CHAPTER 7: SUMMARY AND OVERVIEW OF TIME MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

In this short guide, I have provided tools and techniques to improve your time management skills. By way of a summary, this chapter gives you the opportunity to review some of the principle techniques in this book and to identify key areas where you wish to improve.

Good time management ideas

The ideas on the following pages will help you to become a better time manager. In order to achieve this, read all the tips and then select the two that you believe are the most important in helping you become better organised. This may not seem very many, but the reason I recommend that you take on board two out of the 34 ideas is that you are more likely to implement these than if you set yourself an unachievable target.

I suggest that you highlight the two ideas you select and put them into action straightaway.

Prioritising

1. Be clear about your objectives for the month, the week and the day.
2. Arrange and allocate your priorities for each task. Use the categorisations A, B, C and D.
3. Throw away the Ds. These are tasks that are neither urgent nor important.
4. Subdivide your As into A1, A2, A3, etc.
5. Do task A1 first, followed by your other A tasks – not those attractive Cs!

   Planning

6. Make appointments with yourself in your diary for planning.
7. Plan at the end of each day for the following day and at the end of each week for the following week.
8. Chop a big task down into smaller, more manageable pieces.
9. Estimate the end time for a task, not just the start time.
10. When planning, allow time for unexpected events.
11. Make sure you complete a monthly plan, as well as a weekly and a daily plan.
12. Don’t include too many items on your list of things to do.
13. Maintain a second ‘to do’ list for longer-term tasks or those to which a date cannot yet be given.
14. Record what you have to do – don’t try to keep your ‘to do’ lists in your head.

    Avoiding timewasters

15. Analyse how you spend your time.
16. Identify your biggest timewasters and address these.
17. Be assertive: learn to say ‘No’.
18. Recognise your peak energy time, and use this to achieve your most important and urgent, or difficult, tasks.
19. If interrupted during a task, write down your next thoughts; when you return to your task, you will know what you were going to do next.

    E-mail management

20. Respond to e-mails (unless urgent) at a diarised time each day.
21. Use the 4D process for e-mails – Do it, Diarise it, Delegate it, Delete it.
22. Become familiar with the functionality of your e-mail application and what is available to help you organise your e-mails.
23. Turn off your incoming e-mail notification alert.
24. Aim to handle 80% of e-mails only once, if at all possible.

    Delegating

25. Delegate whenever possible: downwards, sideways or upwards.
26. Delegate tasks, but do not abdicate them: if it is your task, you still have the final responsibility.
27. Always make the instructions for the tasks you delegate complete and clear, and ensure that they have been understood.
28. Always give, or agree, a completion date for the delegated task.
29. Agree the reviews which will be part of the delegation process.
30. Allow people to whom you have delegated the freedom to complete the task. Don’t interrupt at times when you haven’t agreed to do so.

    Discipline

31. Do the unpleasant task first.
32. Stick to the task you know must be done.
33. Do one thing at a time.
34. Get everyone else in your team to think about effective time management.

Self-discipline and time management

There is a saying: ‘Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you’ve got’. Ultimately, effective time management and organisation is all about self-discipline. I wish you the motivation and the self-determination to master the techniques in this book in order to become a better time manager.

Good luck!

Sarah Cook

The Stairway Consultancy Ltd.

www.thestairway.co.uk