20 quick tips for better time management

20 quick tips for better time management.

8 secrets for mastering time management

Time Management from an Islamic Perspective by Shaykh Riyadh ul Haq

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Improving Your Time Management!

Ashworth's Lisa Bryde explains how to improve your time management skills!

Time Management Expert Peggy Duncan, Manage Email Overload

Peggy Duncan, email overload expert, appears on ABC News-Baltimore with host, Terry Owens, host of 2thePoint. This is part one.

Time Management by a Muslim Motivational Speaker : Zohra Sarwari

Muslim Motivational Speaker : Zohra Sarwari's video is for anyone who wants to manage their time! Zohra Sarwari is a Muslim Youth Speaker offers online coaching and business program for muslim youth Aged 14 to 19 can Change their Destiny, Just in 9 Steps. Develop Leadership, Speaking, Writing, Entrepreneurial Skills, Self-Help, Manage your Time, make Money, Start your own Business and become Financially Independent. Learn all this from Zohra Sarwari: Speaker, Author and life Coach.

Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave a lecture on Time Management at the University of Virginia in November 2007.

How To Create the Connection Between Time Management and a Satisfying Work life Balance

Beth Banning

July 15, 2008

You are the only true authority in your life! The most effective time management system begins with the idea that you only invest your time in the things that are most important to you.

How to Manage Your Time to Create Your Best Life

When you ask yourself the question "Are there are areas of my life that are having problems?" you may discover that your intimate relationships are falling down, that having deep, and caring connections are truly lacking for you in your life, or that you're not having enough alone time to actually relax and rejuvenate.

This is where the new time management system comes in. if you discover areas that are falling down, you begin exploring the ways you are actually spending your time now and what has you spend your time there. This exploration allows you to begin making conscious choices about how you spend your time – turning off autopilot and turning on your inner pilot.

When you delve into this area, you may find you're spending some of your time doing things that you aren't really enjoying in some moments. If so, you may want to ask yourself if you're doing those things because you "want to" or because you think you "have to."

If it's because you think you "have to," then we suggest you start keeping a close eye on how much you're enjoying how you're spending your time. Start figuring out how much you value each of the activities that fill up your days. At that point it shouldn't be too hard for you to determine which things you would be willing to spend less time doing.

New Strategies for a Truly Balanced Life

Your next step would be to come up with specific strategies for doing less of what you enjoy doing least. You can fill this newly freed-up time with what's missing for you now, such as activities that offer the opportunity for caring connections with people. Then it's simply a matter of committing to these new strategies. You're in control of how you live your life, and getting a handle on attaining what's important to you will change your life forever.

You may notice that it really doesn't matter if you find you're being nagged by some adopted ideal, or if something truly is missing. Either way, the first step in beginning to have more of what you want in your life is to figure out what is truly important to you. Then let go of anyone else's idea of what "should" be important to you. And the surest way we know for you to find what's important to you is to do what feels best to you in every moment.

Please visit our web site FocusedAttention.com for more helpful advice on this topic.

Once you've identify what you enjoy and what you don't, you can begin balancing your life by focusing more on the areas you enjoy and doing less of those things you don't. If you can accomplish this, or even just begin to practice it, this will certainly change your life for the better as it will lead to achieving balance that's tailored to you and your personal values.

(AC)

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Ask Dr. Marty: Time Management for Managers

By Martin Seidenfeld, Ph.D.
February 2008

As a manager of others, nothing is more important to you than managing your time well. Always feeling rushed and threatened by deadlines is a sure road to poor performance and personal burnout.

Managers often talk about not having enough time, or seeking ways to stretch their time, or finding ways to save time. But time cannot be saved, stretched, shortened, or otherwise altered; it is fixed and inelastic. Each of us has exactly the same amount of time: 60 minutes in each hour, 24 hours each day, 365 days each year.

When managers or supervisors say “I didn’t have enough time,” what they actually mean is that they didn’t get done what they wanted to. Time is what your job – and your life – is made of. It is, in one sense, all you have. If you waste it and don’t accomplish what you really want to do, then you are not performing well on your job – and perhaps, in your life.

