Time Management Made Easy

 

However, before you start on the nuts and bolts of time management, I must first draw your attention to the prioritization of tasks.

Prioritization

No matter how you approach time management, there will always be some limitations. Whoever you are, there are only twenty four given hours in a day. You need to sleep, eat, bathe and perform any number of other activities. There will always be more things that you would like to do than there is time to do them. When you look at these limitations, it becomes apparent that proper prioritization is essential to effective time management.

If you don't prioritize tasks, you would simply change from one task to another without rhyme or reason. This would not only be totally inefficient, it could also result in essential tasks being left incomplete. Most time management experts will argue strongly that one must learn to differentiate between the important and the optional and discover how to judge the relative importance of each task to help in their scheduling.

There are three factors you should keep in mind when prioritizing your list of items on your "To Do" list.

First, you must set aside an appropriate amount of time to attend life issues that are not work related. Time to be spent with your family, for instance would fall into this category. When prioritizing, you must remember to place sufficient value on some of the things that give life a greater meaning. This may, for example, include worship or meditation as a critical element. These real priorities are often inadvertently overlooked by those who are focussed solely with maintaining their business or professional lives--often with a great negative consequences.

Second, you must learn how to differentiate the essential from the important. Every day, you must handle critical tasks (in terms of your work). These projects may be the difference between success and failure or a significant decline. Meeting tough deadlines, working to grow your business, customer service and other tasks may fall into this category.

Third, you must be able to push the urgent items towards the top. Urgent items are those with an immediate or soon-to-arrive deadline. These tasks will not always measure up in importance to some of the critical jobs, but their urgency gives them a higher level of priority. Missed deadlines can have a remarkably deleterious impact on a business even when the matter in question is relatively small.

As you approach your priorities list, keep the above three observations in mind. Remember that setting aside some time for pursuits other than business is important. Understanding the difference between a critical situation and a somewhat important one can also help. Finally, recognizing your need to push through time-sensitive projects as quickly as possibly can reduce panic situations.

Your decision as to which "To-Do’s" should come first will probably be the most important part of managing your time. These decisions can be difficult and frustrating but are the key to time management success.

Get Started - Create Your " To Do " List

Most successful people use " TO DO " lists. They range from the top CEOs of multi-national companies to entrepreneurs of small businesses.

Busy housewives and retired workers - anyone who wants to use their limited time effectively.

All of these people use time management skills including "To Do" lists.

You can use these lists to keep you focused on what really needs to be done, and keep you away from un-important tasks that have no value.

The result - more time to do what you want!

1.Make It A Daily Record

Every day you should make a " To Do " list. This is the first step in your time management crash course. You'll find it invaluable in helping you decide where your priorities lie.

2.The Nuts and Bolts of Your " TO DO " List

Write down all your outstanding tasks on a sheet of paper, then carefully go through deciding if an item is to be graded as :-

A. Urgent.

B. Important but not urgent.

C. Not urgent nor important.

Within categories A and B it will be necessary for you to prioritise, so the most urgent task becomes A1, then the next becomes A2 etc.

Similarly with the set of tasks you have decided are B.

Of course this is not necessary with the C tasks.

Some people prefer to color code the items instead, so with such a system the A tasks may be colored red, the B tasks blue etc.

You may choose whatever colors have meaning for you.

3. Using the " TO DO " List

Each morning you must update your "TO DO" list. Bring forward the A, B, and C items not completed the day before on to another sheet of paper.

Add new items to the lists after considering carefully where each new item should go.

Then review the list and start on the top priorities, crossing off each one as it is finished throughout the day.

Some people prefer to have separate sheets for each type i.e. one sheet for the A list, another sheet for the B list etc.

That way you know you are working on the most urgent tasks from the listing itself, because the A list should always be on top.

So what do you do with the C items?

If you have staff, then delegate - if not, decide if you are going to complete them or not.

Dispose of all items you decide are not worth doing.

Instead of re-writing your list each morning an alternative method is to spend the last 15 minutes of your day on your list, so that you can start immediately the next ay.

Practise your time management skills until they become second nature.

4. How Pareto's Principle May Help You

Vilfredo Pareto(1848-1923) was an Italian economist who in 1906,observed that 20% of the people in Italy owned 80% of the country's wealth.

Over a period of time this observation became known as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

It is never exactly 80/20, of course.

Sometimes it is 79/21 or 82/18 but the under lying principle is always true.

This theory is applied all over the world by multi-national companies as well as much smaller firms.

Broadly speaking 80% of all results come from 20% of all efforts.

So if you identify which 20% is the most important, complete those and you can't help but be more effective and successful.

One word of caution - items on the B list which are not completed within a reasonable time scale have a habit of suddenly becoming a major A item!

This is not the objective of time management!

I have used a "To Do" list for many, many years and it enabled me to keep on top of my responsibilities AND enjoy my family life. I sincerely recommend that you do the same.

Start That Important Task Now!

There are many tasks which because of their complexity and wealth of detail, are difficult to start.

There are always other (and sometimes less important) tasks which give instant satisfaction.

Next time this happens to you try this time management method of motivating yourself.

