Motivation

Are you really busy, ever get the feeling, or say to yourself "There are not enough hours in the day"

If the answer is yes, how are you setting about managing your hours in any given day. The obvious solution most people utilise is by working harder, with increased levels of tension and more working hours, all culminating in the reduction of the quality of our lives and even illness.

I think it is fair to say that a majority, if not all, of people these days have very busy lives and are always trying to maintain a balance between home life, work and play. Believe it or not managing the hours during your day is a skill, and to attain such a skill requires a framework and practice. Using management techniques and practices can and will help to ensure the quality use of the minutes and hours of every day and ultimately with more satisfactory results. Establishing that we want more freedom should provide us with the motivation needed to make a change, so at this stage is it the moment to start working smarter?

List Tasks

The first step for effective time management is creating a to do list. This can help an individual cope and deal with any problems along the way. Stick to a single list, and start by writing down everything that needs to be achieved, whether it be today, tomorrow or next week. Next right down what you think is a reasonable period to complete each individual task, estimates will improve with practice.

Importance Ranking

Once a list has been built next rank each task in order of importance in accordance with their relevancy and significance. By doing this you will come to realise your priorities and it will become clearer what needs to be done and now each tasks can be completed one at a time and in an ordered fashion.

Be Firm

The ability to say No is important. Sticking to a schedule can only be achieved by a single mindedness. Say yes to the most important task at hand, say no to less important tasks. During work, if requested to do something else first determine its importance. Say no, there should be no issue with that, however it may be found that it is easier to refer a person to another individual or to take it on and hand it over to a colleague personally. Delegation is a great way to empower your associates, while reflecting the commitment to stick to your goal. Once mastered this will save time while opening up more opportunities to accomplish more. Be aware that micro management is fool hardy and that we should have the trust at the very least to inspire and coach confidence in our colleagues, team building is absolutely key. I have witnessed to many managers taking on too much until their snapping point is reached, do you really want to make yourself ill through stress.

Time Management

This topic is important for several reasons, most obvious of which is the simple matter of completing jobs on schedule, thus freeing people up to do more of the things they want to do. With better organisation in place the enjoyment of all of your time will improve. Life has to be better when were no longer clock watching. Do not make time the enemy.

When starting out in this aspect of life dramatic changes may not be easy to identify initially, stick to it and don’t give up. Never stop planning and organising and soon enough it will become second nature. The scale of this type of management is all encompassing and can span hours to years and simply involve day to day tasks all the way through to managing vast projects.

If further development is required consider reading books, or even learning to use software to improve time management even more. Before you know it you will be enjoying all of your moments in life!