Loading ...Time Management The Easy Way
Time Management For The Busy Bee
Allright, I admit that I say “I don’t have time to do that” more than Wendy’s says “Where’s the beef?” Time management is a huge problem for many people these days. Were talking about people that range from CEOs to students, garbage collectors to couch potatoes and security guards to bank tellers. My friends always tell me that there are never enough hours in a day.
Basically, time management puts your skills to the test by allowing you to play this one player game called prioritizing. In this game, you set goals and list them from number 1 to whichever number in order of personal importance. You then get to decide what time frame you want to acheive those goals. If you can get this basic structure down, then you will be on your way to working “smarter” instead of working “harder and longer.” When you become an expert at time management, the joys of life will begin to emerge. Who wouldn’t want more time for rest, leisure, and fun times?
The first step, like I mentioned in an earlier article, is to set your goals. They can be practically anything: professional (I want to be a OB/GYN doctor), personal (I want to be a stricter father), family (I want 7 more kids), social (I want to catch up with my 1st grade girlfriend) or financial (I want to be richer than Bill Gates). Think of what your goals are and decide what you want to accomplish. After doing some soul searching, rank your goals in terms of importance and put your goals down in writing. This step is is really important because without it, you won’t know what your goals are and whether or not you have accomplished them or not. Make sure you realize that you can’t do it all at one time. Not even a robot can. The easiest way to handle this problem is to break down large or long-term goals into a series of small steps.
Step two calls for analysis of where your time goes and how you use it. You can do this by keeping a log book for one week to find out exactly what you do with your time. Be as specific as possible in the log book. Record everything that you do at work, at home or in your car. You will probably notice a pattern of peak busy hours during certain times of the day and week. This can be handled easily by reducing the time on less important activities and by planning ahead. You can easily take out some of the activites and place them in a different time slot for another day. Finally, you may see that you will have large amounts of free time. These free time periods should be used to fill up activities from one of your busy days.
Step three is to notice on your time log what you do to waste time and try to eliminate those habits. I’ve been guilty of almost all the common time wasters such as talking on my cellphone for long periods of time, reading my email 50 times per day, putting things off until the next day, sleeping in, being at useless meetings and driving to work.
Step four is to put together your own time plan. There are 3 ways to accomplish this. The first way is obviously the easiest way to make a plan. Just list all the things that you want to do and cross them off as you have the time and the desire to tackle the task. The second way to create a plan is similar to the first. After you list the things you want to do, prioritize them starting from the most important to the least important. The third and final way to plan is to make your list, order them in terms of importance and put a detailed time schedule to each task.
Step five is to act. But before you do, you have to look at your own time patterns. That is, as former NFL player Deion Sanders says, “Prime Time!” Your prime time is the time during which you are most efficient. This is the same principle as the biological clock is to the scientific world. Some people do their best work early in the morning, others in the late afternoon and others in the middle of the night. Your first step is to find out which one of the three categories I just mentioned you fall into. Once this is done, plan to spend that time on your creative thinking and most demanding jobs. For myself, I am not an early morning nor an afternoon person, but I am most energetic during the late night-early morning hours. That is the time that I do my best work. One major point I want to make is to try and reduce interruptions during your best working hours. Did you know that tasks get accomplished twice as much in one quiet hour vs. tasks in two regular hours of frequent interruptions.
Step six is to increase your available time during some hours of the day or week to be with others. This is very similar to office hours in college that make professors and teaching assistants available for students to come in and ask questions. So use this same technique to set aside strict time to be available for members of your family, friends or co-workers only.
Step seven is to be an expert of the balancing act. I’m not talking about Bozo the clown walking on a line 100 feet off the ground and across the Grand Canyon. I am talking about balancing your life between work, rest, family, relationships, leisurely activities and nose picking. The way you become an expert of the balancing act is to give up the less important activities which, in turn, frees up time for more important activities. It all comes down to prioritizing again. Just like a kid at Toys R’ Us who can’t have every Lego set in the building, the kid has to choose the set that is most important to him at the time.
By following these seven steps, you will be well on your way to being a time management expert. Who wouldn’t want extra time to do the things that they like?
Please feel free to leave comments and feedback on any of my articles. In addition, tell me what other personal development topics you want to hear about. Thanks.
Tags: deion sanders, time analysis, time log, Time Management, time paln, time wasters, toys r' us kid
