Improve Your Time Management: Teach Yourself

Polly Bird

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781444102529
• eBook ISBN: 9781444129489
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Time Management

Improve your Time Management is the definitive guide to the basics of time management - the art of organising your life so that you are in control. You don't need complicated equipment, dozens of staff or a six-month break to learn how to save time and achieve more. All you need is a willingness to try some of the ideas in this book and the energy to start now.
Improve your Time Management starts by asking you what you want to do with your life and explains how to work out how you really spend your time. It helps you to find out what you do that wastes time and tells you how to eliminate it then shows you how to plan your life better so that you deal with important activities and tasks at the most appropriate times. It tackles time-wasting activities such as paperwork, phone calls and meetings. And just to make sure that you aren't the only person in your office working at optimum efficiency, it explains how to instil good time management practices in your staff.
By the time you finish the book, you will not only be using your time more effectively but will have more of it. This book will help you turn time into your best friend rather than your worst enemy.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.
AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.
TEST YOURSELFTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.
EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of time management.
TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

1

Choose your personal priorities

In this chapter you will learn:

• how to decide your priorities and goals in life
• how to work out what goals to set yourself
• objectives for achieving these goals

Where are you going?

Like most people you probably take a short-term view of your life. You want to get your work done and get home and have enough time to enjoy yourself. But unless you take a longer view and know where you want your life to go, you cannot plan how you will get there.

You probably live your life in a rush. You rush to get to work, the work piles up, you always seem to be dashing about and never seem to have time to do everything. You probably have times when you feel overwhelmed by the amount you have to fit into your day. You find yourself reacting to other people’s demands, interruptions and phone calls instead of controlling your life. This can make you feel stressed, tired and depressed.

But look at the successful people you know. How do they fit so much into their lives but still remain on top of things? The saying ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person’ fits them well. Yet they never seem overwhelmed by everything. They can fit so much in because they have a clear idea of what they want and where they are going in life. They also have a clear idea about how they are going to achieve it.

By having this clear vision of the future they become successful, busy and happy because they are controlling their time in order to achieve their aims in life. Just as a company with no overall vision founders in the market place, so you will founder in your life unless you know where you are going.

Are you Bob or Betty?

Be honest with yourself – which of these two people do you resemble most?

Bob regularly oversleeps, gets to work late and feels constantly tired. His desk is covered with piles of paper and he can never find the piece he needs. Work seems never-ending. He constantly has to deal with interruptions either in person or by phone. He dashes from one meeting to another and never seems to have time to settle down to work on his major project. There seems to be a crisis every day. He usually works late, gets home tired and after a hurried meal does more work. His family complain that they hardly see him. He feels frustrated because he never seems to get work done and is constantly under stress. His managers are beginning to wonder if he’s really up to the job.

Or are you like Betty? Betty gets up at the same time every morning and allows herself time to have a good breakfast before getting to work on time. She has just as much work to do as Bob but manages to keep it under control. Her desk is not exceptionally neat but has fewer bits of paper on it and is reasonably tidy. She has organized her office so that she can find everything she needs quickly. She gets interrupted too, but not nearly as often as Bob and she deals with most interruptions quickly. She only goes to the meetings she needs to and makes sure she is well prepared for them. She has been working on her major project regularly for the past fortnight and it is nearly finished. Fewer crises come Betty’s way than Bob’s, and those that do she copes with without fuss. She rarely works late and only takes work home occasionally – and then works for an hour at most. She has plenty of time to relax with her family and has the energy to enjoy outside interests. Her managers see a competent employee who has work under control and a personality enriched by her leisure activities. She is earmarked for promotion.

Most of us want to be like Betty but spend more time in a muddle like Bob. But there is hope for you. This book is going to make you efficient and effective.

Self-assessment

HOW WELL DO YOU CONTROL YOUR TIME?

1. Are you always on time for work and meetings?
2. Do you complete work on time?
3. Can you find everything you need quickly?
4. Do you usually leave work on time?
5. Have you enough time for your family?
6. Do you feel in control of your life?

If you answered yes to all the questions then you are good at controlling your time. This book will help you improve your time management and give you new ideas for making time work for you. If your answers were mostly no then you need this book to help you regain control of your life.

