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You probably know that effective time management will help you get more done each day. It has important health benefits, too. By managing your time more wisely, you can min-imize stress and improve your quality of life.
But how do you get back on track when organizational skills don't come naturally? To that you spend your time and energy on those that are truly important to you.
Say no to nonessential tasks. Consider your goals and schedule before agreeing to take on additional work.
Delegate: Take a look at your to-do list and consider what you can pass on to someone else.
Take the time you need to do a quality job. Doing work right the first time may take more time upfront, but errors usually result in time spent making corrections, which takes more time overall.
Break large, time-consuming tasks into smaller tasks. Work on them a few minutes at a time until you get them all done.
Practice the 10-minute rule. Work on a dreaded task for 10 minutes each day. Once you get started, you may find you can finish it.
Evaluate how you're spending your time. Keep a diary of everything you do for three days to determine how you're spending your time. Look for time that can be used more wisely. For example, could you take a bus or train to work and use the commute to catch up on reading? If so, you could free up some time to exercise or spend with family or friends.
Limit distractions. Block out time on your calendar for big projects. During that time, close your door and turn off your phone, pager and e-mail.
Get plenty of sleep, have a healthy diet and exercise regularly. A healthy lifestyle can im-prove your focus and concentration, which will help improve your efficiency so that you can complete your work in less time.
Take a time management course. If your employer offers continuing education, take a time management class. If your workplace doesn't have one, find out if a local community college, university or community education program does.
Take a break when needed. Too much stress can derail your attempts at getting orga-nized. When you need a break, take one. Take a walk. Do some quick stretches at your work-station. Take a day of vacation to rest and re-energize”. End of quote from Mayo Clinic.
One way to accomplish more is to use what I call the A + B + C rule. This is a very simple rule. Do one thing at a time. If you have three projects to complete it will take three times as long to complete them if you work on one and switch over to another. There is no logic as to why things work this way, they just do. If you start project A work on it until it is finished, your day is done, or you run out of materials or information that you must wait for others to supply. There is one other factor that you must consider, If you get burned out and hit a brick wall with the project. Take some time away from that particular project. This does not necessarily mean to start on B, however, that can be an option but probably not the best option for the same is true for C.
Let us take a moment and look at where we are in all of this. You have a lot of infor-mation about planning and developing plan and goals. Your next question could be this. I don’t have all of those things done and probably won’t accomplish them for some time, so what do I do in the mean time. Believe it or not I have an answer for you. This is a problem that all of us face every week in our lives. Here the key word is week.
Let’s take a moment and imagine a large glass jar sitting in front of us. This jar represents the time that we have in a week. The question is, how do we use the space in the jar to ac-complish the most in that week. Let’s represent our major tasks for the week as large rocks that will just barely fit through the mouth of the jar. First we put in those major tasks. Is our jar full, well not exactly, as there is still space around the rocks. Those rocks represent the things that must be done in the next week. If there is still some time left in the week as rep-resented by the empty space in the jar what do we do with it? We have developed a weekly plan with our major rocks noted. What can rocks be broken down to, yup you guessed it—pebbles and sand. The pebbles and sand are the less important items. One mistake you must not make. The size of the project does not necessarily determine its priority.
A high priority item might be to put gas in your car. This probably won’t take a lot of time, just a lot of cash. The consequence of not doing this task is a long walk. These big rocks are based upon importance not amount of time, the cost or the size of the task. This is where you use the prioritization grid. Stay in quadrants I and II.
You have prioritized your tasks for a week now you can manage your time on a daily ba-sis.
The illustration that you see is based upon what Dr. Covey teaches in the 7 Habits book. You can develop your own weekly template with a little effort. I stole the one I use out of a workbook from Dr. Covey.
After you have developed your long and short term time management plan, the plan must be applied in a doable manner. This usage plan must take into account the human as-pect of focus. You have a weekly plan developed. Take this plan and estimate the amount of time each task will take. Break those tasks down into about 30 minute segments for each day if you can. Learning to do this takes practice and is never an exact science. (I still fail misera-bly at this task).
The average human attention span is 30 minutes or less.
Adequate rest periods are essential for your best work.
Length of work periods need to match the way that the human mind works.
Multi-tasking is a myth for effective and efficient work.
If these things are true, then how can I apply these principles to my time management? These ideas can be easily applied. I use a timer to time my actions. The timer that I use is on my computer it is called the Action Enforcer. This is not a free program. It can be found at this link. http://nanacast.com/vp/96244/234316/
My method of work focus time management is an off shoot of the Pomodoro Technique. The book that describes this technique is available from Amazon.com. Here is how I use the technique. The Pomodoro Technique follows an old rule, If you want to eat an elephant take many small bites. To apply this technique your work project must be broken down in to ele-ments or steps that you believe will take two hours or less. If they will take more than this then find the smaller steps necessary to complete the element you are working on. The working time is broken down into 25 minute segments with a 5 minute break every 25 minutes. At the end of 4 of these work segments you take a 30 minute break. This creates six of these rounds in an eight hour day. For reasons that I don’t understand after a day using this method compared to a conventional approach to work I am less tired and usually have gotten more accomplished.
I have a small auto repair business on the side. This technique even works for these types of projects. Sometimes I have to stretch the 25 minutes a little if I am in the middle of something that cannot be stopped. For the most part the method works rather well in nearly all situations.
SUMMARY
In summary time management is all about bossing yourself. To repeat myself the greatest lesson anyone ever taught me came from my father. When I was about 12 years old I forgot to do some chore at home. My Father said to me, “You will never amount to a damn until you learn to boss yourself.” That is time management in a nutshell, learn to boss yourself. This is the central key to all of the other natural laws. Time Management is a mindset. If this isn’t clear, think about it.
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