Businesses need to focus on boosting productivity in this recession and yet the average person wastes 33% of the working year – that is 87 days of the 235 days worked.
Do you feel the need to be more organized and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven't accomplished much?
Time management skills are especially important for business people, who often find themselves performing many different jobs during the course of a single day.
So, how good is your time management skills?
Poor Time Management
Some indicators of poor time management are:
• Constant rushing (e.g. between meetings or tasks)
• Frequent lateness (e.g. attending meetings, seeing clients or meeting deadlines)
• Low productivity, energy and motivation (e.g. ‘I can’t seem to get worked up about anything apart from pay day’)
• Frustration (e.g. ‘I always seem to be at the beck and call of others’)
• Impatience (e.g. ‘where the hell is that information I’ve asked him for? He’s holding me back from getting on with my work’)
• Chronic vacillation between alternatives (e.g. ‘I’ve been scratching my head for weeks over this. Whatever option I choose is going to put me at a big disadvantage. I don’t know which way to jump’)
• Difficulty setting and achieving goals (e.g. ‘I’m not sure what my role is or what is expected of me’)
• Procrastination (i.e. continually putting off starting a task or activity. This may occur because you fear failing to do a good job or baulk at the effort required from you)
Small changes to the way that you organise your day and tasks can make a huge impact to what you achieve. Here are Metamorphosis HR’s top 10 tips to time management.
Time Management Tips
1) Realise that time management is a myth.
No matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn't change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have.
2) Find out where you're wasting time.
Many of us are prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. What are your time stealers? Do you spend too much time surfing the net, checking and responding to email, or making personal calls?
3) Create time management goals.
Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviours, not changing time. A good place to start is by eliminating your personal time-wasters. For one week, for example, set a goal that you're not going to take personal phone calls while you're working.
4) Implement a time management plan.
Think of this as an extension of time management tip # 3. The objective is to change your behaviours over time to achieve whatever general goal you've set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress. So you need to not only set your specific goals, but track them over time to see whether or not you're accomplishing them.
A software program such as Outlook, for instance, lets you schedule events easily and can be set to remind you of events in advance, making your time management easier.
6) Prioritize ruthlessly.
You should start each day with a time management session prioritizing the tasks for that day and setting your performance benchmark. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish?
7) Learn to delegate and/or outsource.
No matter how small your business is, there's no need for you to be a one-person show. For effective time management, you need to let other people carry some of the load – even if its just outsourcing your cleaning or ironing to free up your personal time outside of the work environment.
8) Establish routines and stick to them as much as possible.
While crises will arise, you'll be much more productive if you can follow routines most of the time.
9) Get in the habit of setting time limits for tasks.
For instance, reading and answering email can consume your whole day if you let it. Instead, set a limit of one hour a day for this task and stick to it.
10) Be sure your systems are organized.
Are you wasting a lot of time looking for files on your computer? Take the time to organize a file management system. Is your filing system slowing you down? Redo it, so it's organized to the point that you can quickly lay your hands on what you need.
You can be in control and accomplish what you want to accomplish - once you've come to grips with the time management myth and taken control of your time.
Metamorphosis Human Resources offers an Introduction to Time management will introduce to tried and tested techniques to harness the potential of your day. Tracking daily activities – this tool will help you or your team members form accurate picture of where you spend your time, which is the first step of effective time management.
Metamorphosis HR offers guidance to businesses on how to make better use of their time, and resources, through improving time management skills in the workplace or offering practical organisation solutions that can easily be implemented throughout an organisation. See our training calendar for more details.
To take the next step in organising targeted time management training for your team or organisation, contact Metamorphosis Human Resources. 1300 606 898 www.metamorphosishr.com.au inquiries@metamorphosishr.com.au
