A NEW and SIMPLE look at Time Management.

…there is so much to do, with so little time… but each year new technology comes out that is supposed to HELP US…

QUESTION: Why do all these TOOLS seem ineffective?

ANSWER: You have to be able to apply it, consistently. Can you?

My tip to you for the NEW YEAR is simple and it really works; at least for me it has.

• Step 1: PRIORITIZE EVERYTHING both your Personal and Professional goals. Make sure your professional goals align to what your BOSS and ORGANIZATION needs. Not what you want to do. Refer back to some previous articles if needed:
  1. How you should look at your Job
  2. How to ALWAYS get a YES from your Boss

  First decide if it is Urgent or Important. There are only 4 choices for each item: A, B, C, or D. Quickly place each item, task or project into one of these ‘Buckets’ (Don’t spend time now Prioritizing within the buckets we will do that later).

  	URGENT	not Urgent
  IMPORTANT	A	B
  not Important	C	D

  Items in bucket A are URGENT and IMPORTANT.

  PROBLEM: You should NEVER have tasks in this bucket. If you do have tasks here it is because you already procrastinated doing the task and it finally ended up here in order to meet the deadline, or it is here because others are poor planners…You may be tricked into spending the majority of your time working on these, but these are the REAL PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS. Everyone knows that rushing through things does not produce the BEST RESULTS.

  SOLUTION: Try to work into ‘Your Plan’ and Move these items to Bucket B.

  Items in bucket B are not Urgent and IMPORTANT

  PROBLEM: No problems here, this is where you want to spend as much time as possible.

  SOLUTION: Items that fall in this Bucket, have been well thought out and you are working on the most important items in the best and most productive way. Work hard to keep as many tasks as possible in this Bucket. Good Job!

  Items in bucket C are URGENT and not Important

  PROBLEM: Items in this Bucket are typically ‘political’ and have no real value.

  SOLUTION: Attempt to educate and eliminate these activities since they are NOT IMPORTANT.

  Items in bucket D are not Urgent and not Important.

  These items should not be done at all… If you have to ‘Drop some balls’ these are the ones to drop.

  TIP: Re-prioritize OFTEN since many things or events will change your priorities.

• Step 2: CREATE MANAGEABLE TASKS Break big projects into many manageable tasks…
• Step 3: This is the Simple part. Actually plug those tasks directly into your daily calendar, like appointments with yourself.
  

  Here are some codes I use in my Calendar:

  • Mtg: (if it is a Meeting or Conference Call)
  • Todo: (if I’m dedicating time to work on a task, preferably only items in Bucket B)
  • Travel: (block travel time to give yourself enough time to safely make it to and from an appointment)
  • Event: (I sometimes use these for Church or other personal activities)
  • Info: (you may want to keep track of an on-line purchase, tracking the confirmation etc…)

  Here is a sample day:
  

  You’ll notice your days will fill up quickly, but hopefully with the right activities and prioritized in the right order.

  Make sure you leave some OPEN gaps in your schedule for others to make meetings with you (especially your Team).

  Plan for interuptions, THEY WILL COME. If you have to move something to make room for a new and higher priority, look at your deadlines and move a Todo item not a meeting (since that will effect others).

  If you think a task will take 3 one hour sessions plan for 4-5 one hour sessions to ensure you don’t miss the deadline. The more you understand your environment and patterns of others the better your planning will be.

  You’ll know your planning well by the decreasing amounts of changes you need to do to your calendar.

I hope these ideas work for you as well as they have for me. If you have questions or comments please let me know so I can respond.

GOOD LUCK!