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TIME IS FINITE – YOU CAN’T GET ANY MORE OF IT.

…“MAKES SENSE TO KNOW HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME THOUGHTFULLY, EVERY SINGLE DAY”

Follow the guidance within this post and you will be able to self-organise your activities and save yourself a lot of wasted time. Concentrate ONLY on tasks or activities for TODAY.

You are busy every day, all day but you don’t seem to get everything done… Is that you?

You do the easy things first but that still leaves you too much to do every day… YES?

OK, the problem IS NOT:

The weather – we often blame the weather when we can’t achieve our goals
The Neighbours – poor old neighbours… blamed for everything!
Your tools – what do we say about a poor workman?
Family members – Don’t we love them all, so easy to blame!
Politics – Yeah, I think it probably is to blame for most things!!
The dog! If I owned a dog, I’d probably blame him for EVERYTHING!!…

It is also NOT:

The job or tasks
The chair you sit on
The computer
The office environment
Or the interruptions you get

Of course they all play a part but the problem remains…

… lots of stuff does not get done due to a lack of proper planning.

The first step in Time Planning is a little bit of research, starting with a question…

What are the tasks or challenges you are needing to accomplish during the DAY?

My own experience shows that a LIST is needed:

e.g.

Before you go to work, estimate how much time you will have available to do your tasks
List TODAY’s tasks in any order without worrying about how many there are.
Realise that you may not be able to achieve all the tasks in the availabe time
Prioritise the list of tasks using this 2×2 table >>>>

The quadrants A B C D represent the DEGREE of Importance and Urgency you wish to place on each task and, believe it or not, WHO SHOULD ACTUALLY DO THE TASK!!

Reproduce this diagram and place markings to represent 0 – 100 percent along the vertical and horizontal scales. 100% = IMPORTANT and URGENT, 0% = Not Important and Not Urgent

Now, look at your list of tasks for TODAY and decide the letter (A B C D) that each task falls under when the following definitions prevail:

IMPORTANT means important to you and it is what you get paid for doing … e.g. create an invoice for the work done on a client’s (Smith’s) latest project.

Urgent means when it must be done by… e.g. Collect little Jimmy from school by 3.30pm i.e. this task has a time element.

Clearly, the invoice task could be done by someone else or DELEGATED!

Similarly, Little Jimmy could be picked up from school by someone else (DELEGATE)!

Now to define the letters on the table to see where you could place the tasks from your list.

A = Tasks done by YOU, giving them your top priority for Impoortance and Urgency for TODAY.

B = Tasks may be done by yourself in part and deleghated in part

C = These tasks are all delegated to someone else based on their lower degrees of Importance and Urgency

D = Do NOT DO THESE Tasks because they are neither Important nor Urgent for TODAY!

This subject is often controversial in the way we treat the management of our time but you will notice it depends a great deal on how you define your work, how you prioritise the various tasks and whether or not you accept that Delegation is something you can do?

Working within these definitions and guidelines… That’s How To Manage Your Time Thoughtfully

Please comment if you want to say something about your Time management that might help our readers… in fact, please let me know about anything you want to chat about. Thanks!