Practical Time Management Tips

  
The advantages of time management go much further then just being more effective at getting your job done. With the right time management you can begin to be proactive and work to achieve their goals rather than be reactive. People who follow through on the goals they set for themselves is very likely to succeed in their lives.

Here are practical, easy to implement techniques that will help. Once the initial analysis phase was completed, the techniques described here are simple ones that can be applied on a daily, weekly and monthly, as a matter of routine.

Week of preparation: the first step is the most time consuming: analyze your current situation. To determine under what conditions the management of time is right now, you need to complete at least a week, maybe two, of preparation. You should also take note of all the activities falling on a monthly basis, such as team meetings, or budget performance reviews.

Logging: for one week at least, on a daily basis, you must keep a detailed log, diary, or a registry, of what activities you are involved in, and how long you spend on each of these. Be as detailed as possible, so you can analyze your activity in depths. Experts on time management may want to divide your day into 15-minute periods at least, and very busy periods for periods of time even smaller than 5 or 10 minutes. For example, for the first 30 minutes after starting to work in the morning, don't just write -9.00 8.30 work initiated, open emails, chatted with co-workers, you must operate a breakdown between at least three periods of x 10 minutes. If you have chosen an unusual week, e.g. When you are away from the usual routine, a training course, complete the registration for the missing days, next week. Be disciplined on this. Use a notebook, or a diary, or prepare a document or pc based time sheet for each day. Take this with you everywhere, or at the very least, complete each time you return to the workspace. If it will help you, get support from your colleagues, and ask them to remember that you should record your tasks with diligence.

Analyzing your business: at the end of this period you will need to carefully analyze these records. The primary goal is to identify the activities and negative events. In this context include activities that should not be involved in, or may delegate, tasks that you are spending too long on, activities that are unproductive and destabilizing events or unproductive. Some of the activities that are identified here will be unique to your situation, but some are common to most professionals, such as being inappropriately interrupted by colleagues, from phone calls to others, participation in meetings that are not relevant to you, from surf the internet, focusing on low-priority activities, instead of more important but more difficult, those. However, it is also important to identify the activities and positive events, in order to consider how case is the time that you are assigning to these. Examples might be how much time you are spending to support, or coaching, the team members, or how long you are giving to the construction and maintenance of relationships with others, or how much time you are spending to address aspects of quality management. With a clear picture of how you are spending your time, you can then move to the next step.

Talking with stakeholders: these are colleagues, teams, managers, suppliers, perhaps maybe customers, who have a legitimate interest in how you perform on the job and who will be affected by the changes that will be made. You may also need to organize the discussion with key people, before carrying out the next steps that follow.

Responsibilities: list separately from logging activity, you need to find the time to review your job description, alone if it is ongoing and until today, with the line manager, if he needs a formal review. The purpose of this is to clarify what your role is and what are your responsibilities. It is often the case that, due to poor time management and the problems that this creates, the roles and responsibilities are allowed to drift, to the point where the individual is not the conduct of the activities that are aimed at them. A clear picture of what the roles and responsibilities is an essential part of building a solid foundation on which to plan your new approach to time management.

List your objectives: this is another essential element of building that Foundation as a professional, a manager or specialist, you will need enterprise level and operating level objectives, which to your business to help and contribute to. In parallel, there will be individual work performance and personal development goals that you should be working towards. Identify and review these will clarify them and take them into account when planning changes that will be made.

Eliminate or reduce unnecessary tasks with the information you have gathered and considered, it is time to take some measures. In simple terms, this means identifying the activities, events and time periods, that doesn't help you fulfill your role and your responsibilities, and there helps to contribute to the achievement of business objectives and operational nor your personal goals. In your action plans, and your daily, weekly, monthly, lists (see below), you can ensure that you do not continue to waste time and effort on one of these negative, nonproductive activities.

Prioritise activities: you may need to talk to your team, or your line manager, possibly with internal or external suppliers and customers, to clarify and confirm what your priorities should be. This might be an opportunity to discuss how you might delegate some tasks to others, perhaps simply because it shouldn't be doing them first, perhaps as development activities to help a team member learn new skills. The goal is to have a clear picture of what are at high, medium and low priority activities and events. You can then assign an appropriate time of day, week or month, to work on these, and a period of time adequate guarantees that you will be able to successfully complete this.

Preparing Actions Lists: sometimes called on to do lists. It is a relatively simple task, where you look at the activities and events of the day, week and month, and lists the tasks that you intend to play, and when and how long you work on them. You will obviously need to continuously monitor these activities correspond with your role, responsibilities, and objectives.

Start each new day: in fact, this can mean intervene at the end of the day before, your last task of the day is to plan specific activities, possibly as simple actions or to-do list, with the times, perhaps as a priority list, you will complete the following day. Then, the start of work on the next day you will have an action plan that is waiting for you. As it proceeds to day, you should review your progress periodically, and make adjustments, if necessary. Then, at the end of the day, shall draw up the action plan, the list for the next day.

Build In Times pause: don't fall into the trap of trying to work continuously all day without stopping, working through all your breaks, and worse, don't take a lunch break. Overwhelming evidence shows that we need to pause, and that without them our performance degrades significantly longer than going without. You should take at least a brief pause in mid-morning, a minimum of 30 minutes at lunchtime, and a short break in the afternoon. The Organization should encourage to take these interruptions, as is required by health and safety at work legislation.

Every week, New start: try to take the same approach with the daily schedule. At the end of the last day of the work week, work out an action plan for the next week, or at least for the first day and for the rest of the week in outline. Start each new month: once again, take the same approach with the weekly schedule. During the last week of the calendar month of budget, preparing the action plan for the next month.

Strategic planning: in parallel with planning daily, weekly and monthly, you should also think about a background plane that focuses on medium-term and long-term goals. These can be targets of workplace efficiency, as the year-end financial results, but should also include more soft goals, but just as important as the development of individuals and groups (not to mention your personal development objectives). They may also include objectives such as improving working conditions, or relationships, for example between departments or with vendors. These longer-term plans should be consulted and examined the progress, at least once a month.

In short, without a structured approach to time management it is inevitable that you would encounter difficulty, losing important deadlines do not give enough attention to your career and personal development, do not fully with the needs of team members, allowing others to dictate how you spend your time at work. The result is that the work becomes a burden, and performance will deteriorate. Moreover, others will notice and performance will be judged negatively. Following the procedure simple, functional, here exposed, you take control of the time spent at work, and take control of the activities taking place. Once you have consistently applied these techniques for a month or two, they will become a habit, absorbed smoothly in your daily life. You will find that you have less conflict, less hassle, and will meet most deadlines and goals. There will be time management effectively.