Managers must systematically plan their time. Your individual situation may call for very detailed plans or very loose ones, but without some sort of time plan ning, you will be disorganized and your organization’s productivity will be sub optimal.

Every manager must have a schedule book. It can be as simple as a pad of yellow paper, or as detailed as The Franklin Planner. The important thing is that you have some written method for planning your time. A basic time management sys tem, using these four steps, can help:

1. Listing
2. Prioritizing
3. Delegating
4. Scheduling

First, set aside 10 or 15 minutes each morning to go through these four steps.

Listing means exactly what it says. Write down all the things you hope to accomplish that day. They may be important things or trivial, or take lots of time or doable in just a few minutes. But unless it’s listed it’s too easy to forget.If an item is a major project, break it down into doable bits. For example, if you are developing a budget for your department, you might separate it into reviewing last year’s budget, sending a memo asking about department members’ anticipated needs, creating categories for budget requests, etc.

Prioritizing consists of organizing the day’s tasks according to their importance and their urgency. Its purpose is to keep you from being busy all day, feeling like you’ve accomplished a lot, and realizing at the end of the day that what you did was relatively unimportant, while some truly significant tasks went undone. Few things are more stressful than realizing you’ve “not had enough time” to take care of something that is really meaningful. This often is mere “crisis management” – the style favored by mid-level managers who never make any higher.

You should consider two kinds of truly important matters: those that help you grow and be better at whatever is your specific function and those that have to do with your relationships. Completing a project report at work might be important, and so might be meeting with your boss, to strengthen that relationship. For personal growth, learning such things as how to use a new piece of equipment can be important. In the long run, as a supervisor of others, maintaining and improving your relationships with your employees and your own boss may be the wisest use of your time.

Urgent matters are those that must be attended to right away and may or may not be important. Urgency may result from a deadline (anywhere from trying to finish a report your manager wants today, to seeing to it that an animal feeding schedule is maintained), a crisis situation (anywhere from a conflict between employees that suddenly threatens to engulf the entire workplace, to running out of paper clips), or simple physical need – what could be more urgent, and yet less important in the ‘Grand Scheme of Things,’ than having to go to the bathroom?

To prioritize the items you have listed, ask yourself, what is the single most important thing that I must accomplish today? Note that there you must choose only one such item, although several may seem awfully important. Pick one and call it your Grand Prize Goal.

Your Grand Prize Goal is one you promise yourself you absolutely will accomplish this day. No excuses, no extenuating circumstances, no limits on your time or energy – nothing will cause you to fail to complete your Grand Prize Goal, short of your sudden, untimely death!

Put your Grand Prize Goal at the top of a new list, and then cross out that item on the first list. Now, consider the remaining items on your to-do list. Choose some Second Place Goals. Add them to the new list, in order of importance, and cross them off the first list. These are things you’ll definitely want to accomplish this day, unless doing them would interfere in some way with your Grand Prize Goal.

Next, choose items that seem important, but not so important that you’ll be seriously upset if the day’s interruptions and emergencies prevent you from accomplishing them. These will be your Honorable Mentions — the ones you have a reasonable hope of getting done. Add them to the new list; cross them off the to-do list.

Now, look at what’s left. This is the stuff you wouldn’t mind getting done, but aren’t going to worry about if they get bumped for more important things. These are your Also-rans.

Delegating: Don’t laugh! Right now, you may be thinking that there isn’t anyone to delegate to. But you can manage it surprisingly often, once you get used to the idea.

Take a good, hard look at your now-prioritized list, and for each item, ask yourself, who can I get to do this task for me? Delegating creatively and effectively is an important and somewhat complex management skill and will be dealt with at length in a future column. For now, just think about which members of your work force might be able to do some of your tasks.

Now, cross those items you have delegated off your prioritized list — but note who’s doing what, and add ‘follow up’ to make sure delegated tasks are done.

Scheduling: If any activities are pre-scheduled, such as a staff meeting or a scheduled conference call, write it in your schedule book, and cross it off your prioritized list. Next, schedule your Grand Prize Goal as early as possible in the day — not just to allow maximum flexibility for unexpected interferences, but also because you’ll want to tackle it when you’re freshest and sharpest.

