Top Tips for Effective Time Management
by Kate Smalley
Published on this site: November 2nd, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Time is a precious, nonrenewable resource. That's why you
should value every moment, hour and day that you have. And
just as a well-run business should carefully develop a strategy
for spending money, an effective business person should carefully
develop a plan for spending time.
To help you use your time as effectively as possible, here
are some time management strategies you can implement to enhance
your efficiency and productivity:
Develop a Time Strategy
The first step in effective time management is not to develop
a schedule, but instead to develop a time strategy. The time
strategy should be based on a short list of time priorities.
Start by identifying the No. 1 way you can most increase
profits by use of your time. Then move onto the No 2 way,
the No. 3 way, etc. This short list of time priorities forms
the foundation for your time planning for every week of the
year.
Next, you should focus your efforts. Focus is crucial for
effective time management. And the fewer priorities you focus
on at once, the more productive you will be.
Once you've established your major time priorities for the
year, you should allocate them by week or by month. Like it
or not, a lot of our time each week is going to be eaten up
by nonstrategic items that we have no control over.
Therefore, it is important to limit the number of strategic
time goals we have for each week. So even if you have 10 strategic
time goals for the year, you may want to focus on no more
than one or two of them in any given week.
Set Aside Uninterrupted Time
Every week you should make up a detailed time plan, which
you modify each day as needed. Except in times of crisis,
try to make sure day-to-day issues don't push your strategic
time priorities off your schedule.
Generally, your major strategic time priorities will involve
activities like planning, thinking, and developing ideas.
More so than day-to-day issues, these activities require big
blocks of uninterrupted time.
Constant interruptions can kill any hope of effective time
management. One way to avoid them is to make it clear that
when your door is closed you are not to be disturbed. Another
is to have regular meetings, such as every week, with the
people that you interact with the most and insist on saving
non-pressing issues for these meetings.
Avoid Time Traps
To get the most from your time, be careful to avoid these
common time traps:
- Spending more time in the offices where the most congenial
people are, as opposed to where the most important issues
are.
- Wasting too much time getting daily updates on routine
activities, instead of waiting for a more meaningful weekly
summary.
- Jumping too eagerly into the routine, more straightforward
work and putting off the more complex and difficult work.
- Not starting the most important work first thing in the
morning.
- Failing to make up a schedule for each day.
- Scheduling each day so tightly that it is impossible
to stay on track.
Kate Smalley Connecticut Secretary Freelance Transcription
Services
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http://www.connecticutsecretary.com
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