Time Management

Despite all the tools and processes in the world time management fails. Why? We are just going to discuss same in this post.

Are you giving enough “Attention”
All of us have 24 hours in every single day. Some people seem to extract more out of this 24 hours while some seem to do much less. The distinction is human attention – focussed attention gets things done. Even for same person some days are very effective compared to some of the days when things are not effective at all. So the key lies in improving your attention span.

There are research reports which say average attantion span of an individual is about 15 minutes and beyoud this the attetion gets weaker. Here are some ways to increatese your attention span at work

Remove distractions

Put systems into place to ensure that you don’t get distracted

• Remove distracting things – keep you desk decluttered so that other things on desk do not divert your attention
• Use do not disturb sign on your door / cubicle when you are working on somethig important
• Always move the task at hand to logical conclusion befre you attend to the distraction
• Use voice mail and do not pick up calls when you are working on something (and make sure you call back people so that they know you are reliable)
• Keep healthy diet so that your hunger does not distracts you

Shall I shift my workplace?

Do not try to shift your workplace to manage distractions. This may work sometimes but is not always practicle. Many people “work from home” for few days in a week or month to get undistracted time for their tasks. This may not be very popular with your co-workers (because you are not available in next cube). However if you are able to be more productive their complain will go off soon. You just make sure that when you get back to work you attend to their question and query to their satisfaction.

Time management is dead – No! Give it some time

Understanding and implementing a new time management system takes time. By implementing this you are learning (or changing) a habit – so difficulty will be there. It may take about 10-20 weeks to ensure that new habit is learned and is in practice. If it does not seem to be working you may have to fine tune the system. Sometime things just as simple as moving from computer to paper solve the problem. So do not give up hope. Time management is not yet dead!
We recommend

Books on Time Management

• First Things First by Stephen Covey: If you still want to read a book on time management – we recommend Stephen Covey’s First Things First. We are no way related to him and are not going to benefit if you buy his book. Stephen Covey’s Matrix of prioritizing things is very popular.

Time management Tools

• Post it pads
• Diary
• Notebooks
• Importance Tags – like “Do it now” Tags or Tags which classify items

Time management software

• MS Outlook Tasks
• MS Outlook Calendar
• Google Tasks
• Google Calendar

Time management is not difficult. There is no one size fits all in the world of time management process or systems. So you will need to try out one or two before you find the perfect one that works for you.

Share your experiences in Time management – write your comments below.

Time Management is one of the most exploited topic on the web. There are so many web pages on Time Management published every month. It is this very difficult to find the time to read and understand  all of them. The key about time management is to put the things in practice – reading alone will not help and you need to practice what you read.

I this post we are covering some of the Basic Time Management Tools for job seekers and who are busy in managing their career. What we are proposing are very simple tools and it is not something which you do not know. You may already know them – but not using them; or if you are using them – you may not be effectively using them. We are presenting it as a system to ensure that you pickup the approach and embed it in your daily routine.

Basic Time Management Tools

How to keep To-Do Lists
To-Do Lists are a great way to manage time. Keep a diary or a notebook and maintain a To-Do List. Then do them in whatever order they are in. Once you complete a task it can be can be ticked off regularly (yes this boosts motivation). The simple To-Do Lists however do not gel if you have a tight schedule to be maintained. If you have lot more tasks then the time available to you you may land up in doing the unimportant taks.

How to prioritize your To-Do Lists
Once you have tasks on hand written then put them in order of priority. You can mark the priority in front of the item and rewrite again. Alternatively if you are little tech saavy, you just maintain a spreadsheet and then sort them according to priority. Then you do them in that order. However note that if you have more than 20-35 tasks everyday them they may cause confusion. You can use the Tasks feature of Microsoft Outlook or Gmail to manage your tasks effectively.

Using “Do it now” Tags
If you handle a lot of paper you can use a method called “Do it now”. This prevents you from procastinating the task. You basically use “Post IT” slips with “Do it now” written on the tasks or papers which are critical. You the do these tasks immediately. This is very good for those who have habit of procastination. Many people even use this method if they fear doing domething – so they try to “Do the thing they fear most first”. This works because once the most-feared thing is done, the rest will be easier in comparison. Is is very good for conquering fears at work. If you have joined the workplece new and fear something – try to ‘do that now’.

More complex tasks – start Scheduling
Scheduling is very very simple – you the task list that you maintain just put the time along with it. And now act on them according to the time specified. This is very good where you have many people involved such as meetings etc. However it is difficult if you are not actually estimating the time realistically – which may lead to one task extending into time of other task. Some of the best ways is to use a Calendar – like MS Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar. They are some of the best ways to manage the schedule.

While all of these are very useful in particular situations, and for particular people, they often work best in combination. Individual tools may not work always.

We will be talking more abou time management in our next post.