Next, schedule your Second Place Goals, then whatever Honorable Mentions can fit into the day, and if you can fit in a few Also-rans, schedule them too.

This four-step process (listing, prioritizing, delegating, and scheduling) should only take about 10 minutes, once you’ve had some practice.

Obviously, in most work environments crises happen and things come up that can totally destroy your carefully worked-out schedule. So stay tuned: in my next column I’ll discuss how to block interruptions and avoid time-wasters.

Corporate Leadership: Avoid the fatal flaws of management

(By Harry S. Dennis, III , for SBT)

A manager’s five fatal flaws:

1. Unclear and inconsistent communication.

I’ve written about this issue numerous times the last several years. Deliver the message. Be clear, specific and concise. Say it in 25 words or fewer, if possible. Then make sure your audience understands it.
Now, listen to the feedback. Listen for the intended meaning. Eliminate obvious distractions. Acknowledge your personal hidden assumptions and prejudices. Actively listen by asking probing questions. Listen with empathy for the “heart and soul” of what the other person is saying.

2. Failure to acknowledge change.

The one thing we know about change in the organizational context is that it’s elusive and hard to recognize on a day-to-day basis, but it’s real. To ignore it is to fall behind. It’s important to understand why managers ignore change when they’re surrounded by it:
• Emotion – like fear, anger and uncertainty – gets in the way.
• Perception gets in the way. They don’t see the need for it.
• Attitude gets in the way. They don’t believe it’s for the better.
• Reluctance gets in the way. They want to “wait and see.”To acknowledge change, a management team must do four things. It must identify the change and its source; make it patently clear why the change is necessary and what’s in it for the management team; show how the change itself will be negotiated; and be optimistic about the future.

3. Failure to manage team members differently.

Years ago, when I was the aircraft commander with a crew of 10 on a USAF C-141A Starlifter, my superiors warned me that I should always treat my officers and enlisted personnel on the aircraft’s long global missions the same, according to their rank and station. I never did.
And I don’t do it today in the corporate workplace. Every manager interacts with a variety of personalities. Each requires a different level of attention and “coaching” to maintain high individual performance. What’s important to one team member won’t necessarily be important to the next.

4. Failure to establish clear expectations.

Anyone who has a job should never doubt what’s expected. Here are ways to avoid that problem:
• Be clear and specific when explaining their tasks.
• Have well-defined performance appraisal standards.
• Write mutual contracts with problem employees.
• Measure team goals monthly and quarterly.
• Have a minimum one-year mentor program for new employees.

5. No sound time management principles.

CEOs, in particular, have always struggled to fit 24 hours into a 12-hour day. It simply doesn’t work. The annals of time management doctrine basically stipulate four decision points:
• It’s your time. Know what you want from it.
• Be assertive about the difference between urgent and everything less than that.
• Set your priorities and respect them.
• If something is wasting your time, get rid of it.
Five rights of managersLet’s turn to the other side of the equation. A manager can’t really deal with the five fatal flaws without having certain management rights to pre-empt the fatal flaws in the first place.

1. The right to set clear expectations.

I like the term “managerial paralysis” to describe a manager who is reluctant to spell out job expectations to an employee for fear of a harassment claim. Explaining job expectations is part of communicating well.
There were five specific expectations identified above, and these are all totally acceptable. Not included are issues such as work habits, use of company resources, compliance with company policy, and so on. The bottom line is that if expectations have never been discussed, it’s never too late to have the conversation.

2. The right to expect top performance.

Expecting top performance day-in and day-out from employees is a management prerogative. The caveat is that the company must define performance in terms of specific measurable objectives. That’s where the process typically breaks down. Or more specifically:
• The company talks about top performance in general terms.
• It doesn’t set the “bar” by mutual agreement.
• Employees see that it doesn’t apply to everyone.
• The company doesn’t reward top performance through recognition or incentives.

3. The right to change

Top management is not in business to protect the status quo. It’s in business to advocate change and to advocate this important management right. I’ve already explained how to accomplish change. But for any change process to work, there has to be a change contract, which doesn’t have to be complicated. At minimum, it must include:
• The employee’s participation in the change process.
• Management’s right to change the rules as the situation dictates.
• The employee’s right to discuss performance expectations that are affected as the result of changes.

