Thoughts on Time Management (1 min. read)
By the end of March, a quarter of this “new year” will be behind us! Most of us had a goal of getting more done or doing a better job of managing time; it’s a big club.
Here are a few tips for recapturing a wasted hour here and there and directing it to more productive use:
• Daily planning. The saying goes, “plan your work and then work your plan.” At night, write down a plan to control the precious resource that is the next 24 hours. Arrange the daily plan into priorities and tackle them to get the most important things done.
• Keep track of routine interruptions for a week or so. It can help to examine which interruptions have little value and find ways to eliminate them.
• Plow through paperwork. Most people get hundreds of communications a day through calls, e-mail, texts, and hard mail. It kills time to keep going through the stack, and to correct mistakes that happen when things slip through the cracks. Try to handle the paper once and be done. If it is something that requires more time, put it on your daily plan.
• Keep a time log. Viewing a simple yet powerful snapshot tool of your activity can help you analyze whether you are spending time on things that have the most value and that matter most to you.
• Play “beat the clock.” If you want to increase your productivity, never allow an open amount of time to get a task done. Challenging yourself to get it done in a certain time makes work more fun – like the last day before vacation! The reverse of this? Leave your deadlines open and everything will get done slower.
Maybe you have a great idea to share? If so, we’d love to hear it. A quick e-mail ([email protected]) will let us know this was of interest to you and we welcome feedback!