Key Elements to Successful Time Management

From putting out the daily fires to bigger issues that arise in your business, it can often seem like there aren’t enough hours in the day to take care of everything. Time management is crucial to ensure business success. By having good time management you’ll be able to run your company more efficiently and allow yourself to execute some of the business ideas you’d like to implement in your company but haven’t had time for.

TAB Certified Facilitator, Jackie Gernaey, offers these tips to help you better manage your time:

1. You are not managing time; you are managing yourself within the flow of time. The experience of time and the stress you associate with time is in your thinking.

2. Categorize your activities. Look at activities, the ways Dr. Steven Covey suggests:
A) important and urgent (fires); B) important but not urgent (planning, recreation); C) not important but urgent (needless interruptions, unimportant phone calls, email);
D) not important and not urgent (trivial business work). Work to get all or many more of your activities to category B.

3. Set annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals. At the end of the day, list what you want to accomplish the next day.

4. Do less to get more. Economize your efforts. While waiting for something else to happen do another task. Break a large task into smaller ones and complete a portion of each.

5. Eliminate sources of adrenalin. Acknowledge that you do not work better under pressure. Prepare in advance and use a checklist to alleviate last minute anxiety.

6. Eliminate time and energy zappers. Inventory your time. Are you putting up with things that you should not, or commitments, which do not serve you or your larger purpose, which you no longer enjoy? If so, get rid of them.

7. Simplify your environment. Get rid of clutter. Put things back where they belong, place daily items within reach and maintain a simple filing system. Strive to handle each piece of paper once. Cancel some subscriptions.

8. Simplify your tasks. Do not make a task into a larger project when it’s not needed. Over respond only if you know it will save time or prevent a future problem. Delegate all or portions of tasks to others.

9. Manage people. Make sure you do not answer every question asked of you. Do not try to solve employee problems. Get them to solve their own. Exercise your right to say no. Concentrate on what people say so you do not have to ask them to repeat. Confront constant interrupters.

10. Plan time for yourself. Schedule non-work time like an appointment with a client. Remember, upon their deathbed no one wishes they had worked more.