4. The right to dismiss employees

“Management at will” seems to be old hat these days. But it’s true that if an employee isn’t right for the job, and there’s no other position for that employee, and training isn’t an option, then management has the right to dismiss.
That assumes, of course, that all the fundamental employment policies are in place, and that there have been no extraordinary breaches of management conduct or practice that would lead to a justifiable employee lawsuit.

5. The right to make mistakes

No manager is perfect under any circumstance. Mistakes are inevitable. They’re also fixable, and that’s the sign of a great manager: to admit a mistake and fix it, and to be supported by the CEO in the process. The same is true with employees. They will make mistakes. They should also have the opportunity, working with their boss, to fix them.

These are challenging times for many companies. Sticking with the basics and staying focused will go a long way toward future success. History says so. Until next month, avoid those flaws and exercise your management rights!

Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave a lecture on Time Management at the University of Virginia in November 2007. Randy Pausch is a virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center and creator of the Alice software project

Time management essential

Written plan aids in organizing and prioritizing daily tasks, allowing for better flow in business

One of the major stress factors in owning a small business is that there simply isn't enough time to accomplish all that needs to be done to keep your business running smoothly. As an entrepreneur, you are constantly faced with choices about how to spend your time. It is a valuable commodity and you can only make it go so far. Keep in mind that it is not just how much time you have, but what you do with it that counts. Time management really means managing yourself and your job responsibilities effectively. Small-business owners typically get bogged down for two reasons: poor planning and poor communication. Unless you have a written plan guiding your business, each decision requires too much time and you spend more time fixing past mistakes than planning for the future. Create a business plan to outline the fundamental goals and objectives of your business. With a plan in place, you can concentrate on implementation rather than rethinking each decision. Implementing the business plan also means putting processes in place that allow employees to execute according to plan. ''Process mapping'' will allow common exceptions to be resolved in a consistent and timely manner. This allows you to concentrate on major issues and better manage your time. Regarding communication, maintain an open-door policy for employees. Create an atmosphere that encourages employees to keep you informed about what is going on in your business. Employees are on the front lines and know your business almost as well as you do. They might know your customers better than you do. To make better use of your time, log appointments and major deadlines in a monthly calendar. Write down what must be done and the due dates for projects at key progress intervals. There are many time-management systems available. Everything from pocket calendars to various types of daytimers to electronic schedulers can help you control your time commitments and project obligations. Start each day with a planned schedule. Try to arrive at your office 15 minutes early. You can create an expectation that you have 15 extra minutes daily simply to organize before you begin the business of the day. Make a checklist of priority items and the amount of time you can dedicate to each. Integrate your daily appointments into the checklist. If you find that you are most productive in the morning, perhaps you want to work at your desk until noon and save sales calls for the afternoon. Adjust your calendar to your own personal style for maximum effectiveness. Make it your common practice to establish firm deadlines and meet them. Set deadlines for employees. They will look to you as an example of how things are accomplished within the business. If you routinely meet deadlines, employees will be more likely to meet their deadlines as well. - (Ohio.com)

Time Is A Dimension So Do You Seriously Think You Can Contain It?

