The Use Of Time Management

Time - you won't create more of it, and you'll never have enough of it.

Time is your most valuable commodity. It comes at you fast, and runs away from you even faster, often leaving you wondering what happened to it.

During my school years, and again in my early working years, I learned that the busier I kept myself during the day, the faster I lost time. The day seemed shorter when I avoided inactivity, and I felt like I spent little time working, and a lot of time at home, so I stayed as busy as possible during my working hours.

As I advanced into higher positions, and my responsibilities increased, I realized that I never had enough time to complete all of the tasks my career required.

Seemed like I always fell behind.

Then I lucked into a seminar on time management that exploded that bright light of an Aha moment inside my head. I built on that seminar with some self-study, and grew my time-scheduling techniques until I reached the point of not only completing those tasks I needed done, but also completing those tasks in smaller and smaller periods each day.

Perhaps you read that last paragraph and think, "How is it possible to accomplish everything I need in fewer hours when I can't get most of that stuff done in a full eight hour work day?"

Well maybe my experience can help you answer that question, but you must realize that these techniques take discipline, and if you don't truly want to increase your productivity while shortening your time consumption, you won't.

One technique of time management routine that I recommend is scheduling your activities:

At the end of each workday, take time to schedule tomorrow. List every task for tomorrow on paper, categorize each task, and then organize your tasks in order of how you'll work on them.

A. Your first category is "Important And Urgent Tasks." This category is for tasks that have importance to future gains, and carry the appearance that completion must happen immediately. For instance something you can complete gives you a strong step toward a promotion, but it has a deadline of "by the end-of-day tomorrow."

B. The next category is "Important But Not Urgent Tasks." These tasks, if successfully completed, give extreme impact on gaining an important goal or increasing your bottom line income. An example here is a task that leads you toward that promotion if you finish it, but you have all week to perform the task.

C. Category 3 is "Urgent But Not Important Tasks." These efforts have an air of immediacy, but won't particularly mean personal gain. A ringing telephone represents urgency, but some calls are nothing more than a waste of your productive time. These tasks are best delegated to someone else as they provide you with no personal growth.

D. Category 4 is "Not Important, Not Urgent." Working on tasks in this category totally wastes your time. Give these tasks to someone else, or simply throw them out.

Place the "Important And Urgent Tasks" at the top of your daily schedule. Commit your time to working on these tasks, and focus strictly on these tasks until completion of every one.

Start work on the "Important But Not Urgent Tasks" only after finishing your first category efforts.

If you have time remaining after completion of the Category A & B tasks, work on the "Urgent But Not Important Tasks." Don't concern yourself if you don't complete all of these, they rarely represent any dramatic impact to the future of your career.

Working on the first two categories will demand most of your every day activity, and you'll most likely never arrive at your "Not Important, Not Urgent" category. That's okay; those tasks never do much for you anyway.

Make this scheduling technique a habit, and you'll amaze yourself with how much you accomplish. And you'll enjoy admiration from your superiors and co-workers too.