Time Management

Get the best performance
out of your day

 

How do you get the best performance out of your day? Most people make the big, big mistake of simply starting something and persisting until it's finished, before moving on to the next task.

 

I'd like you to try something different: to divide your day up into many too-short sessions.

 

Here's how it goes:

Get yourself some kind of alarm timer (you can get good ones with minutes and seconds for under £10). Your phone or watch might do it - but it needs to be very easy to use.

 

Decide how many hours you will work before you stop (this also avoids the problem of forgetting to stop - the curse of those who work at home).

 

List all of the tasks you need to do today: some might be urgent, some important, some both. Add in some that aren't either of those, but which keep getting put off.

 

Make sure you have some that are the business-growing type, or the business-connections type. If your work is the kind to have interruptions, add in an Interruptions task.

 

Don't forget lunch - eating and a break of some kind are an important part of your day.

 

Create a column by the list of tasks, and start assigning a rough amount of time to each task. If some could be carried out at the same time (e.g. Bank and Shops), consider including them as one. The Interruptions task should have a realistic amount assigned to it.
This is where you get the chance to deal with a couple of the trivial tasks too. If you have tasks you loathe or are trivial, try assigning just 15 minutes to them, and approaching it as a time-challenge.

 

Count how many hours it adds up to. It'll probably be rather more than the time you have available.

 

Go through your list again, slicing time off the ones that aren't really fixed (don't touch your lunchtime!), until you have whittled the list down to the time available. You'll probably find that few tasks get as much as 1 hour. Personally I try to do as many tasks as possible in 30-minute slots.

 

Choose an order for your tasks, set your timer for the allotted time, and start work! When the buzzer goes (and of course you'll have been keeping an eye on the timer to see when you're getting close, so that you can wind down the task), put the task aside and move on to the next.

 

And the point of this exercise is...?

Now, what are the interesting points about this exercise?

  1. It forces you to accept that you have a limited amount of time available to you, and that if you can't make time expand, you'll have to make the tasks either shrink or disappear.

  2. Working on a task for a restricted amount of time forces you to adopt a more efficient way of approaching it (see my article Time Management: the 1-minute challenge), and also allows you to focus on it more fully, knowing that you are only committed to 30 minutes, or 1 hour. Although you may be appalled at trying to work on some of your tasks in just 30 minutes, you'll be amazed at how much you achieve.

  3. Working in restricted slots like this forces you to put aside a task before it is finished. This allows your subconscious time to process what you've done (particularly if it is creative in any way), and when you return to it you will probably find that it has become clearer, or you have had some new ideas - or your fresh eyes see immediately that there is a mistake in it that you couldn't see before.

  4. Moving from task to task keeps you feeling fresher throughout the day, and you will find, at the end of the day, that you are positively glowing with achievement!

  5. The value of this approach will probably become clearest when you stop using it for any reason. I know that when I forget to use it (usually when I've become obsessed with one particular task), my whole day, my whole house goes to pot! It isn't long before I come gratefully back to the fold...


Is your time management in a bigger crisis than this?

 

Perhaps it's your whole life that needs looking at? Our Change Your Life workshop can let you see very quickly where the problems really lie, so that you can waste no time in tackling them and getting your life back.

 

Change your life today! There's no advantage in waiting another minute!