by Robin O'Brien
October 31, 2007


People are often described as being two-dimensional. It implies that there is a lack of depth to their character; a three-dimensional person is supposed to be the complete picture. But many forget that there is a forth dimension: Time. Is it sheer folly to try and control a dimension?
Without Time life would cease to exist. Consciousness only exists because we all have an innate sense of the passing of time. We know we're happy or sad because we have a fixed time reference; we know that our psyche, indeed everything in life, is constantly changing. We're happy, because we know that sometime in the past we were not. Without Time we would not be able to say if we were happy or not.
Time is a universal law and yet we hear experts telling us we should manage it. Time management is now big business. But time management implies total control, that we can somehow change it. We pay these people huge amounts of money each year so that we too can learn the trick of managing, taming and controlling time. We take these gurus seriously; they are rather like the fabled alchemists who could change lead into gold.
But what if they preached about width management, height management and depth management and how we need to control them to live a more fulfilled life. We would think them ludicrous. And yet, when they talk about time management - the forth dimension - we nod respectfully and beseech them to take our money.
Perhaps I'm being a little facetious but I think there is a serious point to be made. When we spend too much effort in sectioning off our time from one activity to the next, we may think we are more fulfilled, but I suspect, something dies within us.
Are we seriously supposed to draw up time charts for work, family, hobbies and 'quality time'. Surely, our family is a constant part of us; is it possible to shut them out altogether when they are not scheduled in. The term 'quality time' implies an allotted time for us to explore our emotions; a time to be happy, to reflect, to build relationships, to be sad even. But how can we 'switch on' these things; we're human beings, not machines. Our emotions and thoughts creep up on us; they bare scant regard to time, whether it's been allotted to them or not.
When we try to live a regimented life we loose that certain something that makes us human.
Of course, the business of getting through the day does require a degree of organization but spontaneity, creativity and true fulfillment is only possible when time is given a long leash.
I often think that when Time Management gurus tell us that we can reach a better, happier place from the rigorous management of our allotted time on this planet, they are, at best misguided. What is more likely to happen is that we turn off our humanity; we become machine-like. A machine doesn't have any self doubts or bad times, but neither does it have our genius for thought, creation and spontaneity.
A machine is the perfect example of time management. A human being is the perfect example of something that is not governed by, or tries to manage time, but is aware of the possibilities that time gives each and everyone one of us.


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Time Management Tips: How to Set Priorities - Peter Turla

Practical tips on time management

Most of us have to work, and the more you can do in the least amount of time, the better. Time management frees you up to not just work better, but ensure balance in your life. Lorraine Pirihi offers some practical tips.
Basic Time Management
A simple time management tip is to use a daily ‘to do’ list. You have a couple of choices: write your list in the morning, as the first task at the commencement of your working day; or take the time to do it before you finish up the night before, as your final flourish for the day, freeing your mind so you don’t take your work home with you.
Creating a List
Forget trying to create your ‘to do’ list in your head. It must be written down, then left somewhere highly visible, such as your desktop. I suggest writing it in your diary, so you can juggle it with your other commitments.
An effective list will almost always be updated during the day. It is not a static document. As your priorities alter with each crisis, your list will be a work in progress. And don’t be unrealistic. Steel yourself to list only the achievable projects and activities. If you are unable to complete a task on the designated day, simply transfer it to the next day or another suitable time in your diary. Look at the daily ‘to do’ list as the map that keeps you on track.
When you have written your list in the diary, go back and number each item in order of importance. Start with number one and work your way through.
Recording Information
In today’s busy work environments, we are bombarded with so many different distractions it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of everything that’s going on, particularly if you work in a distracting open-plan office.
Instead of recording on scraps of paper or sticky notes all the zillion thoughts that pass through your mind during these stressful periods, use an inexpensive spiral notebook. Anything you write down can then be found again at a later date. Use it with your diary and as a great memory jogger and it will help you focus your thoughts, remind yourself of past conversations and save time from searching for all those ‘back of envelope’ notations.
Telephone Messages
Murphy’s Law of telephones and deadlines means when you are really pressed trying to complete a project on time, the telephone will take off, with a mind of its own.
Try recording a message letting your callers know you are currently unavailable, asking why they are calling, and let them know you will return their call. Or have someone working with you who can screen your calls (lucky you) to give off a similar message. Asking what the call is about will help you assemble any relevant information before you call back, enabling you to better plan your day and return all calls sooner and more effectively.
Time and Stress Management
Effective time management will directly affect your stress management. Using these simple, commonsense time management tips will greatly reduce your stress levels. Keep your systems simple because the simpler they are the more likely you will use them. By implementing these tips and continually sticking with them you will also avoid procrastination, working smarter, not harder.