1. Use Small Periods Of Time To Get Started

It's fifteen minutes to your lunch break - far too short a time to do that overwhelming task which you routinely pick up every morning and then put down again.

But wait!

You could do something to get that task started...

What about making a list of all the relevent sub-tasks that will result in the finished product?

Yes! You decide to try that approach and ten minutes later off you go to lunch feeling better about the task and yourself.

Why? Because you have accomplished something, you have made the list of sub-tasks and are no longer fearful of the main task.

This is called the Swiss Cheese method because by using small amounts of time you are making holes in the larger task. It is a commonly used time management technique.

2. Pretend Someone Else Is Going To Do It!

Sounds silly doesn't it?

But if you pretend that you're just preparing a check list of tasks for someone else to complete all fear will leave you.

Your mind will focus with great clarity on what needs to be done - after all, you're not doing it... are you?

You'll find that as the list is finished so most of your apprehension will disappear. Trust me!

The Pareto Principle is known by many names and seems to be an almost intrinsic law of nature. Amongst its other names two in particular pinpoint what it is about: the law of imbalance and the 80/20 rule. The principle can be expressed in many ways and is applicable, some would say, almost universally in whatever field of human endeavour you work.

In time management terms it suggests that, unless we actually try to do something about it then, for most us for most of the time around 80% of what we achieve comes from just 20% of what we do. In other words, there is a huge imbalance between effort and results.

It's like saying that in the equivalent of just one day we achieve the bulk of what we do that is worth doing in the whole week. Our contribution in the other four days merely adds up to a small fraction of what matters. It's an appalling statistic but, generally, it has far more than just a core of truth behind it.

However, if you learn from it - this natural imbalance - and start to apply standard time management ideas then you can blow the 80/20 rule apart. You can, indeed you should, spend far more than 20% of your time and effort on what matters. You will then achieve far more than what you have been used to; not a little bit more, but far more. From 80/20 you can move to something like 160/50 or even better.

In practice, if you are being reasonably successful at work you are probably already instinctively beating the Pareto rule. But, with some application and thought, you can probably improve much, much more.

So who was Pareto and what did he discover that has caused so much fuss and is worth attaching the word 'principle' to?

In the 19th century, Valfredo Pareto, an Italian, studied the distribution of wealth in England and found that, not all that surprisingly, a few families owned a disproportionate amount of the wealth of the country. There was an imbalance. Specifically, he discovered that about 20% of families owned about 80% of the wealth, 10% owned roughly 64% of it (80% of 80%) and 5% owned roughly 50% (80% of 64%). A very unequal distribution!

He even found that this appeared to be universal, in whatever country or age he looked. The 80/20 rule was born - although, apparently, Pareto himself did not express it so succinctly (1) - and it seems to be endemic.

Examples often quoted include:

• about 80% of the wear in your carpets at home is in roughly 20% of the floor area (the doorways and corridors);
• 80% of crime is committed by about 20% of criminals;
• 80% of personnel problems in companies are caused by about 20% of staff.

Often it is more extreme than 80/20.

• In a football match the action that matters (scoring or conceding goals) occurs in a tiny fraction of the game. When a match goes to a penalty shoot out after extra time the outcome is decided by just 10 kicks taken in a few minutes of melodrama after a game in which the ball has been booted around for 120 minutes. (The 10/120 rule on time; 10/5000 on kicks?)
• In a light bulb only a few percent of the electricity used is converted into light, the rest is wasted as heat (95/5 rule?). Think what could be achieved if you could double that efficiency - half of the electricity would be saved and atmospheric warming reduced.
• What small percentage of pop records do you think earn most of the money in the pop industry?
• Publishers say that only a handful of books provide the profits that subsidise the others.

We could go on, but instead of piling up more examples, let's turn to using the rule to help us to get better use of our limited time. Once you accept that the productivity of your time is unbalanced you are part way to doing something about it.

As usual in time management, we come back to priorities. Every moment you spend working on some task that in reality has a low importance, whilst higher importance tasks are waiting, then you are reinforcing the 80/20 rule of shame. Whereas every time you drop a task of low importance to make way for something more important then you are smashing the 80/20 rule and making your way to higher productivity.

Of course, you are probably not aiming to achieve 100/100, where every single moment of your working day is fully accountable and totally productive. You are not a machine, you do need to interact with your colleagues and that includes a bit of chit-chat. If your organisation is to move forward, and most seem to want to, then some time must be spent speculating on 'what ifs'. That is good use of your time, even though most time spent speculating in this way will lead nowhere (80/20). But some will...

Time Management Skills
Work smarter. Reduce the stress of work overload.

Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function exceptionally well, even under intense pressure.

 

What's more, as you master these skills, you'll find that you take control of your workload, and say goodbye to the often intense stress of work overload.

 

At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little because they're not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most.

The 80:20 Rule

This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. The remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations.

 

By applying the time management tips and skills in this section you can optimize your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.

Time Management Tools

In this section, we start off with simple and practical techniques, so that you can get off to a quickly start to take control of your time. Beating Procrastination and Activity Logs help you quickly eliminate the most common time-wasters, while Action Plans and Prioritized To Do Lists help you focus on the most important short term activities.

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