Introduction
to Time Management Skills
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The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This argues 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 as to be the norm in many areas.
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
The tools we will discuss are:
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I.
Beating Procrastination:
Overcoming Procrastination
If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them achieving things they're capable of and disrupts their careers.
The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes. Why do we Procrastinate? |
Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.
They may feel that they're doing the right thing by reacting fast. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest. Either way, by doing this, they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.
Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away - truly important tasks rarely do.
Other causes of procrastination include:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it must be recognized, dealt with and controlled before you miss opportunities or your career is derailed.
Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating
If you're honest with yourself, you probably know when you're procrastinating.
But to be sure, you first need to make sure you know your priorities. Putting off an unimportant task isn't procrastination, it's probably good prioritization. Use the Action Priority Matrix to identify your priorities, and then work from a Prioritized To Do List on a daily basis.
Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:
Step 2: Work out WHY You're Procrastinating
Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task. But it's important to understand what the reasons for procrastination are for each situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.
Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:
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Step 3: Get over it! If you are putting something off because you just don't want to do it, and you really can't delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. The following approaches can be helpful here:
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If you're putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:
Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan.
Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren't the logical first actions. You'll feel that you're achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.
To have a good chance of conquering procrastination, you need to spot straight away that you're doing it. Then, you need to identify why you're procrastinating and taken appropriate steps to overcome the block.
Part of the solution is to develop good time management, organizational and personal effectiveness habits, such as those described in “Make Time for Success!” This helps you establish the right priorities, and manage your time in such a way that you make the most of the opportunities open to you.
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Activity
Logs
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Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste! Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time spent on non-core tasks.
How to Use the Tool
Keeping an Activity Log for several days helps you to understand how you spend your time, and when you perform at your best. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them on this template. Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day. You may decide to integrate your activity log with a stress diary.
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Learning from Your Log Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your daily activity log. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!
You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these variables.
Your analysis should help you to free up extra time in your day by applying one of the following actions to most activities:
Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.
By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-yield jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times. |
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So, you know that you need to produce a newsletter, organize a team-building session, put together a bid for a new piece of work, or organize moving Jenny's team up to the second floor. Exactly what do you need to do to achieve this?
None of these are major projects. In fact, you can probably think of all the steps in your head right now. But how do you ensure that you really have covered everything? Would anyone else know where you'd got to with the work if you were unexpectedly off sick for a few days? And are you quite clear about when you need to start if everything is to be done and dusted by the deadline?
An Action Plan is a simple list of all of the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve an objective. It differs from a To Do List in that it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. |
How to Use the Tool:
Wherever you want to achieve something significant, draw up an Action Plan. This helps you think about what you need to do to achieve that thing, so that you can get help where you need it and monitor your progress.
To draw up an Action Plan, simply list the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve your goal, in the order that you need to complete them. This is very simple, but is still very useful!
Keep the Action Plan by you as you carry out the work and update it as you go along with any additional activities that come up.
If you think you'll be trying to achieve a similar goal again, revise your Action Plan after the work is complete, by changing anything that could have gone better. Perhaps you could have avoided a last-minute panic if you'd alerted a supplier in advance about when and approximately what size of order you would be placing. Or maybe colleagues would have been able to follow up on the impact of your newsletter on clients if you have communicated with them about when it would be hitting clients' desks. (If you're doing the job often, it can be incredibly powerful to turn your Action Plan into an Aide Memoire.)
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Tip: Action Plans are great for small projects, where deadlines are not particularly important or strenuous, and where you don't need to co-ordinate other people.
As your projects grow, however, you'll need to develop project management skills. This is particularly the case if you need to schedule other people's time, or complete projects to tight deadlines. Visit the Mind Tools Project Planning section to learn these skills, and in particular, see our article on Gantt Charts. |
Key points:
An Action Plan is a list of things that you need to do to achieve a goal. To use it, simply carry out each task in the list!
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prioritized
to To-Do Lists
Your
first step in beating work overload
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How to Use the Tool: Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you face a constant barrage of looming deadlines? And do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?
All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper "To-Do List". To-Do Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom. And starting to keep a To-Do List effectively is often the first personal productivity/time management breakthrough that people make as they start to make a success of their careers. |
By keeping a To-Do List, you make sure that you capture all of the tasks you have to complete in one place. This is essential if you're not going to forget things. And by prioritizing work, you plan the order in which you'll do things, so you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can quietly forget about until much, much later. This is essential if you're going to beat work overload. Without To-Do Lists, you'll seem dizzy, unfocused and unreliable to the people around you. With To-Do Lists, you'll be much better organized and much more reliable. This is very important!
