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Now is the time-it’s just after New Year and already the twelve days of Xmas are past. Have you already dropped a couple of your resolutions, especially about being better organised and being on time? If you have read on and then use some of the tips. If you have managed to keep your promises, well done, and read on anyway!
Many people tell me that they have already heard of, been trained in or have been given Time Management Systems before and yet they are still poor at managing the time they have – why should these time saving tips be any more effective for you? There is one simple answer – YOU! Unless you actually take action to properly implement decisions then nothing is likely to change in the long term. Knowing about something does not become a skill until you put it into action, without action it is still only knowledge.
If you have a poor time management habit that restricts your effectiveness then change the habit – it is possible. I have a tool that can help. Remember:
‘If you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got.’
By using these tips you can improve your management of time.
1. If you are a slave to your email system, and particularly if your pc is set up to notify you immediately upon the receipt of any incoming email, then turn off the pop-up or noise which notifies you that you have mail. For many people this is the single biggest obstacle to successful time management. Establish a new habit of checking your email at certain times in the day, when it is sensible for you and the business to do so – say, first when you arrive at your desk or start work, second just before lunch, third around an hour before normal business closes.
You must decide when to look at your emails – this control should not rest with everyone out there who sends emails to you (nor indeed should this control rest with the spamming and virus-spreading community).
Involuntary email notification is the single biggest time management detractor in the world today.
2. Manage your phone calls – don’t let them manage you. Ideally check at planned times, and avoid continuous notification of incoming calls. Try to minimise the time that you are available to take unplanned phone calls, unless you are in a customer-facing, reactive role (customers can be internal too), and even if you are customer-facing, you must plan some time-slots when you are not available, or you’ll never get anything important and pro-active done.
3. Challenge your own tendency to say ‘yes’ without scrutinising the request – start asking and probing what’s involved – find out what the real expectations and needs are. Remember to ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen if I say NO?” If this is an issue for you let me know.
4. Really think about how you currently spend your time. If you don’t know, keep a time log for a few days to find out. Knowing exactly what’s wrong is the first step to improving it. Use a diary, and an activity planner to schedule when to do things, and time-slots for things you know will need doing or responding to.
5. Challenge anything that could be wasting time and effort, particularly habitual tasks, meetings and reports where responsibility is inherited or handed down from above. Don’t be a slave to a daft process or system.
6. Plan preparation and creative thinking time in your diary for the long-term jobs, because they need it. The short-term urgent tasks will always use up all your time unless you plan to spend it otherwise.
7. Re-condition the expectations of others as to your availability and their claim on your time – use an activity planner to help you justify why you and not others should be prioritising your activities and time.
8. Use Covey’s ‘urgent-important’ system of assessing activities and deciding priorities. I can let you have more information about this if you need.
9. When you’re faced with a pile of things to do, go through them quickly and make a list of what needs doing and when. After this handle each piece of paper only once. Do not under any circumstances pick up a job, do a bit of it, and then put it back on the pile.
10. Do not start lots of jobs at the same time – even if you can handle different tasks at the same time it’s not the most efficient way of dealing with them, so don’t kid yourself that this sort of multi-tasking is good – it’s not.
11. Always probe deadlines to establish the true situation – people asking you to do things will often say ‘now’ when ‘later today’ would be perfectly acceptable. Appeal to the other person’s own sense of time management: it’s impossible for anyone to do a good job without the opportunity to plan and prioritise.
12. Break big tasks down into stages and plan time-slots for them.
Finally:
‘Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.’ ~ Denis Waitely
Contact me direct if you want to know more. So don’t procrastinate – Just Do It!
Peter Mackechnie
‘Keeping it simple’.
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