Time Management
Time Management
Schools have gone back, offices are grappling with whether not you should return to work or continue working from home…but wrap around care is no longer in place and you already dismissed the doggy day care…so what happens now?
So many of my friends and family are excellent examples of time management and have been juggling multiple responsibilities for years with relative ease. So if you are like them and always manage to have several plates spinning at once why would you do a course in Time Management?
I think it’s essential for everyone to take a step back from time to time and look at the way they manage their time. Are all the tasks you undertake really necessary? Is there a more effective way of doing them? Is there any way for you to rearrange your time slots to enjoy more quality time with your family and stress far less about your work commitments?
Did you know that by scheduling more effectively and writing a basic to-do list daily you could be at least 25% more efficient on day 1? That gives you an extra 2 hours of productivity in an 8 hour working day!
Start by Planning your Days, once you have the hang of daily planning, you move to weekly planning, then to monthly and finally yearly planning. DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY. Without these plans you end up doing what is passive and easy. You get caught up in life and you stop controlling your own direction.
If you don’t really know what you’re doing during the day. If there just aren’t enough hours in the day and you feel like you are wasting a lot of time on mindless activities it’s time to analyse exactly what’s going on. Keep a time log for a whole working week and see what is happening during your days. If you wish, you can add free time to it and look at how you are spending your free time too. Perhaps there’s too much screen time? (If you would like a template time log, get in touch and we’ll send you one over.)
Do you remember when you were at school and during exams your teachers used to try to get you to make a study timetable? Well as much as it might seem a bit of a pain in the neck…Time Boxing is an excellent way of blocking your time. Now all you need to do is stick to it! You are your own worst enemies! Use your online calendar – it’s the easiest way.
Have you ever heard of the Eisenhower Matrix?
According to https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/ here is how to get the most out of it:
Prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance results in 4 quadrants with different work strategies:
We call the first quadrant Do first as its tasks are important for your life and career and need to be done today or tomorrow at the latest. You could use a timer to help you concentrate while trying to get as much of them done as possible.
An example of this type of task could be to review an important document for your manager.
The second quadrant we call Schedule. Its tasks are important but less urgent. You should list tasks you need to put in your calendar here.
An example of that could be a long-planned restart of your gym activity.
Professional time managers leave fewer things unplanned and therefore try to manage most of their work in the second quadrant, reducing stress by terminating urgent and important to-dos to a reasonable date in the near future whenever a new task comes in.
The third quadrant is for those tasks you could delegate as they are less important to you than others but still pretty urgent. You should keep track of delegated tasks by e-mail, telephone or within a meeting to check back on their progress later.
An example of a delegated task could be somebody calling you to ask for an urgent favor or request that you step into a meeting. You could delegate this responsibility by suggesting a better person for the job or by giving the caller the necessary information to have him deal with the matter himself.
The fourth and last quadrant is called Don’t Do because it is there to help you sort out things you should not being doing at all.
Discover and stop bad habits, like surfing the internet without a reason or gaming too long, these give you an excuse for not being able to deal with important tasks in the 1st and 2nd quadrant.
TIM WOODS
The 4th Box in the Eisenhower Matrix is interesting because people like to do ‘busy work’ – they don’t know how to Eliminate Waste from their daily lives! Remember this mnemonic when looking at your Activity Log…what can you get rid of?
Transportation – Are you moving your tasks from one place to another unnecessarily?
Inventory – Are you building up a stock of things for the future which may/ may not every be used because you feel like you want to be ‘safe rather than sorry’?
Motion – Do you spend twice as long doing a task because you keep half your materials in one cupboard and the other half in another? Do you need to go to five different places to get what you need?
Waiting – How long do you spend waiting for other people? Can you do it yourself? Can you delegate the whole tasks to them? Is it even necessary?
Over Processing – Is it necessary for you to update the text every 30 mins? It is really necessary to note in detail by hand each and every movement? Do you need to read it 10 times?
Over Production – Do you need to create 5 types of your product? Do you need to write 3 months’ worth of lesson plans?
Defects – Where are the issues in your day to day life? How can you simply eliminate them? It could be as simple as Negative People for example.
Skills – Are you wasting your skills/ talent on inane tasks? You need to refocus on what you should be doing? At the same time are you underestimating the skills of those around it? Are you underestimating what they could be doing to help you? Delegate Delegate Delegate!!!
If you are interested in knowing more about Time Management here is some recommended reading:
• 1. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change” by Stephen R. Covey
• 2. “How to Stop Procrastinating: A Simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit” by S.J. Scott
• 3. “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time” by Brian Tracy
• 4. “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”
• 5. “Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life” by Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow
• 6. “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen
• 7. “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport
• 8. “Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day” by Jake Zeratsky and John Knapp
• 9. “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think” by Laura Vanderkam
• 10. “The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande
• 11. “Surge: Your Guide to Put Any Idea Into Action” by Matt Kane, Steve Garguilo and Sergiy Skoryk
• 12. “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg
• 13. “Time Warrior: How to Defeat Procrastination, People-pleasing, Self-doubt, Over-commitment, Broken Promises and Chaos” by Steve Chandler
• 14. “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown
• 15. “15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management- The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs” by Kevin Kruse