How to be a Time Master

Control Your Time...Control Your Life

Ian Cooper

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781906465674
• eBook ISBN: 9781907293146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

If you could save just 24 minutes a day you'd gain an extra 6 days a year. Some say the world was created in 6 days. What could you achieve?

You don't have to work harder or spend hours defining your life goals in order to manage your time. The Time Master approach is full of quick painkilling solutions and long-term 'know-how'.

This is more than time management, this is time mastery.

Forget about complicated planning techniques and endless charts - withover 400 practical tips and tricks at your fingertips, you'll be able to tackle your main problem areas and take back control of your time and your life, quickly. As a Time Master, you will learn how to slow down and enjoy doing the things you really want to do.

Master ways to:

• Work out what really needs to be done and when
• Manage emails, your screen time and the telephone
• Run brilliant meetings
• Deal with interruptions
• Stop others stealing your time
• Say no when necessary and manage our boss
• Make time for your health
• And many more...

'A common sense approach to time management... in an easy to read format.' --Clare Evans, Time Management Coach and author of Time Management For Dummies

1

MASTER YOUR PLANNING

I regularly encounter people who tell me that time management is not for them because they don’t like planning. If their perception of this discipline is spending hours sweating over daily, weekly and monthly charts and never being able to feel spontaneous, then I don’t blame them for feeling that way. It wouldn’t be for me either!

How you do it and the level of sophistication is absolutely up to you, but know this: any planning system is better than none. If you don’t plan at all, you won’t have control over your life and others will. If you don’t have a method and a habit of planning, then get one!

With this in mind, here are the Time Master Planning Truths. These are a set of very simple guiding principles that apply in every situation regardless of the planning method you use or the complexity of your life.

PRIORITIZATION IS THE ‘HOLY GRAIL’ OF TIME PLANNING

One area on which all time management planning experts agree is the absolute importance of prioritizing. Ultimately, everything boils down to this. You choose what you spend your time on at any given moment. Make good choices and you are on your way to becoming a Time Master.

When you have a multitude of things to do both at work and in your personal life, the problem you are faced with is deciding what order to do things in. People who just ‘do’without any thought - and this applies to many - are always at risk of losing control of their time, getting less done and being more stressed than people who have a conscious strategy behind their choices.

The big problem, however, is how to prioritize in order to choose one task or thing to do over the rest. See Chapter 2 for my thoughts and tips on this question.

DON’T BECOME A TIME PLANNING JUNKIE

Don’t become a time planning junkie or a slave to time planning charts. This activity is not an end in itself. When the planning process starts to become so time consuming that you have no time left to do the things you are planning, then take my word for it, you have your priorities wrong!

I have read books that recommend two hours a day of time planning. I don’t know about you, but I can think of many more things I would rather do than give up two hours every day just to plan! In fact, anyone who has two hours to devote to this task probably hasn’t got much to do.

So how much planning should you be doing? You need to do enough to make a difference in your life and that’s it. If you are spending more than 10 minutes a day on thinking and planning your time, that is probably too much.

Avoid becoming too obsessive or inflexible with your planning. Plans are there to help you live your life to the full, they are not an end in themselves. Planning every minute of your time can take the joy out of living. It is the equivalent of a wealthy person sitting at home all day counting their money and deciding precisely what they will buy instead of getting out there and enjoying it!

You shouldn’t try to plan everything. Being spontaneous is a virtue and you can’t put ‘be spontaneous’ in your diary for 7-8 p.m. every Thursday, as one person I came across used to do. That defeats the purpose!

Businesses should heed this advice too. Some organizations and their management take time planning far too far. I have over the years encountered companies who are quite prepared to take every key member away from their main duties for days at a time at the busiest and most commercially significant time of the year to engage in time planning exercises. Of course time planning is good business practice, but not if it stops you doing business.

NO ONE PLANNING SYSTEM FITS ALL

Some time management writers focus on a particular, almost mechanical system of time planning - usually one they have created - and push this to the exclusion of anything else. You often read, ‘Such and such a system is state of the art and the only “proper”way to do your planning,’which leaves you feeling intellectually inadequate and useless if you can’t understand the system or it doesn’t work for you.

While I do have the Time Master ‘www question’ system as my personal guiding principle to any planning method (I’ll tell you what this is shortly), I want to be blunt, open and pragmatic with you: no one system fits all. Too often the focus seems to be on the mechanics of a time planning system without the recognition that everyone is different and has their own ‘time personality’.

What is important is to create a system that works for you. It doesn’t matter what others say, how it conforms to the experts’ perception of what is good or how simplistic it is. At the end of the day the only test is whether or not it is helping you get more control of your time to use as you want.

Arguing that there is only one way is a bit like saying there is only one weight loss system that works. Some people advocate counting calories, scoring points, eating meal replacement bars, weighing in every week, avoiding certain foods, or doing press-ups every morning before their six-mile jog! The reality is that they all work if carried out sensibly and on a sustained basis.

My time planning message is that planning should be personality and not systems led. Later in this chapter I will offer you a menu of different planning methods to consider. Some will appeal to you more than others. Try them out, mix and match until you have something that gives you the level of improved control that you are seeking.

UNDERSTAND THE TIME MASTER WWW QUESTION SYSTEM

I mentioned above my ‘www question’ approach to time planning as a guiding principle behind every time planning system. This couldn’t be simpler. Stick to it and you won’t go far wrong. Each ‘w’ stands for an important question:

W = What do you ‘have to’ and ‘want to’ get done?
W = When will you do it?
W = Where will you write this information down so that it is
easily visible and accessible to remind you?

The answers to these three questions will give you everything you need to plan well. The rest is detail! Let’s explore these a little further.

W = WHAT DO YOU ‘HAVE TO’ AND ‘WANT TO’ GET DONE?

