Time Management Tips

TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS
Time management starts with the commitment to change. Time management is easy as long as you commit to action. The
key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the planned time, which often involves re-conditioning
your environment, and particularly the re-conditioning the expectations of others. In terms of time management, you are at
your most efficient the day before you start your annual leave. Your time management and efficiency on this day is
probably awesome. If you really want to, you can be this well-organized every day...
time management tips - and ideas for time management skills training
Be prepared to make drastic changes. Be creative to find and introduce different ways of doing things.
Manage your emails and phone calls - don't let them manage you. Ideally check at planned times, and avoid continuous
notification of incoming emails.
The more senior you are the more selective you need to be about when to be available to receive phone calls.
Try to minimise the time that you are available to take unplanned phone calls, unless you are in a customer-facing,
reactive role (customers can be internal too), and even if you are customer-facing, you must plan some time-slots when
you are not available, or you'll never get anything important and pro-active done.
Challenge your own tendency to say 'yes' without scrutinising the request - start asking and probing what's involved - find
out what the real expectations and needs are.
Really think about how you currently spend your time. If you don't know, keep a time log for a few days to find out there's a
free time management time-log template tool here. Knowing exactly what's wrong is the first step to improving it.
Challenge anything that could be wasting time and effort, particularly habitual tasks, meetings and reports where
responsibility is inherited or handed down from above. Don't be a slave to a daft process or system.
Download and use the free time management assessment tool at the free online resources section, which will help you or
another person to objectively judge your time management, and underlying issues.
Review your activities in terms of your own personal short-term and long-term life and career goals, and prioritise your
activities accordingly.
Plan preparation and creative thinking time in your diary for the long-term jobs, because they need it. The short-term
urgent tasks will always use up all your time unless you plan to spend it otherwise.
Use a diary, and an activity planner to schedule when to do things, and time-slots for things you know will need doing or
responding to. There's a sample time management activity schedule template with examples on the new time
management section.
Re-condition the expectations of others as to your availability and their claim on your time - use an activity planner to help
you justify why you and not others should be prioritising your activities and time.
You must also plan time slots for unplanned activities - you may not know exactly what you'll need to do, but if you plan
the time to do it, then other important things will not get pushed out of the way when the demand arises.
Use the 'urgent-important' system of assessing activities and deciding priorities. See more at the new time management
section.
When you're faced with a pile of things to do, go through them quickly and make a list of what needs doing and when.
After this handle each piece of paper only once. Do not under any circumstances pick up a job, do a bit of it, then put it
back on the pile.
Do not start lots of jobs at the same time - even if you can handle different tasks at the same time it's not the most efficient
way of dealing with them, so don't kid yourself that this sort of multi-tasking is good - it's not.
Be firm and diplomatic in dealing with time allocated for meetings, paperwork, telephone, and visitors, etc. When you keep
your time log you will see how much time is wasted. Take control. Provided you explain why you are managing your time
in this way, people will generally understand and respect you for it.
Keep a clean desk and well-organized systems, but don't be obsessive about it.
Delegate as much as possible to others. If you have one, give 25% of your responsibility to your successor. (See the rules
of delegation.)
You don't need to be a manager to delegate. Just asking nicely is sometimes all that's required to turn one of your difficult
tasks into an easy one for somebody else better able to do it.
If you can't stop interruptions when you need a quiet space for planned concentration time-slots, then find somewhere
else in the building to work, and if necessary work and at home or another site, and fight for the right to do this - it's
important for you and the organization that you be able to work uninterrupted when you need to.
Set up an acceptable template for the regular weekly or monthly reports you write, so you only need to slot in the updated
figures and narrative, each time.
If you can, get a good assistant, secretary or pa.
Sharpen up your decision-making.
Always probe deadlines to establish the true situation - people asking you to do things will often say 'now' when 'later
today' would be perfectly acceptable. Appeal to the other person's own sense of time management: it's impossible for
anyone to do a good job without the opportunity to plan and prioritise.
Break big tasks down into stages and plan time-slots for them. Use project management methods.
the priest and the politician (a story about time management and being late)
After twenty-five years in the same parish, Father O'Shaunessey was saying his farewells at his retirement dinner. An
eminent member of the congregation - a leading politician - had been asked to make a presentation and a short speech,
but was late arriving.
So the priest took it upon himself to fill the time, and stood up to the microphone:
"I remember the first confession I heard here twenty-five years ago and it worried me as to what sort of place I'd come to...
That first confession remains the worst I've ever heard. The chap confessed that he'd stolen a TV set from a neighbour
and lied to the police when questioned, successfully blaming it on a local scallywag. He said that he'd stolen money from
his parents and from his employer; that he'd had affairs with several of his friends' wives; that he'd taken hard drugs, and
had slept with his sister and given her VD. You can imagine what I thought... However I'm pleased to say that as the days
passed I soon realised that this sad fellow was a frightful exception and that this parish was indeed a wonderful place full
of kind and decent people..."
At this point the politician arrived and apologised for being late, and keen to take the stage, he immediately stepped up to
the microphone and pulled his speech from his pocket:
"I'll always remember when Father O'Shaunessey first came to our parish," said the politician, "In fact, I'm pretty certain
that I was the first person in the parish to that he heard in confession....."
(Ack Stephen Hart)

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