In school, you learn how to manage your time around set events. For example, if I have an exam a week away, I know that I can procrastinate for five days and then pull an all-nighter on the 6th day. Unfortunately, this style of time management doesn’t work so well in the workplace. At work, you’re given set deadlines as well, however, between the day you receive the project and the time it’s due, you’re also trying to juggle putting out fires that arise. One day you may sit down expecting to work on something, and then end up working on a totally different project the entire day. However, even though you spent your day working on something else, the project deadline for what you expected to work on hasn’t changed.

As someone who enjoys setting a schedule and following it to the tee, this was an issue for me at first. Before the second week of work started, I had created a calendar of all the tasks I expected I would have to complete, only for it to be totally nullified by Monday afternoon. By Tuesday afternoon, I was distraught, how was I ever going to be able to focus on one project when so many things were occurring at once, and that’s when I realized the fault in my logic. I thought that being efficient meant blocking your time, grinding out a project, and then moving on; however, I soon realized that wasn’t the true definition of efficiency. Efficiency is having the capability to be versatile on what you’re working on and achieve those deadlines by properly allocating time to all your responsibilities throughout the day.

This is an invaluable lesson that I’ve learned from working at Ellery, and one that will help me at every job I work in the future. Without a doubt, I would not be as motivated to work on these projects if it wasn’t for the exceptional team that I am part of. If we have an issue, we come together and work to resolve it efficiently!