Steps for Managing Your Time
1.Analyze how you currently spend your time.
•For at least one day and preferably a week, use a time log to record the things you do. Note each activity and how long it takes.
•Tally your activities into one of six categories:
•telephone calls
•scheduled appointments
•drop-in/ad hoc appointments
•meetings
•administrative work
•report writing and analysis
•Take each category and total the number of minutes spent on it each day. Divide the result by the total number of minutes in your day. (An 8-hour day has 480 minutes.) This tells you the percentage of time that you spend working on that activity.
•Determine whether the time you spend in each category matches your key responsibilities.
•Evaluate your time usage in terms of payoff.
Steps for Managing Your Time
2.Review your goals.
•Review your organizational, departmental, and personal goals.
•Consider the priorities that you have assigned to each goal, and ask yourself whether you are attempting too much. If the answer is yes, try adjusting your priorities.
Steps for Managing Your Time
3.Break your goals into manageable tasks.
•Review each of your goals individually, and list all of the key tasks required to achieve each goal.
•Put the tasks in sequential order.
•Estimate how much of your time each task or activity will require. Remember to add a 10–20% cushion to your time estimates to allow for the unexpected.
•Establish a deadline for the completion of each task or activity. For more complex activities, set up milestones along the way to track your progress.
•Assign priorities to each task, based on the priority of the goal that each task supports.
•Note which tasks need to be completed in a sequence, and which may be done at any time before or after a particular stage is reached.
Steps for Managing Your Time
4.Schedule your time.
Take your top priority tasks and block them into time slots over several weeks or months, using a scheduling tool that allows you to take a daily, weekly, and monthly perspective. Bear in mind the resources you have available, and allow some slack time for hold-ups, over-runs, failures in delivery, etc.
•Schedule important work or activities that need creativity and intelligence during your peak energy period.
•Schedule only part of your day, leaving time to deal with crises and the unexpected.
•Combine tasks and consolidate similar activities, where possible.
•Identify tasks to work on when you have unexpected free time.
•Use to-do lists to break daily tasks into further detail.
Keep your schedule easily accessible. Check on your progress throughout the day to see if you are on target.
Steps for Managing Your Time
5.Identify your time wasters and outline strategies to deal with them.
•Review your time log and identify the types of things that prevent you from keeping to your schedule.
•Work with one time waster at a time.
•For each time waster, brainstorm strategies that match your personal style.
•Experiment with the strategies you develop and keep the ones that are realistic.
•Make sure to add those time wasters you cannot control back into your schedule.
Steps for Managing Your Time
6.Implement your schedule.
Once you have analyzed your time and time wasters, and scheduled your time, you are ready to implement your schedule.
•Carry your to-do list with you during the day. Consult it when needed to make sure that you at least complete your top priority tasks during the course of the day.
•Review your schedule at the end of the day. Reward yourself for tasks completed on schedule and make any adjustments needed during the rest of the week.
•Handle unexpected tasks quickly and return to your priority tasks.
•As changes occur, modify your weekly schedule to compensate.
•Remember, new habits, like adhering to a schedule, are hard to adopt at first. The more you do it, the more automatic it becomes.
Steps for Managing Your Time
7.Evaluate your schedule and make adjustments.
After you have been using scheduling tools for about one month, monitor the implementation and results of your schedule. Ask yourself the following:
•Are you completing the tasks you set for the week?
•Are you making progress on achieving your goals? Do you feel better prepared and focused?
•What was the impact of not doing some tasks?
•Are you avoiding time wasters?
•Is this a schedule you can keep up?
If you have had a problem completing activities on time, ask your manager or direct reports for feedback. Incorporate their observations into your continuous improvements. Modify your schedule based on your analysis.
Tips for Scheduling Time
Take both a long-term and a short-term perspective: schedule tasks for each day, and schedule several weeks or even months at a time.
When your schedule changes, mark what really occurred in your day for future reference.
Learn when your "high-energy" and "low-energy" times occur and schedule your day accordingly.
Balance your activities—schedule time to allow yourself to unwind. Include time for physical exercise, recreation, and social activities.
Remember Parkinson’s Law: Work tends to expand to fill the time allotted.
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