"Time management” refers to the way that you organize and plan how long
you spend on specific activities.
It may seem counter-intuitive to dedicate precious time to learning
about time management, instead of using it to get on with your work, but the
benefits are enormous:
·
Greater productivity and efficiency.
·
A better professional reputation.
·
Less stress.
·
Increased opportunities for advancement.
·
Greater opportunities to achieve important life and career goals.
Failing to manage your time effectively can have some very undesirable
consequences:
·
Missed deadlines.
·
Inefficient work flow.
·
Poor work quality.
·
A poor professional reputation and a stalled career.
·
Higher stress levels.
Spending a little time learning about time-management techniques will
have huge benefits now – and throughout your career.
Organizational time management is the science
of identifying, valuing and reducing time cost wastage within organizations. It
identifies, reports and financially values sustainable time, wasted time and
effective time within an organization and develops the business case to convert
wasted time into productive time through the funding of products, services,
projects or initiatives at a positive return on investment.
What
are the best tips for managing your time?
One of the biggest problems that most entrepreneurs have isn't just in
how they can get enough done in such a demanding market, but also how they
maintain some semblance of balance without feeling too overworked. This isn't
just about achieving and going after goals around the clock. This is also
about quality of life.
Balance is key. If you lack balance in your life, you're going to feel
stressed out. Even if you're able to effectively juggle your responsibilities,
without proper balance you're going to eventually reach your breaking point.
So, it's important to not only follow a system that will help you get things
done, but also one where you prioritize personal and family time.
Don't forget to do things like take a walk in the park or just sit and
listen to your favorite music with headphones on, or paint a picture, go on a
date night and so on. That's more important than you can think. And when you do
that, you achieve some semblance of balance. Life is short. So don't ignore those things while you reach for
your bigger goals. With that said, here are 15 crucial time management tips for
getting the proverbial job done.
1. Set goals the right way.
There's a right and wrong way to set goals. If you don't set your goals
the right way, then you'll lack the proper targets, which will force you to
fall off track. But when you set them the right way, the sky is the limit. Use
the SMART goal setting method to help you see things through. And
when you do set those goals, make sure you have powerful deep down meanings for
wanting to achieve them.
2.
Find a good time management system.
One of the tips for managing your time is to find the right
system to actually do it. The quadrant time-management system is probably the
most effective. It splits your activities into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. Things are either urgent or
important, both, or neither. Neither (quadrant 4) are the activities that you
want to stay away from, but it's the not-urgent-but-important quadrant (2) that
you want to focus on.
3.
Audit your time for seven days straight.
Spend seven days straight assessing how you spend the time you do
have right now. What are you doing? Record it in a journal or on your phone.
Split this up into blocks of 30 minutes or an hour. What did you get done? Was
it time wasted? Was it well spent? If you use the quadrant system, circle or
log the quadrant that the activity was associated with. At the end of the
seven days, tally up all the numbers. Where did you spend the most time?
Which quadrants? The results might shock you.
4.
Spend your mornings on MITs.
Mark Twain once said, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to
do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's
best to eat the biggest one first." His point? Tackle your biggest tasks
in the morning. These are your most important tasks (MITs) of the day. Accomplishing those will give you
the biggest momentum to help you sail through the rest of the day.
5.
Follow the 80-20 rule.
Another great time management tip is to use the 80-20 Rule, also known
as the Pareto Principle. This rule states that 80% of the efforts comes
from 20 percent of the results. In sales, it also means that 80 percent of
the sales come from 20 percent of the customers. The trick? Identify the 20
percent of the efforts that are producing 80 percent of the results and
scale that out. You can do this with meticulous tracking and analysis.
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