Posts Tagged ‘time’

Team Efforts in Time Management

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Family and co-workers are a part of the team of people that you should include in your time management plan. When you promote confidence and motivation to your team, you are taking the first step in making your plans work. Time Management is essential in any success strategy planned. If you are not into cramming, rushing, or failing it is wise to get ahead by setting a time management plan that includes each person that works around you.

If you have family time, management is important since you do not want to neglect the people you love the most. This is part of your team, and when they are neglected, you are affected. When you are planning a time management schedule, it is wise to include all details of your life into the plans. For example if you are making a list of tasks, then you will include sleep, waking hours, meals, job, family, entertainment, social, chores, travel, and so on.

Try to avoid planning a task list that works against your schedule. If you set a time in the day to eat a meal, then make sure that is the time you will dine. There comes time in our lives where we may have to modify our schedule but try to avoid this if, at all possible. If you need to check off your list this is great for keeping up with a schedule. Checking off your list only assures you that your time management is working.

Another helpful tip is to determine what tasks take longer than other tasks. For example, if you work and are expected to handle a large project, be sure to take care of the bigger tasks and work down to the smaller tasks. By handling, the bigger tasks first will save you time, since the smaller tasks will be easiest and you can then find more time for your team members. If you work as a team at your employment, then try to include your team in the time management plan as much as possible. When teams work together, there is always more time for other details that are needed to be fulfilled.

You want to include time in for the family also. If you work long hours, you might want to cut back on the hours by getting your work done. Some of us tend to lax when we are working. Do not waste time chitchatting if you have work that needs to be fulfilled. Get the work done first. Teamwork is where it is at, since no one person can stand-alone. However to make team effort work, collaboration is essential.

Teamwork is essential when working out a time management plan. The key to success is taking necessary precautions to prevent communication leakages within a business. Teamwork that instills motivation and confidence is the primary focus of getting the plans in action. When you have confidence, and motivation, you have the primary keys to getting on the road to managing your time. Communication is an important ingredient that makes time management fall into place.

© 2005 www.your-offical-guide.com; All Rights Reserved

Steve Hall is the owner of http://www.your-official-guide.com, your one-stop location for getting the information you are looking for on a wide ranging and ever-growing list of subjects.

Need to get more time? Try the Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Learn to Manage Your Time Effectively ==>Click Here

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Management, Balance & Time – 10 Tips for Managing Overwhelm in your Business

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

How many of us have been in a position where we have more to do than can realistically fit into one day, or week. So we spend all of our time feeling rushed, being rushed, and wondering how on earth we are going to manage. If you are having that feeling of overwhelm in your business, it’s time to take stock of what’s going on.

How well you manage yourself and the time you have, is crucial to your success. Wasted time equals lost opportunities. Lost opportunities equal lost business and profits.

Time can’t be “saved” – it’s an impossibility. You can’t find more of it – it’s a fixed commodity. You can only manage your activities as time passes. So how are you spending the 60 seconds in each minute – the 60 minutes in each hour – the 1,440 minutes in each day?

What you need is to achieve is working on your top priorities in the most effective way. Here are 10 great strategies for doing just that.

Lesson 1: Prioritize

Aside from just listing what needs to be done, rank them from most important to least important. And then complete them in that order. Too often we start with the easy stuff or the quick stuff, regardless of how important it is. Look at the list of things that need to be done. Hi-light the activities that you could put on hold if you had to. How much time could you free up if you put some of those activities on hold?

Be realistic about the number of priorities you have. Most of the activities we are involved in are things we want to do. The problem with overwhelm is that there are many more things we want to do, than we physically have time for. So create some space by telling yourself that you are just putting some activities on hold for now. You are not giving them up forever, but you are giving yourself permission to put some activities on hold – so you can focus on the most important priorities. This may force you to make some tough choices – but it’s a pretty empowering thing to do.|

Lesson 2: Be ruthless with e-mail

What a productivity killer email can be if misused. Use a private email address for clients and customers. Get everything else sent to a generic or alternate email address. That way you can deal with your client issues first, and the rest when you have time.

Only respond to your emails at set times during the day. I personally do emails first thing in the morning, and between 2 and 3pm each day. There’s no need to respond the instant that you receive an email. This approach simply means you get interrupted all the time, and your productivity remains low.

