Posted in Productivity
January 1 is often the time people set or reset direction for their lives. They set resolutions, they review the past and set goals for the future. Regardless of how well or poorly you’ve been managing personal productivity, the New Year can be a good milestone to review your processes and see if there are places you can make improvements. Time management is a way of life and needs to be reviewed regularly.
Assess your productivity habits using the following 10 time management principles and see in what ways you can improve your productivity.
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January 1 is often the time people set or reset direction for their lives. They set resolutions, they review the past and set goals for the future. Regardless of how well or poorly you’ve been managing personal productivity, the New Year can be a good milestone to review your processes and see if there are places you can make improvements. Time management is a way of life and needs to be reviewed regularly.
Assess your productivity habits using the following 10 time management principles and see in what ways you can improve your productivity.
- Set goals and have a plan to reach those goals. Goals give your life, and the way you spend your time, direction. Coals are the foundation of effective time management. Do you know anyone who is successful? Have you spent time talking with them about their success? Chances are, they credit setting goals as a major step in their success, and continues to be important as they look for new ways to challenge themselves. Setting goals is not just for champion athletes or wealthy people. Everyone needs goals to give them direction. It’s not complicated. However, it can be challenging. The process of goal setting can be of value to you in building drive and commitment; important factors in achieving success.
- Set priorities and make daily plans. You can spend your days responding to the next crisis that grabs your attention or you can set priorities to using your time effectively. You need to know what is important in moving your toward your goals. Then, eliminate those things that prevent you from meeting your priorities. Organize in a way that makes sense to you, but once you have an order for things, do first things first.
- Deal with the important, not the ugent. There’s a quip that says, “Lack of proper planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Work to be effective, rather than merely efficient. Efficiency means doing the job right, but effectiveness means doing the right job efficiently. Urgent tasks usually have short-term consequences, while important tasks have long-term, goal-related implications. Work toward reducing the urgent tasks you must do so that you have more time for what is important in the long run.
- Delegate effectively. Delegation is getting things done through others. If you don’t delegate effectively, you attempt too much. You will either “burn out” or you will not complete everything on your task list. Delegate everything but those tasks at which you personally want to excel. Remember that delegation never absolves you of responsibility; you are still accountable.
- Avoid or consolidate routine details. Time is often lost in the starting, stopping and changing of different levels or types of activity. Save time by grouping similar tasks together. Make all your outgoing phone calls at the same time. Organize your errands into a single run. Reply to e-mail once during the day. This is a more efficient use of your time.
- Learn to say “no”. “No” is the most powerful time-management word in the English dictionary. There are times when we have demands on our time which exceed our ability to manage them. Learning to say “No” is a critical skill that needs to be mastered. Taking on more than you can manage leads to frustration as nothing gets done very well. Learning to say “no” to the unimportant makes life much easier. However, use good judgement when saying “no” in the workplace.
- Control interruptions. Controlling drop-in visitors who interrupt your workflow requires both tact and judgement. The office culture where you work will have influence on this practice. If yours is an organization that encourages less-formal communication, you may find people dropping by to discuss anything from last night’s big game to next week’s big presentation. When appropriate, establish periods of the day when you block interruptions so you can focus on difficult or important tasks. Save routine tasks for the times of the day when you permit interruptions.
- Maximize technology. If you’re having trouble finding a way to do something more effectively, chances are that there is a tool or software on the market to help you do it better. Much of this technology can help you make maximum use of otherwise wasted time. For example, answering e-mail on a Blackberry while waiting for a doctor’s appointment.
- Don’t be a perfectionist; work toward excellence. The time cost of perfection is greater than the outcome benefit derived. Work to be excellent, not perfect. Make your work the best in can be under the circumstances. Excellence is attainable, gratifying, and healthy; perfection is often unattainable and frustrating. We all want to do the job right, but no one is perfect. Spending too much time trying to do something better prevents us from moving on to potentially more important tasks. Of course, if you’re a surgeon, the closer to perfect, the better.
- Stop procrastinating. We all put things off. We hope to avoid tasks that are boring, difficult, unpleasant, etc. When faced with something we don’t want to do, we can find a dozen tasks of no consequence to fill our time. We secretly hope that, by procrastinating, the unpleasant task will shrink and go away. Unfortunately, the reverse is often true; the deferred job just gets bigger and more difficult. Procrastination is the result of indecision. Visualize the end result of an activity rather than the activity itself. Break large tasks into multiple smaller units. Clear the clutter. Create an environment that is conducive to getting the job done, and reward yourself after completing the job.
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