The 80/20 principle

Did you know that only 20 per cent of your time produces 80 per cent of your work, or that 20 per cent of your work achieves 80 per cent of results, or that 20 per cent of managers do 80 per cent of the work, or … Examples of this principle are found everywhere. It is also called Pareto’s Law after the Mr Pareto who discovered this interesting ratio.

What this means to you is that just 20 per cent of your time deals with productive activities. The other 80 per cent is lower priority or unnecessary.

This shows the importance of working out exactly what you want from life. Once you have defined your goals you must make achieving them the highest priority and use that important 20 per cent of your time and effort on them. That way you will achieve more with less effort.

Your goals will help you prioritize. If something helps you achieve your goals, is an objective or step on the way to one of those goals, then it is high priority. Those important steps will make up the 20 per cent of your work. Put most of your effort into them. The other 80 per cent can be done later, delegated or ignored.

Start taking control

You need a clear idea about how you see your life in the future. Instead of responding to life by giving in to the demands of others, reacting to crises, or simply doing things out of habit, you can control your life. But to do so you need to know what you really want.

What do you want to be doing in five years, ten years, twenty years? What do you want to have achieved by the time you retire? How do you want to spend your retirement? Aim to make your life as much like your dreams as possible. Defining your goals and objectives in life will help you achieve your dreams – or at least go a long way towards them. By defining your goals you can organize your life accordingly. At first it might seem as if you can’t fit everything in. But trust me – if you know clearly where you want to get to, the journey will be much easier.

Define your life’s key areas

First, decide which are the most important areas of your life – your key areas. Look at the various roles you play. Are you a worker, parent, worshipper, committee member, sports person? By looking at these roles you can work out what broad categories your life falls into. Ask yourself ‘What is important to me?’ A typical list might be:

• family
• work
• leisure
• community
• spiritual
• money
• health.

Within each of these areas of your life you will have goals you want to achieve. Until you have worked out what those goals are, you cannot decide what you need to do to achieve them and therefore how to arrange your time to achieve them.

WHAT ARE YOUR SECRET AMBITIONS?

Forget for a moment about the work you have to do tomorrow and that committee meeting you have to go to at the local community centre. Take an hour to write down your hopes and dreams – all the things that you want to do, however silly they seem. Include dreams and ambitions that relate to the all the key areas of your life, both professional and private. For example:

• become chief executive
• work only four hours a day
• spend three months fishing in Scotland
• live in China
• go bareback riding in the USA
• buy a Rolls Royce.

Don’t be shy – let your dreams flow. Some of the dreams may be ultimately unachievable (perhaps becoming chief executive is a little ambitious!) but they give you something to aim for. Other things, such as the fishing in the example, can be planned for and could be achieved, if you had time and money.

Take into account the things you regret not having done, your secret wishes, the things you like doing best, what you would do if you had more free time, in fact anything that you can visualize as part of your ideal life.

Don’t write down what you or other people think you ought to want to achieve – write down your own goals however silly they may seem. If you aim for the stars you might never get there but you can at least visit a few asteroids on the way.

Try to write at least one goal, preferably three, for each key area. For example, your goals for family life might be:

• spend more time with my family
• travel together
• have time to help my children with their homework
• spend quality time with my partner.

By writing down your ambitions in this way you can see in which areas you need to make changes to your time.

WHAT TALENTS DO YOU HAVE?

Write down all your talents and inner strengths, too. These are all part of the resources that will help you reach your goals. Don’t underestimate these. No skill or personal resource is too trivial to be valuable to you whether it is courage, needlework, honesty, car mechanics, being a good listener or having the ability to get on well with others. Assess all your talents and skills to see how they can help you achieve your goals, or whether they should become part of your goals.

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Insight

If you are not sure what personal qualities you have, ask a friend to give you an honest assessment.

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DEFINE YOUR VALUES

Your goals will give your life directio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Meet the author
• Only got a minute?
• Only got five minutes?
• 1 Choose your personal priorities
• 2 How much time have you got?
• 3 Plan your time
• 4 Using transition time
• 5 Conquer procrastination
• 6 Learn to say ‘no’
• 7 Reduce paperwork
• 8 Subdue your phone
• 9 Master your meetings
• 10 The art of delegating
• 11 Deal with information overload
• 12 Time management training
• Taking it further
• Glossary
• Answers to revision tests
• Index