Lesson 3: Restrict your use of the telephone

Try to devote a certain time of the day to both return and originate phone calls. Carrying a mobile telephone makes us feel as though we’ve got to be “connected” at all times – but this is just plain crazy. And just because someone calls us doesn’t mean we have to answer immediately. Some people I now work extremely effectively by restricting calls to two periods during the day – one period in the morning to make all their calls, and another in the afternoon to return calls and to followup. At all other times, voicemail takes any messages. This may not work for your business, but the idea of not answering the telephone unless it is at a good time for you can really help you with the continuity of your work

Lesson 4: If you don’t have time for something, just say so

There is no need to listen politely if you’ve already decided the conversation is not of interest. Simply say – “I am sorry to interrupt you, but I don’t have time for this right now.” Yes it’s direct, but then you are not sitting there feeling frustrated about the time you are wasting.

Lesson 5: Limit your availability

This is one of the keys to beating overwork. Unexpected and unplanned interruptions and distractions can “steal” your day. An “open door” policy is fine, but not if it has a negative impact on productivity and profitability. Actually schedule time when you can’t be interrupted, and let everyone know about it. During that time you don’t answer emails, you don’t answer the phone and you don’t talk to others – you just do whatever it is you’ve got to do – no interruptions.

Lesson 6: Protect your productive time

Each of us knows if we are a morning person or a night owl. We know if our peak productivity times are at 7 am or at 11pm. So make sure you are free and uninterrupted at those times. Try and make this time just for you and devote the activities that need your brain the most at the times you are most productive.

Lesson 7: Plan your day the night before

I know – you’ve heard it before. But spending 5 minutes at the end of the day preparing for the next day helps to orient you in advance and mentally sets you up. So when you get up in the morning, you’re ready to go!

Do whatever works for you – make lists of activities, check your calendar, enter tasks into your electronic task list, schedule a couple of uninterrupted hours in your diary, tidy away your papers and get tomorrow’s ones ready to go. Do whatever you need to to feel comfortable about the next day’s work.

Lesson 8: Don’t get buried by paper

When possible, try to “touch” each piece of paper only once. File it, act on it or toss it! (Periodically, every quarter, purge your files. If you haven’t touched it in 3 months, you probably never will…so toss it!). As the saying goes: “Do it, ditch it, or delegate it!”

Lesson 9: Group your appointments

If you have several appointments or errands, try to group them all in the same day so that all of your external travel and time is scheduled for one or two days in the week. That leaves you 3 full days in the office without the need to go out for meetings.

Lesson 10: Confirm appointments

Never assume that your 1 o’clock is on! The realization that you’ve been “stood up” is both frustrating and irritating. A simple phone call or e-mail message, saves time, energy and anxiety.

Management expert Peter Drucker, once declared, “Time is the scarcest resource.” Time really isn’t scarce, it’s uniform and constant. However, your ability to manage it is crucial to your success. If you can’t get this part right, you may not need to not worry about cash management!

Megan Tough – published writer, coach, facilitator and speaker – works with people to create outstandingly satisfying and truly successful professional lives. Make more money – have more fun! To learn more and to sign up for more FREE tips and articles like these, visit http://www.megantough.com

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Where Did My Time Go, Why Can’t I Manage

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Have you ever wondered where you time went? Sure you havewe all have at one point in our lifetime. We all sit around looking back at a series of wasted time we invested and wonder where the time went. If we would have planned, organized, worked hard, and set goals, we would be looking back wondering how we can move beyond our already achieved goals.

But no, we did not have a plan, set our goals straight, stay organized, or worked our booties off to achieve the goals we planned. Don’t complain you did it!

Planning Ahead

Planning ahead is a step to managing time. When we plan ahead, we are setting goals that we can achieve over a course of time. Planning is the process of devising or projecting a realization of achievement. Therefore, when we are planning we should plan both short and long-term goals that we can meet. If we over dramatize our goals, we will be sitting on a couch looking back wondering where our time went.

If we start out with smaller goals and work to achieve these goals, our long-term goals will be an easy ride uphill. Unless you have some terminal disease, you always can reach a level of completeness, as long as you are planning a head, reaching for achievable goals, and making the effort to get to the top is the key to success. We all make mistakes, but the trick is to learn from those mistakes.

If your plan is in action and you find a problem area has developed, step back and take a good, long look at what caused the problem. If the problem occurred as a direct result of your planning scheme, then you know right of the bat that your plans need modification. Time management is the process of making plans work, by developing skills and using actions that make the process run smoothly.

Do not sit around looking back, since this too waste time if you are not doing anything about it. Take the step to developing a scheme that works smoothly with your schedule and situation. When you are planning before sure you calculate factors that could change your planning scheme. Changes such as weather disasters, lost data, changes in relationships, family, and so on are some of the factors you should calculate into your planning scheme for time management.

