One of the most challenging situations people face when planning their day is how to stick to their schedule when they are constantly being interrupted.
Tags: interruption, schedule, time, time management
We are all born equal! We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Oprah Winfrey has the difference is how we choose to spend our time. No matter how you dissect this concept, there could only be 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds at any given 24.
We’ve all been there and continue to get caught up in last minute rushes to meet deadlines, meetings that are double booked or achieve absolutely nothing, days that seem unproductive and crisis that spring unexpectedly from nowhere and destroy the most carefully planned day.
Somewhere in our education program, we all learned about the mathematical term “transition property” where if:
A=B and B=C, then A=C
Let’s try to apply this formula to what we’ve read so far.
Time Management (A) = Planning & Prioritization (B)
Planning & Prioritization (B) = Productivity & Success (C)
Therefore…
Time Management (A) = Productivity & Success (C)
14 years ago my family and I moved to Central California from Los Angeles. For us, we were living in a fast-paced world and everything and everybody seemed to be in a great hurry. Long commutes, rush hour traffic, being stressed all the time had a time slot in my day planner with my permission until I realized I was wasting time, a resource that I couldn’t stop or reverse even if I wanted to. The decision to move came in very easy and with it came the abundance of time and the guilty pleasure of “sneaking” or “stealing” a few moments of the day for myself and if you haven’t guessed it by now, I had the recipe for disaster brewing very slowly.
It is crystal clear to me that we all know about how important managing time is but frankly many of us aren’t that good at it.
In this article, we will target 3 specific elements that act as the foundation of time management and give you few specific techniques to manage time and enhance your skills better.
Define time: When we reference time in our daily lives, we talk about wasting time, spending it and needing more of it. Webster’s definition of time is: “The measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues”. Time is a resource you have complete control over that you choose to use consciously and only you decide how you want to spend it will be my definition. What is yours?
Prioritize: Remember you only have 24 hours in a given day. Use the LEAN approach and eliminate that which brings you no benefit whatsoever. Distinguish between what’s important vs. what’s urgent. Doing what’s important will leave you with a feeling of being in control of your life.
Adopt the approach: This is not about a sophisticated tool that you would use to manage your time. I am referring to what’s important to you in life and what values and roles do you want to focus on. Adopt a time management approach to maintain or achieve what you’ve designated as important. If you don’t decide what’s important to you, almost anything can compete for your time and attention.
Earlier in this article, we talked about the three elements that makeup the foundation for “Time Management”. 1) Understand and learn YOUR interpretation of time, 2) Plan smart and distinguish between what’s important and urgent, and 3) Focus on what you want to achieve and how important is that to you in life?
Once you establish the foundation, refer to the process of time management and use these techniques that will allow you the time for pursuit of your goal. The techniques I’m about to share with you are traditional in nature but what separates mediocre results from those which are extraordinary are the principles that take over where the traditional time management skills leave off.
Are your organized?- Keep an orderly desk with a place for everything. Get rid of clutter and waste. You won’t be wasting time to look for stuff.
Do you say no?- Avoid asking for forgiveness later for not being able to complete a task on time. Say no in advance to excessive work.
Do you procrastinate?- Find out the real reason why you don’t want to begin with the task on hand. Motivate yourself to get it done. Start with some actions that are simple and easy and reward yourself for accomplishing them. Face procrastination head- on.
Here are three practices that take over where the traditional time management skills leave off.
Exercise- Get exercise to fuel your body and nurture your soul. While you have to allocate time to get exercise, getting fit and being decisive will allow you to be more productive in the long run.
Agile mind- Learn to multitask. We all know we only use a small percentage of what the mind is capable of. Use all of your mind and learn to multitask and get twice as much done in the same period of time.
Review and Reflect- Step back from all of it and allow yourself to relax. Find an activity that will bring you mental and body relaxation. Careful, don’t confuse relaxing with wasting time. Regroup and allow for what really matters to you in life drive you.
In Summary, effective time management is essential to personal and business success. When people take the time to plan and prioritize, they can increase their productivity and sense of personal satisfaction with their accomplishments.
Take the first step toward mastering the art of time management. When you find yourself overwhelmed by a large list of daunting chores, you will be glad you did.
Vera Haitayan, Principal Consultant of The Leadership Laboratory., a California-based employee development and process improvement consulting firm and is the senior editor of The Stepping Stone Newsletter featuring leadership and process improvement best practices.
http://www.1leadershiplab.com
mailto: vera@1leadershiplab.com
If you want to manage your time well, you need to understand that time is full of strange paradoxes that can leave us puzzled and unsure. Here are 7 of the most common paradoxes of time.
1. Time is universal yet intensely personal. For everyone, whoever they are, time moves at the same rate. In the working week of 40 hours, each of us has the same opportunity to be productive for 240 minutes or 14400 seconds. That’s over 6 million seconds of work energy a year! Yet, few of us produce at the same rate or to the same standard. How we spend our time is down to us.
2. Time is a resource yet like no other. Because time is one of the factors that determine how well we work, it is regarded as a resource. Hence, the common adage that time is money. Yet, unlike every other resource, such as money, time cannot be bought or sold, cannot be stored or traded, and cannot increase or decrease.
3. Time is complex, yet known to all. Time is the most familiar resource known to man. Even if we lack every other resource, such as money, we still have time. Yet, time is also infinitely complex. Quantum physicists now tell us that, in fact, time is an illusion, that it doesn’t really exist except in our perception of experiences. Instead of moving in a linear pattern from one point on a timeline to another, our lives are created by our thoughts in a time-defying way.
4. Time moves relentlessly at a fixed speed, but sometimes it drags and sometimes it flies. Our clocks and calendars tell us that time moves at a fixed speed. There are only ever 24 hours in a day, give or take a few minutes. Yet, many of us complain that there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. Or, when engaged in something we love doing, we marvel at how time simply flies past.
5. Time is limited and yet limitless. When each of us are born, we have a fixed time span, albeit unknown to us. But as we live, we feel we have enough time in the world to do anything we like. We view time as unlimited. As the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, warned: “You have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you and be lost beyond recovery.”
6. Time defies attempts to be controlled, yet it can be managed. None of us can control time. Much as we would like to, we cannot have a bit extra in the good times, and a bit less in the bad times. But we can manage time. We can use time to achieve goals and be creative; we can use time to work with others; we can use time to organize the tasks that we must do to get through the day; and we can plan time so that we fulfil ourselves as complete human beings.
7. We all have time, yet few of us can claim to be perfect time managers. Many, maybe most of us, are guilty of wasting time. We fill up our working lives with empty rituals, competitive game-playing, and ego-serving politicking. We avoid responsibility for what we do with our time, imagining that it is better for us to hand that responsibility over to others. Yet, we are all capable of becoming accomplished time managers. We can wrest back control of our time from others and make up our minds to organize it, make the most of every moment, and at the end of each day look back on a day that has achieved something.
Understand these 7 paradoxes of time and you’ll be well on the way to managing your time in a more productive, relaxed and balanced way.
(c) Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com.
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