Articlepedia: 10 Ways For Effective Time Management

Why Time Management is Important?

Different people have different types of time management. Bad time management is equal to stress. By some estimates, people waste about 2 hours per day.  Signs of time wasting include; messy desk and cluttered files, unable to find things at right place, missed appointments or unprepared for meetings, wasteful use of social media, tired and unable to concentrate. Being successful doesn’t make you manage your time well. Managing your time well makes you successful. Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Time must be explicitly managed, just like money. So in order to doing that we must handle people and projects that waste our time. However we must be aware of specific skills and tools to save our time. Now it is really up to us that how we effectively manage our day to gain extra 2 hours per day through the use of principles and strategies of effective time management.

10 Famous Principles for Effective Time Management

1. Set goals, organize and plan

Your success tomorrow starts with planning tonight. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Write down specific goals, clarify them and start working. Spend time in planning and organizing goals and achieving the objectives. Plan each day, each week, each year and every event. Move out smartly; start with toughest assignments or biggest goals first. For that consider the following;

a. Why am I doing this?

b. What will I accomplish at the end?

2.  Prioritize tasks, duties and responsibilities

Break things down into small steps. You can choose the Pickle Jar Theory, which describes to do the big and toughest things first. For your convenience you can fill your jar with smaller things that you enjoy.

3.  Use a to-do list

Start keeping your to-do list in four-quadrant form or ordered by priorities.

Important	Urgent and Important	Urgent but not Important
	Genuine crisis, emergencies,	Mail and reports, meetings
Not important	Not Urgent but Important	Not Urgent not Important
	Exercise, recreation, planning, relationship buildings	Junk mail, time waster people and activities, messaging

Learn to say “NO”, to the tasks mentioned in the category not urgent not important. Don’t make a do-it-tomorrow list, which is in fact our default response to all tasks.

4. Consider your biological prime time

Everyone has good and bad times. Find your creative/thinking time and dead time. Defend your creative time ruthlessly; spend it alone, maybe at home. Schedule your mundane stuff during your dead time.

5. Conquer procrastination

Procrastination is the thief of time. Doing things at the last minute is much more expensive than just before the last minute. We can avoid procrastination by developing a sense of urgency and keeping the importance or value of tasks in our mind. We must consider that deadlines are really important, and though we can establish them ourselves. Conquering procrastination simply means quit making excuses.

6. Delegation

No one is an island. Delegation is not dumping. Delegation groom successors, motivate employees, develop them and save time. You can accomplish a lot more with help. You should delegate people “until they complain”. Grant authority with responsibility and tell them the relative importance of tasks.

7. Office Work Management

Clutter is death; it leads to thrashing. So try to get rid out of clutter. You’re your desk clear: focus on one thing at a time. A good file system can also help you to manage your tasks and duties according to their priorities.

8. Get A PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)

We must recognize that most things fall under the tag of pass/fail. So getting things done is really important. In this regard you can get a day timer or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). It will help you to manage your activities and perform them on time. In your PDA write things down about when’s your next meeting? What’s your goal to have done by then?

9. Neglect interruptions

You must reduce the frequency and length of interruptions to effectively concentrate on a given task, e.g. e-mail noise on new mail is an interruption. So turn it off.

10. Reward yourself

You need to give yourself room to breathe, keep a clear head and stay focused on what you want to achieve. Take a break after every hour, there is no medal for working 12 hour a day without break, do this to recharge your batteries. Sharpen the saw, to re-energize and renewing yourself (exercise, water, reading, planning, service, empathy, meditation). Make time to be effective.

Good time management supports an active work life and makes you a better leader. Apply the rule of five, take five steps. Baby steps are fine, apply everyday and you will get there.

Hope you enjoyed reading!

Any Comment!