(Dynamic Business)

Mastering Time Management Can Double Or Triple Your Productivity

By Chet Holmes

The true secret to becoming the best sales and marketing organization is repetition of basic core skills. Skill is not created by constantly switching to new things. Skill is created by focusing on a small number of things and doing them repeatedly. Black belts in karate do not become black belts by practicing 4,000 different moves; they become black belts by practicing 12 moves 4,000 times. The same is true of sales skills, particularly time management. Commit to these six steps: Six proactive steps to time management can transform your day. They take five minutes to do and can double the amount of results you get daily. The problem is not whether or not these steps will work, because they will absolutely work. The problem is whether or not you will fully commit to doing them, repeatedly. The key to time management is commitment to the following six steps: Step One: Touch it once: How often do you pick up something on your desk and say, “I have to take care of this, but I can’t deal with it right now”? If you do that a few times per day with a few different documents/projects/tasks, by the end of the year, you will have spent an entire month touching and rereading information without taking action. So, if you touch it, move it to the next step. If you want to see how often you waste time, each time you pick up something, put a red dot on it. After you have three red dots on a piece of paper, you begin to feel pressure to do something and move on. If you touch it, take care of it. Step Two: Make lists, but stick to the six most important things. When we conduct this time management seminar, we ask how many people in the audience make lists. Practically everyone does. People often have lists with 25 to as many as 40 items on them. They are proud that their lists are so long and that they are so busy. Further investigation quickly shows them that long lists are the perfect way to be busy, but not productive. When you have a long list, your energy is focused more on trimming the list than it is on being productive. Each day, pick the six items that will produce the highest level of results, put them on your list, and finish all six things by day’s end. Step Three: Plan how long you will spend on each item. You’ve started your day by making a list of the six most important things. That took two or three minutes. Now take another minute to plan how long each item will take or how long you will dedicate to the items that are ongoing. When we conduct this workshop, the people with long lists usually find that they can have an incredibly productive day with only six hours spent on their six key items. Most people who use these steps find they get more important work done in less time because their time is focused on the most productive tasks. Step Four: Plan when: Now that you know how much time to dedicate to each task, you need to plan when you will do them. In addition, you must build in time for the reactive mode. For example, if you are a sales manager interrupted by frequent “got a minute” meetings, plan a fixed time when you will accept those types of meetings. Otherwise, unless it is an emergency, do not allow people to come to your desk and ask if you’ve got a minute! Think of any top executive you know. Can you simply call them up, or do you have to schedule time with them? Many top executives plan their day down to the minute. Everything is done according to a schedule, including time for “got a minute” meetings. Scheduling time is the key to time management. Step Five: Ask the results: Few people are highly productive. People like to have items on a list, so they can cross off the items. But that’s not enough. The things that produce the best results are generally the most difficult. Thus, they get left off of the list or are scheduled at the end of the day, causing them to get bumped to the next day…and the next...and the next. Schedule important tasks in the beginning of your day. Cold calling or trying to get appointments with key prospects or clients are the things that produce the best results. However, they often get pushed off by average salespeople. After you make your list, ask yourself if the items on it are the ones that will produce the most results. Step Six: Will it hurt me to throw this away? Of all filed information, 80% is never referred to again. After hearing this time management idea, I began to throw away four out of five of the items I used to keep. It’s been 10 years, and I cannot think of a single time where it has hurt me. Making The Training Stick: Human behavior can only truly be affected in two ways: Repetition and direct involvement. You can agree intellectually that these six steps will cause a productivity increase, but until you practice them (direct involvement) and continue to use them (repetition), your behavior will not change. Common wisdom is that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. My experience is that it takes years. But for now, if you can stick to this program for just 21 days, you will be forever reminded of its power, and you will be more likely to use these important steps.
MANAGER’S DAY
8-8:30 a.m. Plan day; have quick look at staff’s planned day.
8:30–9:30 Work on strategy to overcome our new, most frequently heard objection.
9:30-10:00 Create a standard promotional piece or standard letter that addresses the problem.
10:00-12:00 p.m. On sales call with Bill
12:00-1:30 Lunch with important client, Smith
1:30-2:00 Miscellaneous
2-3 Got-A-Minute meetings
3-4 Review “Six Musts of Marketing” for the month
4-5 Work on better systems
5-6 Meet with Boss

Question: How much of this day is proactive?
Answer: All but 90 minutes