Today, more than ever, I believe that time management is key in the path to success. This article is designed to help you be more efficient, manage time and achieve more in each day. It all starts with a plan. It's time to sit and plan how a typical week in your life will look like:
The number of hours that will be invested working in your business.
The number of hours that will be invested working on your business.
The time you want to spend on “private matters”: fitness, family and relaxation.
Then, for one week, write every day what are you working on. Track time. Where does time flies? Who "steal" your time? Is it e-mails? A customer? An employee? Family member? After logging time, go back and see how much time you spend on each subject and then it is time for decisions.
Do you still want to spend 10 hours a week on e-mails? If no - Act now and change it.
Access Outlook or any other planning tool and plan carefully your timetable, every day of the week.
You Should do re-planning for the week, on a weekly basis, of urgent meetings, customers who wish to meet you on a day designated for rest, etc. re-planning means that if something important has been canceled, find it another time in your log.
I’ll give an example. Most of my Wednesdays are devoted to work on my business. Among other things it is targeted to write articles, blogs and newsletters. In case Wednesday become occupied by meetings, I’ll re-schedule this time on another day of the week, otherwise the working on the business time won’t get accomplished at all.
When you begin postponing, there is no end to it.
" I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule. "
Louis E. Boone (a United States academic author)
Are you familiar with the phenomenon of procrastination? Do it tomorrow and tomorrow become two days later and it will never happen. If it’s not in your calendar it won’t be executed.
Monday morning are designated for planning. Start with checking your monthly goals and set targets for the coming week as part of the bigger goals. Check last week’s goals and see what has been accomplished and what hasn’t. Give yourself a report on what has been accomplished, what was the reason for it and how to keep pursuing this result. If it wasn't accomplished what should you improve.
During the week, every morning, check your calendar. See whether there are Important tasks (you can read about the difference between Urgent and important, in Covey’s Book) and find the way to accomplish them. These tasks are important to promote your business!
In addition, every morning you should open the day by looking at your calendar and find out what's on. Is what appears there match what you think you should achieve today? Many times there are appointments that have been scheduled weeks ago. When you scheduled them, the calendar was empty and it was easy to book that date and time. Since then, your priorities have changed. Today you have an important task you need to accomplish, while in the calendar there are several meetings you may want to postpone. I recommend not to be shy and postpone these meetings for a later date. As time management will become second nature to you, important tasks will end several days before their scheduled time, and then it won’t be necessary to cancel meetings.
Focus is another important thing in your time management. Focus, lets you know clearly what is important to promote every moment every day. Postpone the things that not important. Learn how to say "NO" more often. Saying "no" is saying "yes" to a more important task. In the middle of the week, it is important to do a reality check. What did you achieve? What didn’t you achieve? What more can you achieve this week? In this way you will be able to achieve more, week after week. Now when this tool is in your hands, please begin to use it.
Time management is not something you learn and practice in a day.
It is important to be persistent. It takes at least 21 days - the time it takes to implement a habit. So in short, on a daily basis:
Choose a good attitude for the day
Focus on what is important today
Update your calendar to match the importance of the day.