often prioritised according to needs of others or impending deadlines, some of which limit time spent on things that are really important for you and your role. Prioritising effectively can ensure each task brings real value and makes the most of your time.

• Having a to-do list will help you organise your tasks from urgent to non-priority, and easily plan your time accordingly.

• Categorise tasks according to importance and urgency. Those which are urgent and important should be done first. Important but not urgent tasks should have time scheduled in the coming days to complete without interruption. Urgent but unimportant tasks should be delegated, wherever possible. And any tasks which are neither urgent or important should not really be on your to-do list! If you can minimise or eliminate the last type of task, you’ll be able to do a better job at the rest of your tasks.

Perform. You need to perform the techniques above in order to become time efficient.

In summary, plan your days, weeks, and months to put yourself in the strongest position. Write a to-do list and set goals. When things don’t go to plan, use your resilience to learn from it and try again. Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise, and plan for the unexpected.

For further tips, take a look at Returning to work after a career break: CV guidance.