Welcome to my 4-part series on time management which will highlight strategies for creating the correct balance for ultimate success.
Time Management
Ask yourself:
Do you spend your time wisely and invest it in activities that produce results?
Do you know what things should be dropped or delegated?
Do you understand what’s important and are you doing it?
Do you make things easier for yourself or harder?
Think about your answers to these questions. Consider participating in this series in order to find answers and strategies to help gain balance and goal success in your personal and professional life.
Objectives for this Series:
- Discover where your time goes in order to ensure that you are investing in activities that contribute most to your productivity.
- Reduce time wasting activities, interruptions and distractions.
- Goal setting strategies and why planning and clear goals set the foundation for success.
- Get and stay organized.
- Make decisions and set priorities.
- Create balance.
Week One: Time Management and Productivity
How many feel that their time is out of control or that you do not have enough hours in the day to get things done?
Time management and productivity do not necessarily go together. In reality, time management is a tool to make you more productive. So how do we improve time management skills in order to improve productivity? The following series and each topic within the series will break down each step to achieve balance, efficiency and ultimately goal success.
Step 1 – Time Log:
Fill out a time log, for one week, to see where you are spending most of your productive hours during each day of the week. You should fill out a time log for work and a separate one for home. This way you can examine where your time is being used up. This is an important step, to self assess, before any change in efforts can have any impact.
Instructions: List each activity you do for one to two weeks to find out where your time goes. Enter the date, a brief description of the activity, the time you began and ended it and a ranking for its importance. Rank an activity from 5 to 1, with 5 for the activities critical to your success and 1 for the activities that contribute little to your success. Keep your log for at least one week. Once you have finished your tracking, analyze the log to see where your time goes and develop strategies for streamlining activities, eliminating time wasters, and becoming more productive.
Information to include in your Time Log:
|
Date |
Activity |
Time Started/Ended |
Rank |
Step 2 – Time Log Review:
How satisfied are you with your days?
How much time did you spend on the most important activities?
How much time was spent on the less important activities?
Identify how you currently spend your time. Where does your time go now? Are you spending it on the right things and getting them done? Or are you scattered and unfocused?
Identify time wasters and create strategies for eliminating them.
