In: Categories » Self improvement » Time management » Personal Planning and Time Management Tips
|
Always ask yourself, Is what I am working on right now the best use of my time? How will you know if it is the best use of your time? It will be the best use if: It is going to help you achieve your goals It is the item with the highest value to you, your customers, or your company It can’t be delegated Rather than focusing on when you need to finish something, focus on when you need to start. Then start when you need to. One reason projects and tasks don’t get finished on time is that we think we have plenty of time, so we put off the important work in favor of the urgent items—until the important becomes urgent. Schedule the most important work during the time when your energy is highest. The earlier in the day, the better. Take control of the day before it takes control of you. Don’t put off doing things you don’t like doing but are necessary. Plan what you will work on. If you don’t have a plan you will tend to allow yourself to be interrupted, distracted, and delayed from accomplishing what is most important to you. You would usually not consider taking a vacation without planning it out. Why does your work deserve any less? Recognize that you will need to make adjustments. There will always be some interruptions. There will be changes in the work that must be done. Build into your schedule some time for interruptions and new or unexpected work. When you have a “margin of safety” it helps you maintain control. Whenever you have a choice, don’t cram things together. If one of the activities runs late, you’ll be rushing from one project to the next or one appointment to the next. That creates additional stress that you don’t need. Allow some extra minutes between appointments, for example, so that you won’t be as rushed. Keep your desk or work area free of clutter. Clutter distracts you from your primary task. It also creates additional stress. Keeping things in order promotes a feeling of control. Principles of Proactive Planning Planning takes time; not planning takes more time. It takes a lot less to prevent a crisis than it takes to solve it. You can’t eliminate interruptions, but you can control them. Review your results for the day with these questions: Did you accomplish your most important priority? What trends do you notice about how you spent your time? What was the most productive part of your day? Why? What was the least productive part of your day? Why? What or who caused the majority of interruptions? What could you do to control these interruptions? What was your biggest time waster?
|
legal disclaimer
1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.
related articles
Time is impossible to manage. We cannot change time. There are always seven days in a week, twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a minute. What we can do is use our time effectively so that we succeed in our professional and personal lives. Here are some ideas to help: Prioritize your activities. Always do things that will maintain and enhance your reputation with your customer/client. Each day create a "to do" list. Estimate how long each item wil...
2. Navigating Your Way Through the Day
Life offers you two precious gifts: one is time, the other, freedom of choice, the freedom to buy with your time what you will. The quality of what we “buy” with our time is a reflection of our ability to remember and act on what’s most important in the decision moments of our lives. So how do you effectively navigate through a day? How do you balance the need to focus and the need to be aware? How do you keep the “urgent” from overpowering the important? How do you disce...
3. Make the most of your time in a recording studio: 10 great tips
So you've managed to get some studio time to get your songs down. Excellent. But how do you make the most of your time behind the microphone? In my role of producer, I've seen artists who got great results in the studio, and those who made a complete mess of it. So, if you want to avoid the common pitfalls many artists fall into, read on.. 1 Get into the right mind-set. Sounds obvious right? If you're going to rap the biggest club banger the west coast has ever heard, make sure you're amped up and ready - not fi...
4. Hands Free Timesheets
This article briefly looks at what the market currently has to offer in the way of Personal Time Management software solutions for the service industry – be it a need for accurate time capture ready for billing, process improvement or just for the boss, who needs to see where his/her day goes. If you have any questions regarding this article, I don’t’ bite, so be sure to email me and let me know your thoughts. When I was first introduced to MetriQ I was, it has to be said, skeptical. Their claims of re...