Time management
Do you have time to read this? If not, you must read this! How many times have you felt that the day should be longer, the night also should be longer. Most of the time, night!
In today's fast moving, information overflow, dynamic lifestyle, time has become an equal or more important resource to money. Just like you need to effectively manage your money, you also need to manage your time effectively.
Lack of time management can result in lack of production, lack of quality, customer / employee dissatisfaction.
Managing time is much more difficult task than managing money, since money can be decreased or increased based on need / negotiation, whereas time is fixed, it can neither be reduced, nor increased, hence it needs to be utilized in an optimal manner.
While there is no direct formula to manage time, here are some good tips to follow. To start off, make a list of all activities that are pending, and needs your attention to complete. Make a separate list of office and personal work.
1) Prioritize each activity by time and / or date for completion.
2) During the course of day, keep ticking activities that get completed and time spent on it.
3) At end of day carry forward pending activities to be done.
Do the above for one week and then analyze all the activities you completed during the week and one's you didn't. Try and write down the reason for not completing it. Most of the time you will find the reason to be lack of time, since you are spending may be more time on some activity.
4)Now is the time to re-arrange your day a little.
Divide your day into about 4 to 6 major tasks. For example:
(a) Attend to e-mail/faxes/internal doc.
(b) Attend to customer/projects
(c) Attend to employees
(d) Attend to management
(e) Attend to personal work
(f) Attend to surprise activities
Having done this put a reasonable amount of time for each activity. Remember always include point (f) above since you cannot plan for everything and this will be your buffer.
Now make a 'Daily To Do' list and make sure you do not spend more time than allotted to that group.
Maintain a monthly calendar of important appointments /events (your spouses birthday) and always refer to this calendar two days before the date.
Do not send e-mail CC's to unconcerned people, do not send chat e-mail message to persons who can be reached by intercom or are a desk away. Remember spending more than 1 hour on e-mail/Internet may be waste of time, unless of course your job requires you to only do this.
Always take time-off to attend to personal work. At the end of each month, analyze all the activities of the month and see if you are satisfied with your achievements. Among other things that can help improve time management is a good routine of walk/exercises/meditation, regular intake of food and water and getting up early and sleeping early will all certainly help improve the utility of the most valuable resource time.
Lastly but not the least, remember a busy person always has time for everything whereas a lazy person will always say "I am busy, I don't have time!"