Don’t fool yourself into believing that nothing ever changes. The fact is everyday all things are changing as a direct force of reality. The key then is to move forward with caution, yet not worry about everything that is changing around you. If it is going to happen it will, but don’t let it be an accident or incident caused by your negligence in time managing planning.

Everyday, if possible, you should make list of the tasks you want to achieve and work through those tasks until they are completed. Anytime we complete a task, we are encouraging our self-esteems and promoting motivation.

© 2005 www.your-offical-guide.com; All Rights Reserved

Steve Hall is the owner of http://www.your-official-guide.com, your one-stop location for getting the information you are looking for on a wide ranging and ever-growing list of subjects.

Need to get more time? Try the Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Learn to Manage Your Time Effectively ==>Click Here

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Taming The Procrastination Demon

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Are you like many people who put off what you know you should do in your daily life? Is the basement, the closets, your office, the garage, the yard work all demanding your attention? We all delay doing some chores, but if you are finding yourself with more and more undone projects, maybe you are a victim of “procrastination”. This gets to be a really demoralizing situation. If you accept the challenges that life provides, then you are more likely to live many years longer than those who spend their lives stressing about “getting things done” and never making the necessary moves to accomplish what needs doing.

If you are not being challenged in your daily life by your work or your living situation, then maybe it is just fear holding you back and you need to accomplish much more. Fear grips you so that you are not able to accomplish what you desire and so you put it off, making excuses not to accomplish the project. Eventually this can become a habit throughout all your facets of living. This article will attempt to reinforce your zest for a challenge, to enable you to take chances, to overcome rejection and to step up to the plate when you know you have things that need attention.

Here are some steps to take immediately:

1. Be organized – I know that this is a hard goal to reach. But, start out small to accomplish the larger goal. Make a project chart for your larger jobs and put the smaller projects on your daily chart. Organize your day with a “TO DO LIST” and put the items down as rapidly as possible and do not worry about what order until the page is filled up. Then go back and rank what is most important and circle the item, make a star by that item, or otherwise note their importance. This way you can let the other items fall below what is most important and you can get to them later. What you do not get done one day can be added to the next day’s list. I know this can be a hard habit to get into, but once you do it for a week or two, you will find it will be hard to get to sleep without your list made for the next day.

2. Divide Major Projects – If a project seems overwhelming, then have a major project list and divide each segment into smaller tasks. For instance, let’s say you want to clean out the garage. (At my house, that is a MAJOR project!) On Monday, you can go through the stuff that looks like it should be going to Goodwill and box that up. Tuesday, you can do an easy chore of taking it to Goodwill. Wednesday, you can arrange all like items in separate piles. For instance, yard tools, lawn furniture, sports equipment, household tools like step ladders, tool cabinets, brooms and mops, things of that nature. On Thursday, you can map out how much room to allow for each category because maybe you have too much lawn furniture based on the space you have or maybe you want to devote more space to lawn furniture and less to sports equipment. Whatever your lifestyle is, this is the way to organize it within the garage area. On Saturday, move everything that you plan to keep out of the garage and clean the shelves and floors and windows. Then put it all back and arrange neatly based on the space sketch you have. On Sunday, enjoy having a place to park the car, finally. It is all a matter of doing little bits of associated action and keep moving to the final goal.

3. Just get started – When you find yourself making excuses and putting things off, then you know that you are letting yourself go down the road to being a prisoner of the demon called procrastination. Just do not let yourself provide excuses. Start with your easiest task and proceed from there. You will have a greater sense of accomplishment when you make small insteps to the greater project than if you do nothing at all.

4. Outside help – Enlist outside help if you find it necessary to finish a project. There is nothing wrong with having help, whether you have to hire outside help or whether you encourage your family members to help on some projects. The idea is to make a goal sheet and keep on the projects you know are needed around your place and pick a start date so everyone knows how to schedule their time to be involved. A family that cleans together keeps the place cleaner for the next time!

5. Reward Yourself – Finally, reward yourself and your crew when you finish a project. Getting a job done has taken a lot of effort, and you need to be good to yourself for fighting the procrastination demon. There is a wonderful feeling which comes over us when we know we have done a good job and can see the fruits of our labor. That is how the world works. As it has been said, this is a kill and eat world. You have to know how to make yourself set goals, work through the human desire to put things off, and finally to feel the sense of accomplishment and reward with completion of a project.