The key tool for answering the ‘what’ question is the ‘to do’ list.

‘TO DO’ LISTS

I have heard many people say that they don’t like ‘to do’ lists. If you fall into that category, you have a problem because every planning system essentially starts with a ‘to do’process. You can’t think and organize your ‘things to do’until you know what they are.

You may have a massive choice over how you divide up your things and where you write them down and store them, but all planning begins with the ‘to do’ list process. Don’t ignore it altogether.

The humble ‘to do’ list itself comes in varying levels of simplicity and complexity and can be structured very differently. Which of these do you think might work for you?

Level 1: The basic ‘to do’ list

This is just the process of creating a written list of things that you need or want to do. It is writing down the answer to the simple question: What shall I do today, this week, month or year? Think of something you need or want to do, put it on the list and cross it off when you’ve done it. That’s the process in a nutshell. It doesn’t distinguish between any specific projects or activities, or anything else for that matter. You just dump everything onto one list. Planning done!

I have come across people who knock this approach to time management as being flawed because it is too simple. What nonsense! It may not be the best method for everyone, but it is only too basic if it doesn’t give you the required result. I have encountered many people, some of whom are very bright and in senior business positions, who previously did absolutely no planning at all and found that the humble Level 1 ‘to do’ list transformed their lives.

If you are starting from scratch, this may be a great place to start from before you work through the other levels as you try to improve.

Level 2: The prioritized ‘to do’ list

This kind of list involves doing everything in Level 1, but deciding once you have prepared your list what your priorities are and what order you will actually do things in.

As I mentioned before, how you decide on your priorities is a potentially huge issue and one that I deal with separately in the section ‘Master Your Priorities’.

If you can prioritize, it will maximize your chances of ensuring that the most important things - those activities that will have the biggest impact for you - are dealt with first. Remember the 80/20 rule from the Time Master Truths? The idea is to spend your time where the effect will be greatest and where it will bring you closest to what you want to achieve.

You can physically highlight and identify your priorities on your ‘to do’list in any way that works for you. Some people like to grade and mark them as A, B or C tasks, others 1, 2 or 3 and many visually sensitive people like to colour code them in some way with a highlighter pen. You choose.

Level 3: The prioritized, time-specified ‘to do’ list

Again you have a list with everything on it, but with this approach not only do you identify and record your priorities in some way, you also consciously ask in relation to each item: When precisely will I do it?

For most people, asking ‘When?’ and putting the answer somewhere in their planning system is the biggest factor of all in reducing stress in time management and I include myself in this category. There is nothing worse than carrying around a huge and growing list of ‘things to do’ in your head, wondering ‘How will I ever get through them?’, ‘How do I cope?’or ‘Help!’

Nothing works better than putting all the tasks into a list, sorting them into some priority order in terms of importance to you and then deciding precisely when each will be done. Once you have put an item into your diary or planning system, you experience a sense of peace and relief, in the knowledge that a particular thing will turn up to be dealt with at the allotted time.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF ‘TO DO’ LISTS

In addition to the three levels of detail just explained, there are a number of variations to the ‘to do’ list format that you might want to consider and experiment with.

The project specific ‘to do’ list

Depending on your lifestyle or your job, you might find it helpful to draw up your list under different headings, with relevant ‘to do’ items under each of them. The headings might be divided into clients, or other categories of your daily or weekly commitments.

If you are an account manager at a PR or marketing company and you look after three main clients, for example, you might have a list of things to do under each client you handle. As a teacher or lecturer, you might have a list of things to do under different classes you take as headings, along with another one for administrative duties. If you are self-employed running a small business, you might have lists for new business, past clients or customer activity, and one for administration and finance.

How can you divide up what you do? What are your main areas of focus?

This is the method I use at Level 3.

The activity-specific ‘to do’ list

This method is not divided into subjects or projects but specific types of activities, such as telephone calls you need to make or are planning to receive, emails to draft and send, meetings and proposals to write. Of course, this again can be drafted at Levels 1, 2 or 3 and in any written format to suit your personal preference.

Time section-specific ‘to do’ list

I have also adopted this approach many times over the years. It is a major plank of my Time Master thinking that you must feel you have the flexibility to adapt an...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• WHAT TYPE OF TIME MASTER ARE YOU?
• THE TIME MASTER TRUTHS
• WHAT ARE YOUR TIME PROBLEMS?
• Chapter 1 - MASTER YOUR PLANNING
• Chapter 2 - MASTER YOUR PRIORITIES
• Chapter 3 - MASTER YOUR STUFF
• Chapter 4 - MASTER YOUR PROCRASTINATION
• Chapter 5 - MASTER YOUR TIME ESTIMATES
• Chapter 6 - MASTER YOUR TELEPHONE
• Chapter 7 - MASTER YOUR EMAIL
• Chapter 8 - MASTER YOUR SCREEN TIME
• Chapter 9 - MASTER YOUR MEETINGS
• Chapter 10 - MASTER YOUR INTERRUPTIONS
• Chapter 11 - MASTER YOUR TIME THIEVES
• Chapter 12 - MASTER THE ABILITY TO SAY NO!
• Chapter 13 - MASTER YOUR BOSS
• Chapter 14 - MASTER YOUR DELEGATION SKILLS
• Chapter 15 - MASTER YOUR TIME CHARGING
• Chapter 16 - MASTER YOUR DECISION MAKING
• Chapter 17 - MASTER YOUR HEALTH
• Chapter 18 - DON’T BE TIME BORED!
• TIME MASTER TRAVEL TIPS
• TIME MASTER SHOPPING TIPS
• TIME MASTER EATING OUT TIPS
• TIME MASTER BUSINESS TIPS
• THE TIME MASTER COMMANDMENTS
• INDEX