By Hayley Solich, Managing Director, The Creaticians
We are all given the same number of hours in the day but it seems that some are able to pack so much into such a short space of time. How do they do it and how can you do it?
Time Management is all about:
– Making the BEST use of your time.
– MANAGING it, instead of it managing you.
– Working SMARTER not harder.
– Recognising PRIORITIES
Okay all you procrastinators, for you it is all about DECIDING to do the most important things first, even when you don’t feel like it.
We all struggle with motivation from time to time and sure, who wouldn’t choose lying on a lounge by the pool if given the choice over that and doing the dishes. The point is, managing your time is all about valuing what you will accomplish if you apply yourself. The goal, when focused on as a completed project, is the motivator.
Sometimes we try to take too much on at one time. Focusing our attention is the key to producing quality results. A divided focus will result in a mediocre outcome. The more pure your focus, the higher quality the end product will be. So it is equally important that your “work zone” be a space in which you are able to fully focus on the task at hand.
The enemy of effective time management are the time wasters and remember, they are not going to manage themselves, you have to tame these wild time gobblers in your world.
They are:
– Trying to do too much
– Procrastination
– Interruptions from others
– Inadequate or inaccurate information from others
– Chatting and other unproductive tasks (a big one if you have great friends)
Equating your time to money and valuing it that way, ie time=money, does help us to be more productive. Imagine if you will that if you are paid $60 per hour, then just 5 minutes of your time is worth $5.00. So one phone call to a friend that goes for 30 minutes is potentially $30 you just spent $30! Not to say that friends are not important and worth that investment, but I’m just trying to point out that if time is your most valuable asset it is worthwhile considering what you are doing with your time? In economics we have the term “Opportunity Cost” and it relates to when you purchase an item in a shop you are forgoing the opportunity to purchase a different item. When we spend our time on unproductive activities, we are forgoing the opportunity to be productive.
To get yourself better organised and more effective, try using lists. Be they mental or physical (written down), the process of thinking through all tasks and deciding in which order you should be tackling them is a worthwhile process to undertake. The few minutes you spend organising yourself will bring huge dividends by the end of the process and there are so many free programs that can help you do this. Your calendar program on the computer often has a tasking function where you can record tasks, prioritise them in terms of importance and even set date reminders. Once an item is on your list and has a date reminder, you can then forget about it until the date that you need to start work on it. This declutters your mind and decreases your stress levels, allowing you to focus on the important tasks at hand.
If you get your urgent and important items off the list early, notice how less stressed you feel to tackle the less important items.
Life is too short to waste even one minute! If you don’t know where you are wasting time, log yourself for a day or two. Have a running sheet and write down everything you do for a day or two. It might surprise you to see where your time is being wasted.
To gain a better understanding of the practicals of prioritising, I recommend Dr Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” book/CD. He clearly demonstrates how to delineate between what is important, urgent, non-important and non-urgent, which helps you to make better decisions about how to effectively use your time.