Hardly a week goes by without someone asking or telling me about Time Management issues. Sometimes it is their personal time management issues and other times it has to do with their respective team members. Yet, most people feel Time Management is all about some hard skills or techniques – we are supposed to use everyday.
Thus, the continuous call for Time Management workshops or how to manage our time better.
Hey, the truth is Time Management is All About Choices. Yes, the choices you make everyday and basically every minute of your day determines your use of the precious time available to you. Now, it is truth in the business world others do take control of your calendar quite often – mostly for meetings rather than actual results oriented actions.
You can take back control of your life – time management – by reviewing your answers to seven simple and straight forward questions. The key is to REVIEW Your Answers and Responses to the questions for insights into how to become more effective and productive – every day.
Do you know the answer to the question? If not you, then who? We all have a tendency to think that our crazy schedules are out of our control. But are they, really? Each of us has the same 24 hours in a day. Right? And not one person gets more than 24 hours, right?
We must all exercise the discipline to work on those things that have the most importance. Sometimes you have the discipline…but not the determination…when another person drops something onto your already full plate. You may also have to learn to say “ NO “.
Do you know what your priorities are? Look at your appointment book, aka I-Pod, Blackberry, Day-Timer. The constant scribbles in the lines are your priorities. Most of the time the slots between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. are going to be work-related appointments.
There are three main parts to the procrastination puzzle.
Activation Event: This refers to the task you are putting off.
Belief System: These are your hidden feelings about the task or for whom you are performing (or avoiding) the task
Consequence: This is what happens when we postpone or ditch the task
Procrastination is counterproductive behavior. We discussed possible causes in a previous post, i.e. fear of success, low sense of self-worth, self-defeating behavior, depression, ADHD, etc. Now let’s look at what this chronic procrastination might costs us.
Are you constantly working on items today that should have or could have been accomplished yesterday, last week, last month?
Psychologists categorize procrastination as a counterproductive behavioral condition that many times has roots in one or more of the following disorders:
Do we really think we can multi-task? Studies are now showing that it is not as effective as we once thought. Yes, there are things we can accomplish by multi-tasking, but they must be very mundane things. You might listen to a training recording while opening and sorting junk mail. But if either task requires your undivided attention to complete, no multi-tasking allowed.
Time freedom comes from good time management skills. And good time management skills come from good planning. This week we have looked at various issues surrounding time management. Today we will focus on ways to create some control of your precious time.
As we talked about earlier this week, we all have the same amount of time each day and each week. How we use this time most often determines our success and satisfaction in life.
Time wasters can be both frustrating and distracting. In fact, studies have shown that if your concentration is removed from a task it can take fifteen to thirty minutes to get back on track. And even more time is lost if the interruption was dramatic! Yikes!
One of the most important time management tasks you can undertake is to identify your time wasters. These time wasters can be people, tasks, habits, things, your own personality quirks, etc. that get in the way of being more effective with your time.
Time management is really more about managing ourselves. There are only 24 hours in a day and time neither fluctuates or moves into freeze stance. The true test of effective time management lies in:
