Time Management
Time management is the process of planning and controlling how much time to spend on specific activities. Good time management enables an individual to complete more in a shorter period of time, lowers stress, and leads to career success.
3.2 Benefits of Time Management
The ability to manage your time effectively is important. Good time management leads to improved efficiency and productivity, less stress, and more success in life. Here are some benefits of managing time effectively:
Stress relief: Making and following a task schedule reduces anxiety. As you check off items on your “to-do” list, you can see that you are making tangible progress. This helps you avoid feeling stressed out with worry about whether you’re getting things done.
More time: Good time management gives you extra time to spend in your daily life. People who can time-manage effectively enjoy having more time to spend on hobbies or other personal pursuits.
More opportunities: Managing time well leads to more opportunities and less time wasted on trivial activities. Good time management skills are key qualities that employers look for. The ability to prioritize and schedule work is extremely desirable for any organization.
Ability to realize goals: Individuals who practice good time management are able to better achieve goals and objectives and do so in a shorter length of time.
3.3 List of Tips for Effective Time Management
After considering the benefits of time management, let’s look at some ways to manage time effectively:
3.4 Time Management Tools and Techniques
Here are practical tips, tools and skills to improve time management. The key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the planned time. Time management has enormous implications for organizations and the whole economy. Be prepared to make drastic changes. Be creative to find and introduce different ways of doing things. If you need a starting point see the ‘Pareto Principle’ (80:20 Rule), to assess what efforts and activities are most productive, and which are not.
The Pareto Principle is a concept that suggests two out of ten items, on any general to-do list, will turn out to be worth more than the other eight items put together. The fact is that most people procrastinate on the top 10 or 20 percent of items that are the most valuable and important, the “vital few,” and busy themselves instead with the least important 80 percent, the “trivial many,” that contribute very little to their success.
Here’s what you should do in order to effectively apply the 80/20 rule to setting SMART goals which will boost your overall productivity.
First, take a piece of paper and write down ten goals. Then ask yourself: If you could only accomplish one of the goals on that list today, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life?
Then pick the second most important goal. What you’ll find is, after you complete this exercise, you will have determined the most important 20 percent of your goals that will help you more than anything else. You should continue to work at those goals that you’ve chosen as the most valuable all the time.
Eat the biggest Frog first
You often see people who appear to be busy all day long but seem to accomplish very little. This is almost always because they are busy working on tasks that are of low value while they are procrastinating on the one or two activities that could make a real difference to their companies and to their careers. The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex, but the payoff and rewards for completing them can be tremendous. Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20 percent of my activities or in the bottom 80 percent?” The rule for this is: resist the temptation to clear up small things first. If you choose to start your day working on low-value tasks, you will soon develop the habit of always starting and working on low-value tasks.
Using the Pareto Rule to achieve Success in Life
The starting point of great success and achievement has always been the same. There is nothing more important, and nothing that works faster than for you to cast off your own limitations than for you to begin dreaming and fantasizing about the wonderful things that you can become, have, and do. As a wise man once said, “You must dream big dreams, for only big dreams have the power to move the minds of men.” When you begin to dream big dreams, your levels of self-esteem and self-confidence will go up immediately. You will feel more powerful about yourself and your ability to deal with what happens to you. The reason so many people accomplish so little is because they never allow themselves to lean back and imagine the kind of life that is possible for them.
Weekly Activity Schedule – Planner
Use a simple weekly planner to manage and protect your planned activities. You’ll manage your time by managing your activities – that means protecting the time slots you plan for your tasks. Time management is mainly dependent on planning activities into time slots and then protecting the activities from interruptions, whether from other people or your own distractions.
Template (example):
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
AM | 1. check emails, post, initial response.
2. review last week reports 3. department meeting 4. agency meeting 5. check emails
|
1. check emails etc.
2. staff appraisal 1 3. staff matters arising time-slot 4. project time-slot 5. check emails
|
1. check emails.
2. chase figures for weekly report 3. strategy meeting 4. process review time-slot 5. check emails
|
1. check emails
2. my appraisal 3. staff appraisal 4. staff appraisal 5. check emails
|
1. check emails
2. weekly report 3. conference planning 4. unresolved non-urgent issues 5. phone calls 6. check emails
|
LUNCH | with agency | project team working lunch | with customer | with appraisee | with boss |
PM | 1. weekly report preparation | 1. reading monthly reports |
In addition to this, if you’re constantly juggling with deadlines, resources, and deliverables, then there’s a high chance you would benefit from dedicated time management software. Here are some of the best time management tools that can help to keep you and your team on track.
2. TRELLO
3. REPLICON
4. TIMECAMP
5. TEAMWORK PROJECTS
6. ACTIVE COLLAB
Tipps for efficient time management
- Set goals correctly
Set goals that are achievable and measurable. Use the SMART method when setting goals. In essence, make sure the goals you set are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
- Prioritize wisely
Prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency. For example, look at your daily tasks and determine which are:
- Important and urgent: Do these tasks right away.
- Important but not urgent: Decide when to do these tasks.
- Urgent but not important: Delegate these tasks if possible.
Not urgent and not important: Set these aside to do later
- Set a time limit to complete a task
Setting time constraints for completing tasks helps you be more focused and efficient. Making the small extra effort to decide on how much time you need to allot for each task can also help you recognize potential problems before they arise. That way you can make plans for dealing with them.
For example, assume you need to write up five reviews in time for a meeting. However, you realize that you’ll only be able to get four of them done in the time remaining before the meeting. If you become aware of this fact well in advance, you may be able to easily delegate writing up one of the reviews to someone else. However, if you hadn’t bothered to do a time check on your tasks beforehand, you might have ended up not realizing your time problem until just an hour before the meeting. At that point, it might be considerably more difficult to find someone to delegate one of the reviews to, and more difficult for them to fit the task into their day, too.
- Take a break between tasks
When doing a lot of tasks without a break, it is harder to stay focused and motivated. Allow some downtime between tasks to clear your head and refresh yourself. Consider grabbing a brief nap, going for a short walk, or meditating.
- Organize yourself
Utilize your calendar for more long-term time management. Write down the deadlines for projects, or for tasks that are part of completing the overall project. Think about which days might be best to dedicate to specific tasks. For example, you might need to plan a meeting to discuss cash flow on a day when you know the company CFO is available.
- Remove non-essential tasks/activities
It is important to remove excess activities or tasks. Determine what is significant and what deserves your time. Removing non-essential tasks/activities frees up more of your time to be spent on genuinely important things.
- Plan ahead
Make sure you start every day with a clear idea of what you need to do – what needs to get done THAT DAY. Consider making it a habit to, at the end of each workday, go ahead and write out your “to-do” list for the next workday. That way you can hit the ground running the next morning.