Stop your wasting time right now!
Well not really, you have to know where you are and where you
want to be in order to improve anything. So deciding that your
time management skills are poor, and learning how to get better
and where you want to be is time well spent. How ever in saying
that if you've been searching for time management information
for days now, and are still looking for a perfect solution
there's a chance you're procrastinating. Just one trait of
someone with poor time management.
So what can you do to start improving your time management right
away?
Make lists and prioritize
Often it's not that people aren't effective with their time
rather they just don't spend the time they have doing the right
things. We're all guilty of this at one time or another, but
some of us are habitual with it. The easiest way to determine if
you do this is to make a list each morning, or the night before
of the things you need/want to accomplish the following or that
day. Once you have your list prioritize the items from greatest
to least importance. Now spend a day and perform the tasks in
the order you prioritized them. This does two things.
a.) It shows you what you need to accomplish in a day so you now
have some urgency because you know there are other tasks to get
done not just the one your currently working on.
b.) It ensures that the most important items are being taken
care of first.
There are times when we can't finish every item on our list but
at least we took care of the most important issues first.
Learn to say no
You can't do everything for everyone. Following our list
exercise above it's obvious that if you have a list of 20 things
and only time for 10 of them in a day then it's hard to accept
additional activities from others. Of course there are trade
offs that a more important task could come along and you
exchange it for another task you were going to do that day. This
gets into another discussion on life priorities such as friends,
family, career, remember balance is also important. But you
can't do everything so if the boss wants you to work late that
night, but your supposed to see your son's hockey game you have
to be able to say no somewhere.
Don't book every moment of your day
Now while we've preached lists, daily organization, and learning
to say no you do need to leave some room for flexibility.
Booking up every moment of your day so that you're on a
minute-by-minute schedule can be a big problem if a mini crisis
occurs in the day that wasn't accounted for.
Use other tools
Using day planners, or PDA's to keep track of appointments and
to do lists will save time and promote organization on all
levels. Also keeping good contact information whether it be in a
contact database on your computer or in an address book will
save time when you need to contact people.