Time Management Tips

Time Management? The funny thing is, it is not really managing time is it? It’s managing yourself within the constraints of the time available.  As they say: “Time and tide wait for no man”

Managing yourself within the time available to you is critical to the achievement of any of your goals. Actually, if you can't master yourself here, ​

you absolutely won't be as successful as you could be, no matter how good you are at anything else. Time management should be done every day with your focus on taking care of your important and urgent tasks and minimising or delegating time sapping tasks.

An excellent management tool for time management is to create a daily action plan where you write down all of your objectives for each day, in order of priority. The Task Journal is a useful tool to assist you in this. Or you might like to use one of the myriad of time management and time tracking apps, however this might take too much time! So be aware.

Here are some time-saving tips to help you work more efficiently and effectively:

Take On Less

• Learn to say “no" this is a biggy.
• Delegate
• Eliminate unnecessary meetings, not always possible
• Don't take on issues others should be doing, sometimes easier said than done and requires that “NO” word
• Don't get bogged down with details except when it's necessary to do so

Work Efficiently

• Make and meet deadlines
• Tackle tasks as soon as you can
• Tackle tasks when you are most alert
• Make deadlines for others who tend to procrastinate
• Keep communications short and to the point
• Make phone calls when they will save time. You know yourself emails or text messages can go back & forth, back & forth.

Work Effectively

• Make a plan and stick to it
• Be realistic
• Plan anything that will take some time - phone calls, written communication, meetings
• Take breaks - they revive you
• Set priorities
• Finish what you start each day, remembering there is always more to do!

​Do share some of your time management strategies in the comments below.