Rabu, 24 Juni 2009
Professionals who don't understand the secret of time management are doomed to futile complaints about "needing more hours in the day," "running out of time" and "not being able to remember all they have to do." They also falsely believe that time can actually be managed, in the sense that money, food or employees can be managed. These mistakes in thinking about time, and time management, keep professionals in a state of stressful denial, as they look for solutions in all the wrong places.
The fact that time is impossible to be managed is not enough, however, for those who are interested in having a practical peace of mind in the midst of their daily activities. Instead, they need to understand that the essential building block of all time management systems is something they can control -- a habit or practice. Every professional who works uses some kind of system that they developed themselves, and they are all comprised of habits. However, most of them also don't understand that their habits need to cover the 11 fundamentals of time management if they hope to produce the peace of mind they desire.
Some might get lucky, and teach themselves practices that provide full coverage. Most, however, suffer and complain that their memories are faulty, they are lacking hours in the day and that they are always running out of time. What are the 11 fundamentals that a time management system needs to cover in order to be effective?
They can be divided into 7 Essential and 4 Advanced Practices, which must be customized by professionals into habits that they can comfortably support. In the following definitions, a “time demand’ is simply a decision that a user makes to complete a task that requires a time expenditure. To-Do lists for example, are lists of time demands. So are the messages in our email Inbox that we intend to work on later.
The Essential Practices
1. Capturing: placing time demands in reliable places for temporary storage, using as few places as possible, and never using one’s memory! These “reliable places” are called capture points.
2. Emptying: moving these time demands from capture points into other parts of our time management system
3. Tossing: after some consideration, deciding not to perform an item that’s in a capture point
4. Acting Now: immediately executing time demands that can be completed within 5 minutes
5. Storing: placing information that needs to be used later in a safe place (such as an email address or URL)
6. Scheduling: deploying time demands into a calendar as a set of appointments that include oneself, or also other people
7. Listing: sorting numerous time demands into lists that are too detailed to be scheduled in a calendar (e.g. a grocery list)
The Advanced Practices
1. Interrupting: creating ways to signal the start of a new time demand in a way that forces the user to make a decision about switching
2. Switching: deciding what to do next, once a time demand is complete
3. Warning: being advised that one’s time management system is about to fail
4. Reviewing: proactively maintain one’s time management system to ensure that it is working as planned
Within each of these practices it's possible to move from a level of basic learning to that of mastery. The choice is the user's, and it's one that they can make as they grow as a professional and take on increasing responsibilities, with a commensurate rise in the number of time demands that they must handle each day.
A professional who makes a conscious choice to develop some capability in each fundamental, according to their needs is one who is taking charge of a critical aspect of their lives. They don't complain about what life has given, or not given them, and instead focus on practicing the fundamentals until they achieve the level of mastery they need for their lives to work.
They have found the hidden secret of time management.
Francis Wade is the author of the 2Time website, plus several articles, presentations and courses that focus on Tmme Management 2.0. See http://2time-sys.com for more information.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Francis_Wade