Ok, now, get out those pens and papers and take a mental trip across your home, your business life, and your personal or religious life. What needs to change? How soon? Will you take my advice and banish the procrastination demon and finally feel the reward for accomplishment that you may have been lacking recently? And make no mistake, the procrastination demon can come on you at any time, in varying degrees, and you must take a stand and banish the demon with whatever steps you feel necessary. Do not put off having the things you want in life because you procrastinate. Give yourself the satisfaction of accomplishing the things you need and doing them within your goal period.

© 2005 www.your-offical-guide.com; All Rights Reserved

Steve Hall is the owner of http://www.your-official-guide.com, your one-stop location for getting the information you are looking for on a wide ranging and ever-growing list of subjects.

Need to get more time? Try the Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Learn to Manage Your Time Effectively ==>Click Here

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Get More Time by Managing Your Energy

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

In the book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz offer a paradigm for time management which focuses on leveraging energy rather than time. Loehr says, “The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time we have.”1 Based on the authors’ concept of harnessing your energy to be in FULL ENGAGEMENT,2 here are some key strategies to help you to empty your plate and accomplish more:

1) Manage your energy, not your time.
Start paying attention to your body. If you experience afternoon fatigue, consider the source.: Is it your diet? Are you getting only a little sleep? “Pushing through” tasks when your energy is low causes ineffectiveness. When you’re sharp and focused, you can complete the job more quickly.

* When do you have the most energy? Tackle hardest projects at that time.

* When do you have the least? Take breaks. Schedule power naps, workout, or other activities that require less focus.

* Consider what is zapping your energy. Are you doing things that are not in line with your values? Are you procrastinating? Identify the times that you have energy and times that you don’t. What are you doing differently?

2) Downtime is key for your success.
While it would be great to run at 110% all the time, our bodies require food, rest and relaxation. Many successful people recommend one day a week that you do NO WORK, giving you more energy for the other six days of the week. Think of your body as a battery and your day off as the charger. Constantly unplugging it and using it will drain it, and you’ll never get fully charged if you keep unplugging the battery and using it. It takes three times as long to charge a dead battery than it does to keep it charged (and who wants to run out of juice mid-task), so don’t wait until you are dead; charge yourself weekly with downtime.

3) Rituals help to maintain focus.
When we are overwhelmed or overloaded, we operate less efficiently and waste time. The authors of The Power of Full Engagement recommend RITUALS for optimizing energy and time. Rituals set up a recurring time and pattern for needed tasks and behaviors. Coaches commonly suggest establishing 10 daily habits, or rituals, that support what you have to do anyway. However, by linking them together in a set time and pattern, you go on autopilot and accomplish them quickly and easily. Habits or rituals are daily tasks that take a short amount of time and add to your productivity, e.g., making to-do lists, confirming appointments, bill paying, clearing your desk, filing, returning phone calls, checking e-mail, drinking water, eating fruit, etc.

4) Purpose fuels performance.
Know why you are doing what you are doing. We get caught up in doing tasks because we always have done them, think we need to do them or just should do them. “Shoulds” are a performance killer. They never quite reach priority status on our to-do list. Why is the task important? Why do you care that it gets done? Things that we approach in a lackadaisical manner take longer to accomplish; stand to be interrupted; are likely to be put off or left undone; or are completed with loose ends. When you work with purpose, you complete things quickly, stay focused and generate momentum. This will allow you to finish the current objective in less time and go on to accomplish even more.

5) Work in sprints (small bursts of focused energy).
Life is full of interruptions and urgent or unplanned tasks. How do you keep yourself from falling victim to a reactionary cycle of running from one urgent thing to the next, praying for a minute to last longer? Schedule sprint times where you are 100% focused on one thing. I recommend sprints be 30 or 50 minute time blocks. Close the doors, shut off the phone, have a full drink, and clear all distractions for your sprint time. Know exactly what you want to accomplish, and work only on that. You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done, creating momentum and focus, which lends itself to building energy naturally. You will often get more done in this period than you can in an entire day of random interruptions and urgent demands. This is a great time to work on important tasks such as writing, billing, customer service, or things that if they don’t get done will not kill you now, but will need serious time and attention if neglected.

What is important that you need to do? What will you plan to begin doing right now that will allow you to harness your energy and gain more time? Pick one thing you will do today and enjoy the renewed energy and time you gain!

Christy Geiger is a strategic planning coach and the owner of Synergy Strategies, a business and life-coaching company that works with IBOs and professionals to implement their thousands of great ideas in ways that will maximize time, energy and effort! Through solid vision, goal and strategy planning, clients are able to maximize their personal effectiveness and accomplish their mission! Visit http://www.synergystrategies.com

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