You may have heard lots about managing your time. The purpose of this lesson is to bring together all the simple time management concepts in one place.
Concepts:
- Two Choices – Organize time or Free up time.
Allocation (Organization)
- Allocation – Everyone has the same amount of time. It’s all about how you allocate it. Consciously choose to allocate it in a way that will create the future you want.
- Begin with the end in mind – If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
- Personal Management – Time management is a misnomer, what we are actually managing is ourselves, our focus, our energy, our choices, and our activities.
- Time Management Tools – S. Covey’s continuum of the evolvement of time management tools: simple to-do list; task list with priorities, calendars, and schedules; taking your vision and planning that first; the four quadrants of prioritization.
- 4 Generations
- 1- Notes and checklists
- 2- Calendars and appointment books
- 3- Time management prioritization, values
- 4- Relationships and Results maintaining the production-production capability balance (Time management is a misnomer)
- Four Quadrants
- 4 Generations
- Time Blocking – Setting aside time and sticking to it. Being flexible to be able to move this block around, but never creating more or destroying what you have.
- Power Hour Sheet – Jot things down during the day, so when your power hour (your blocked out time) comes, you will be super productive.
- Weekly Planning/Review – Planning for a week is the most productive period. Daily reviews, yes. Monthly goals, yes. But weekly allocating time.
More Time (Free Up Your Time)
- Freeing Up Time with Increased Productivity – Allocation together with increased productivity seems to create more time out of nothing.
- FOCUS Do Less & Accomplish More – Tear things down to the essential parts. Find your mission in life and focus on making that one thing happen to an exclusion of all else.
- Take Time Inventory – Review a period of time, like a week, and see where you spend your time and analyze how each of those tasks helps you reach your goals.
- Eliminate Unproductive &Â Unimportant Tasks – Having in mind a clear vision of where you are going and what you want to accomplish, you can start to remove all that excess baggage that won’t get you there.
- Low Information Diet – Capture time wasted consuming news, media, and other things that you can’t control (outside your circle of influence). You can get an update on what’s going on in the world from friends.1
- Pareto 80-20 Rule – Many people find they spend 80% of their time with 20% of their customers. Fire those 20% and replace them with customers who take up less time. There are other applications for this, too.
- Batching – Doing simple or repetitive tasks all at once on a weekly basis. Being more productive with your time.
- Boundaries – You may love to serve others and take responsibility to bring them happiness. Or perhaps you find your time drained by other’s problems and crises. You need to set limits. Let others know when you will be available for them and when you are unavailable because of prior commitments you have made to yourself. If people are draining your time, ask for reciprocation, “I’ll do this for you if you help me in this way and free up some of my time.”
- Saying No – Learn how to say, “No” to ‘good’ things that you are asked to do, but that don’t help you reach your goals.
- Honor your own time – If you respect your time, other people will respect it, too.
- Outsourcing – Are there things you are not good at doing or don’t like doing that you can have someone else do for less. Outsource some of your tasks to others who love doing them.
- Delegation – If you are a leader, you can delegate certain tasks and share the load with others. This can lighten your load and get more done as well as give enjoyment and involvement to others. You can also delegate decision making by giving people simple rules or values to employ to make decisions for you.
- Share – If something needs to be done, you don’t necessarily have to be the doer of it. Even if you can do it better than someone else, you sometimes need to let go and allow others to step up.
Books mostly used in this post:
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Jade’s Time Management Tips
Footnotes and References
- This idea comes from Timothy Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Chapter 6
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