Whilst To-Do Lists are very simple, they are also extremely powerful, both as a method of organizing yourself and as a way of reducing stress. Often problems may seem overwhelming or you may have a seemingly huge number of demands on your time. This may leave you feeling out of control, and overburdened with work.
The solution is often simple: Firstly, download our free To Do list template.
Start by writing down the tasks that face you, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything that you have to do, and until tasks are will take no more than 1 - 2 hours to complete.
Once you have done this, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important) to F (unimportant). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.
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You will then have a precise plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face. You will be able to tackle these in order of importance. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones. Using Your To-Do ListsDifferent people use To-Do Lists in different ways in different situations: if you are in a sales-type role, a good way of motivating yourself is to keep your list relatively short and aim to complete it every day.
In an operational role, or if tasks are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to keep one list and 'chip away' at it.
It may be that you carry unimportant jobs from one To-Do List to the next. You may not be able to complete some very low priority jobs for several months. Only worry about this if you need to - if you are running up against a deadline for them, raise their priority. |
If you have not used To-Do Lists before, try them now: They are one of the keys to being really productive and efficient.
Prioritized To-Do Lists are fundamentally important to efficient work. If you use To-Do Lists, you will ensure that:
To draw up a Prioritized To-Do List, download our template and use it to list all the tasks you must carry out. Mark the importance of the task next to it, with a priority from A (very important) to F (unimportant). Redraft the list into this order of importance.
Now carry out the jobs at the top of the list first. These are the most important, most beneficial tasks to complete.
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Effective
Scheduling
Plan your time. Make time for yourself.
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So far in this section of Mind Tools, we have looked at your priorities and your goals - these define what you aspire to do with your time. Scheduling is where these aspirations meet reality.
Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:
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A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your commitments, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you. It is therefore your most important weapon for beating work overload.
How to Use the Tool:
Scheduling is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week or month. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:
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By the time you reach step 5, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first four steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way.
Remember that one of the most important ways people learn to achieve success is by maximizing the 'leverage' they can achieve with their time. They increase the amount of work they can manage by delegating work to other people, spending money outsourcing key tasks, or using technology to automate as much of their work as possible. This frees them up to achieve their goals.
Also, use this as an opportunity to review your To Do List and Personal Goals. Have you set goals that just aren't achievable with the time you have available? Are you taking on too many additional duties? Or are you treating things as being more important than they really are? |
If your discretionary time is still limited, then you may need to renegotiate your workload. With a well-thought through schedule as evidence, you may find this surprisingly easy.
Key points:
Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can both reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness. This makes it one of the most important time management skills you can use.
Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.
Scheduling is then a five-step process:
If you have little or no discretionary time left by the time you reach step five, then revisit the assumptions you have made in steps one to four.
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Personal Goal Setting
Find direction. Live your life your way.
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Achieving More With FocusGoal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you decide what you want to do with your life and what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
This section explains a simple technique for setting personal goals. It
starts with your lifetime goals, and then works through a series of lower
level plans culminating in a daily to-do list. By setting up this
structure of plans you can break even the biggest life goal down into a
number of small tasks that you need to do each day to reach the lifetime
goals.
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Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime GoalsOnce you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life. |
An easy way of doing this is to use the goal-setting software like GoalPro 6 on a daily basis - we review GoalPro on the left-hand sidebar, alternatively you can download GoalPro from Success Studios web site. GoalPro uses a similar set of categories to ones we recommend - either use theirs, or adapt the software to use ours.
This is something we focus on in detail in our "Design Your Life" program, which not only helps you decide your goals, it then helps you set the vivid, compelling goals you need if you're to make the most of your goal setting.
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
Failure to meet goals does not matter as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal-setting program.
Remember too that your goals will change as you mature. Adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go. Goal setting is your servant, not your master. It should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.
Example:
The best example of goal setting that you can have is to try setting your own goals. Set aside two hours to think through your lifetime goals in each of the categories. Then work back through the 25-year plan, 5-year plan, 1-year plan, 6-month plan, a 1-month plan. Finally draw up a To Do List of jobs to do tomorrow to move towards your goals.
Tomorrow, do those jobs, and start to use goal-setting routinely!
