Time is ticking – learn to manage it well! Freeda Wilson Acusis Training Team

Time Management Time is money, spend your time wisely.

What Is Time Management ? Time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or quantity.

Why Time Management? Good time management paves the road to success. Helps you to be highly effective. It helps maximize your efforts. Brings about a sense of fulfillment at work. Helps you experience greater peace and less stress. Work gets done on time, every time!

Bad Time Management Results in missed deadlines. Poor quality work. Not able to balance professional and personal life. A lot of stress. Lack of concentration.

How Can I Manage My Time Better? Set Goals (long term and short term). Break down goals into small manageable tasks. Create a to-do list to achieve those tasks. Schedule tasks well. Prioritize your tasks. Manage distractions. Concentrate on results. Self-Motivation.

To-Do List

Create a To-Do List Take time to write down a “to-do list”. This can be done effectively through Microsoft Outlook. To-Do list helps you list down activities you need to complete for the day/week etc It helps you collect your thoughts. It serves as a reminder. Before you call it a day, check your to-do list and check mark the activities that you have completed and follow up on the ones you need to complete.

Scheduling Tasks

Scheduling Tasks is an important component of time management. All of us have different rhythms, different times during the day when we feel most productive and energetic. Example: You can make best use of your time by scheduling the high-value work during your peak time and low-energy work towards the end of the day.

Prioritizing Tasks

Prioritize your tasks When you are faced with too many tasks in a day and with too less time to complete them, what would you do? Prioritization helps in these scenarios. Identify the important and urgent tasks.  Important tasks are the ones that provide significant value.  Urgent tasks are the ones which have to be done immediately. Great time management lies in being effective as well as efficient.

Prioritize your tasks To prioritize your tasks, divide them into the sections displayed on the right.

Prioritize your tasks Complete the tasks which are urgent and important. Secondly, complete the tasks which are important but not urgent. Thirdly, complete the tasks which are urgent but not important. Finally, complete the tasks which are not urgent and not important.

Manage Distractions

We need to manage our distractions so that they don’t gnaw into our time. The following will help us manage distractions well. Schedule Breaks. Plan for distractions. Regulate Inputs. Know your productive zone. Increase your margins.

Schedule Breaks The moments you spend away from your work are just as much a part of your life as those spent toiling away. Treat them as such! Scheduling breaks, especially when you’re short on time and long on work, can make the difference between productive success and burnout.

Schedule Breaks Don’t wait until you’re frazzled – Schedule your breaks! No matter how brief your breaks are, it is a way of “topping off” your energy reserves instead of a way to come back from an empty tank. Stay on schedule – If you planned to take a 15-minute break at 12:00, you’d better be backing away from your desk by 12:01! The same goes for ending your breaks. Stay on time and you’ll find it easier to move in and out of your focused “work mode” without losing forward motion.

Schedule Breaks A break should be a restorative action – Chatting with a friend online about your project isn’t a break. It’s a distraction. The idea of a break isn’t to derail your train of thought but to pause for restoration and refueling.

Plan for Distractions The following will help you handle distractions Better. Acknowledge the interruption – The best interruptions are the ones we see coming. Others come without warning – For example, someone opens the door to your office without knocking on it which causes you to spill coffee all over some important papers. However big the interruption, it’s not worth your time to get annoyed! Doing so will just make it that much harder to return to work once the interruption is over.

Plan for Distractions Bookmark your idea – During the moments after the phone rings for the first time or you’ve said “come in” to the person knocking on your office door, you have a chance to note exactly where you were heading with your project. Part of planning for interruptions is to have sticky notes or a favorite bit of software open in order to jot down a quick note before the phone rings a third time.

Plan for Distractions Minimize your immediate involvement – Many interruptions require more than just an answer. Clients, partners, spouses, children and friends typically want an action and not just a conversation. The trick to staying productive, in spite of the interruption, is to schedule your action for a later time. If your friend needs to talk to you about a family problem, politely inform your friend that you are at work and you would call her/him after you are done for the day.

Regulate Inputs Silence your cellphone and put it out of sight if you receive personal phone calls very frequently. Schedule phone calls so that you attend to them only during breaks or after office hours. Attend to only urgent/important phone calls during your work hours. Limit the number of times you check your each day and batch your replies when possible. If you need to use Facebook or Twitter, do so as part of your scheduled breaks.

Know Your Productive Zone  When do you get your best work done?  Are you a genius in the morning but slow in the afternoon?  Do you work best late at night when you’re alone?  Most of us only have a few hours each day that we can honestly point to as being truly productive hours.  Those hours are what we call a “productive zone.”  Do your maximum work during your productive zone.

Increase Your Margins One of the most annoying things about interruptions is that we almost never have time for them. In our rush to get jobs done at the last minute, we miss out on numerous fun conversations and inspirational moments. If you give yourself enough time to complete your activities at a high quality and allow for a few interruptions and restorative actions (breaks) you won’t find interruptions as distracting. You would have scheduled them after all!!

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." -Michael Altshuler