UNDERSTANDING TIME’s IMPORTANCE
Time may be infinite, but each one of us only has a finite allocation. It is something you can’t increase or decrease. You can’t speed it up or slow it down. It can’t be managed. Then why do so many books and people talk about time management?
Time Management is managing the use to which you put your time. Time is like a box. Every day when you open it up it has 24 hours of space in it again, regardless of what space you left empty in it yesterday: whether or not you used it all. You can’t swap the box for one bigger or smaller, because everybody’s box is exactly the same size! Every day, some of the contents (the things you scheduled to do) left over in the box get piled up in tomorrow’s box.
Simply, what you need to do is to carefully manage the time you have got, putting it to the best use possible. Before you can save time, you have to spend some in doing things like:
Plan
Organise
Review
Rearrange
Sort &
Think.
SETTING LIMITS
Good time management is all about setting limits. You need to set all sorts of limits to manage your time well. Set limits for:
Availability (how you make yourself available for others, you are disturbed, etc.)
Duration (how long you spend doing things)
Importance (how you prioritise things)
Involvement (how much you do yourself as opposed to delegate to others)
Standards (how well you do things)
Urgency (how quickly you do things)
Let’s take each of these in turn and see how your time management can be improved by setting limits.
LIMITING AVAILABILITY:
When the phone rings and someone asks us something, or when someone walks in the door, we very often stop what we are doing and deal with it. What makes these interruptions so urgent? Just because someone asks us something, it doesn’t make giving a reply more important. We are conditioned to react, and often this means dealing with things as if they were more necessary than they really are.
Just say – ‘Can I get back to you, I’m in the middle of something important/urgent?’
You should constantly stop what you are doing to deal with interruptions.
LIMITING DURATION:
Some of the things we do take a great deal of time for very little result. Set sensible limits on how long you will spend on a job, and if it takes longer than you can afford, evaluate whether you really need to finish it, considering all the other things you have to get done. Most people get a sense of accomplishment from completing things, but using your time to feed your sense of accomplishment is not a very good use of it!
LIMITING IMPORTANCE:
Not everything is important. Not everything can have equal priority. Check that you are not over-emphasising the importance of some tasks. You can’t do everything, so spend most of your time on the most important work, and if you have to skimp on time, skimp on things that are not important.
LIMITING INVOLVEMENT:
You need to limit our involvement in things. Don’t be overcommitted. Delegation is an important time management skill. It means stepping back from personally handling things to delegate them to others. You are still involved, but to a limited extent, saving you time.
LIMITING STANDARDS:
For most things we do, there is an acceptable standard, if there is nothing, we should mentally set one for ourselves. We often set artificially high standards. You can save a great deal of time by doing things well enough. Doing them better than the necessary is a waste of time.
LIMITING URGENCY:
Not everything needs doing today. We over-emphasise a task’s urgency, like its importance. We feel we must do things now. Urgency determines when you do things: in what order. So giving priority to things that are non-urgent leaves you to deal with the really urgent matters.
CHANGING YOUR THINKING:
Limitations | Wrong Thinking | Right Thinking |
Limiting duration | I have to stop what I’m doing to answer the phone... | Is this interruption really more important than what I’m doing right now? If it is, fair enough. If not, it can wait! |
Limiting duration | I have started so I might as well finish. | It’s OK to give up and get on with things you can finish. |
Limiting importance | It’s all important. | Sort out your priorities and plan your time accordingly. |
Limiting involvement | If you want a job doing, you could better do it yourself. | You can’t do it all. Only get involved in things that need you to do them, and let others take care of the rest. |
Limiting standards | If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. | A job is only worth doing well enough – it doesn’t have to be perfect. |
Limiting urgency | This can’t wait. | Or can it? What would happen if I wasn’t here to do this? Is it the most urgent thing you need to do? Is it really the best use of your time right now? |
DECIDING WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR TIME
What are you actually there for? What’s the purpose of your job? You can’t be more effective unless you know what you are trying to achieve!
SPEND TIME DOING THE RIGHT THINGS:
Anyone can be busy, you need to be busy on right things. Some people get stuck into their work every day. Hence, they can sometimes spend as much time doing minor, irrelevant things as they do on important tasks. Planning and prioritizing will help you focus your effort appropriately.
SPEND TIME DOING WHAT YOU LIKE DOING:
If we could focus on improving the amount of time we spend on tasks we actually enjoy, most of us would be happier. And when we feel happier, we usually get more done: we achieve more.
SPEND TIME DOING WHAT YOU ARE GOOD AT:
Work you can do easily can be done in difficult times – for example, first thing in the morning, or when you are pushed for time. Tasks that you find difficult will need more concentration and effort, so plan these in so they are not rushed.
SPEND TIME ON RESULTS, NOT EFFORTS:
As we said earlier, you need to spend your time on achieving things. Achievements make most people feel good, so they are the motivated and will work better. 80/20 rule or the Pareto’s principle states that typically 80 percent of the efforts achieve only 20 percent of results. Most of the time we spend is wasted – it produces very little result. If we could focus on the aspects of our work that yield most results, we would be enormously more productive.
SPEND TIME AT THE RIGHT TIME:
Most people realize that they work better at certain times than at others. You need to be aware of this, and work appropriately. If you can identify which aspects of your work produce the most results, then do these when you are at your best. If you start to become tired and can’t concentrate it can affect your work’s performance and time spent. Plan your day around your most productive times.
CHECK LIST
Don’t over-schedule – you will run out of time for dealing with unscheduled crises and emergencies.
Check how urgent things really are. Remember, there is another day tomorrow and another week next week.
Don’t be afraid to throw things away or pass them on. Keep things that you need than you want.
Try to keep socializing down to the level required for a good working relationship.
You don’t have to be involved in everything.
Don’t confuse importance with urgency.
Keep a diary for scheduling and plan your activities accordingly.
Determine ‘deadlines’ for everything.
Do your best; Delegate the rest.
Sort works before you get started.
Ma10kumar
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