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
When you achieve goals, allow yourself to enjoy this achievement of goals and reward yourself appropriately. Draw lessons where appropriate, and feed these back into future performance.
Time Management Products Reviewed
Setting & Achieving Goals Now!
(by Think Right Now!)
The audio program, which is just over an hour long, is divided into four programs: two short programs on relaxation and two longer programs on setting and achieving goals. Listeners may find it useful to break the program into two parts, listening to the first relaxation section and first program on setting and achieving goals (Tracks 1 and 2) in one sitting and saving the next two programs (Tracks 3 and 4, which are also on relaxation and goal setting and achieving) for a separate sitting.
This audio program places appropriate emphasis on dissolving barriers that inhibit goal reaching, establishing and sticking to your goals, taking responsibility for your failures and successes, and to obtaining the skills you need to obtain your goals, all while effectively managing your time. The audio program boasts short, helpful tips and tidbits of advice that serve to “re-program” negative thinking, while helping listeners to focus on positive end results.
Just as important, the audio program is balanced with information on letting go of failures and fears, but not before taking time to learn and grow from such experiences and feelings. It boasts easy-to-follow, self-improvement advice that will undoubtedly enhance both your personal and professional life, enabling you to set and reach new, realistic goals.
I found the audio program to be helpful, referring to it several times during the workday and enjoying it during commutes to and from work. I also find it interesting that the Think Right Now! products were designed by a once unemployed and financially distraught young man who used these very thoughts and ideas to propel him to success.
For more information about Mike Brescia and the Think Right Now! Products and services, go to http://www.mindtools.com/rs/ThinkRightNow.
A Nightingale Conant product (www.nightingale.com)
Reviewed by Kellie Fowler
After listening to Nightingale Conant’s “The Psychology of Winning,” by Dennis Waitley, it’s easy to see why the theories contained in this audio program are considered among the best. Waitley’s theories on human potential and his understanding of motivation, leadership and discipline shine through in every one of the six cassette tapes contained in the comprehensive program.
As seems to be consistent among the Nightingale Conant products, this program
lives up to its reputation for creating a winning attitude and truly winning
results! As one of the most acclaimed and popular audio programs, my
expectations were high for “The Psychology of Winning.” Even so, my
expectations were exceeded with top-notch information and steps that I have
easily implemented into my life in my quest to be a true winner.
In fact, in “The Psychology of Winning,” Waitley details the “Ten Steps to
Winning,” which are already used by Olympic athletes and top executives alike.
By applying positive self-expectancy, as Waitley recommends, it is easy to boost
your own “winning average,” almost instantly. Much more than it’s
hard-to-believe hype, “The Psychology of Winning” is real meat and potatoes,
leaving the listener feeling full, yet wanting more.
The audio program is divided into two sets, Attitude Qualities and Action
Qualities, each containing three two-sided audiotapes. In the first part of the
program, Attitude Qualities, Waitley successfully defines and explains the
importance of positive self-expectancy (my personal favorite), positive
self-image, positive self-control, positive self-esteem and positive
self-awareness. Clearly surpassing other similar programs, each of these tapes
gives no-nonsense attitude advice, further supported by information on making
the attitude changes necessary to becoming a winner.
In the second part of the program, Action Qualities, Waitley discusses positive
self-motivation, positive self-direction, positive self-discipline, positive
self-dimension, and positive self-projection, leaving no rock unturned.
As with all Nightingale Conant programs I have reviewed, “The Psychology of
Winning” is as successful as the users ability to adopt the techniques and
changes. Honestly, I find this not to be a difficult task, focusing on long-term
commitment to the program and making changes each and every day, all with the
goal of being a winner.
Repeated listening is essential to the program’s success, but because the
information is easy-to-understand and apply, I find listening to the tapes a
rather easy task, with the results making the time I invest more than
worthwhile. I look forward to listening to the tapes and have made scheduling
time to do so a priority. For it doesn’t take long to review a single tape and
since each tape is clearly labeled with the information it covers, I simply
choose a tape I feel I will benefit most from and put it in.
In short, this program is a MUST for anyone looking to improve their attitude
and their performance – working to become a winner in every way!
Note from James: When I first listened to the Psychology of Winning 10 years
ago, it made a major difference to my life. Whilst in some areas ideas have
moved on since PoW was recorded, this does not in any way diminish the
importance of its message.
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