Time Management Skills and Techniques are of critical importance to people at all levels of organizations, and are often overlooked when it comes to development.  Below, we look at the following aspects of Time Management Skills and Techniques:

• Why Time Management Skills and Techniques usually fail.
• 5 Keys to Improved Time Management Skills and Techniques

Why Time Management Skills and Techniques Usually Fail

Many attempt to improve their Time Management Skills and Techniques, but it often doesn’t work.  There are two key reasons for this:

1. Normally, people attempt to be more efficient with their time, when they should be assessing their effectiveness.
2. They will be more effective when they do less, as opposed to trying to cram more into their day

5 keys to Improved Time Management Skills and Techniques

1. Understand where your time is currently being allocated
2. Be aware of your time wasters
3. Identify priorities and set goals
4. Plan your activities to achieve your goals
5. Take initiative and overcome procrastination

Understand where your time is currently being allocated

The first key to improved Time Management Skills and Techniques is to understand where you currently stand in terms of managing your time.  In order to do so, you will need to track your time for a period of two weeks.  This will only be meaningful if you are honest with yourself during the tracking.

You do not need to track your time in 5 minute increments, but rather spend one or two minutes twice a day (perhaps once at mid day, and once at the end of your day), and track your activities in 30 minute increments.  There are tools available on the Wily Manager website to assist in this task.

Be aware of your time wasters

A key impediment to improving Time Management Skills and Techniques are typical time waster that impact just about everyone.  Here are some common culprits:

• Email – much of the time spent dealing with email is not value added time.
• Many meetings – make sure the meetings you attend are valuable.
• Perfectionist tendencies – in some cases an 80% solution might be the best you can afford in terms of time.  Perfectionists want 100% all the time, and this is not realistic.
• Other people’s crises.  Just because someone else is having an emergency, doesn’t mean you need panic as well.
• Unclear roles or goals.  If you don’t know what your key goals are, then you end up doing a lot of things nobody care about, and have little value.  You cannot have good time management without understanding your goals and priorities.

Identify Priorities and set goals

A key part of effective Time Management Skills and Techniques is to make smart trade-offs with your time.  It is not possible to do everything, so those that are most successful make the best trade-offs.

• Focus on 3 – 7 key priorities at a time.  If you have many more than this, you will be setting yourself up for failure.
• Your priorities must align with those of the larger organization.  If you cannot see a clear line of sight between your priorities, and those of your boss, and the organization, there is probably a good chance you are expending much effort in futility.
• Ask “so what?”.  If you stopped doing something, who would notice, and how long would it take?
• Practice the 80/20 rule.  There are times for 100% solutions, but many other times, you need to quickly get a task to 80%, and then move on.  The extra amount of effort required to get the last 20% is an overwhelming burden if you have many demands on your time.

Plan activities to achieve goals

If something is truly a priority, then a key part of improved Time Management Skills and Techniques is to allocate time to achieving those key priorities.  If you don’t schedule time to advance your priorities, you will be overwhelmed by things that are merely urgent.

• As a caution, don’t spend more time planning the work than doing the work.
• Plan Action against major goals on a weekly basis.  You may not look at each priority every day, but you should not let a week go by without making some progress on important goals.
• There is a Weekly Planning tool on the Wily Manager website

Take initiative and overcome procrastination

• Be disciplined – sometimes you just need to get things done.
• Use to do lists, but make sure they are prioritized.  A to-do list is useless if it does not reflect the priority of what you’re trying to do.
• Ask why you might be procrastinating.  There are a variety of reasons things are put off.  Some of the most common reasons are:
• Fear
• Perfectionist tendencies
• Waiting for a deadline, because of the illusion of “working better under pressure”.
• Overwhelmed – in some cases, there may in fact be too much to do.

3 Things to Remember About Improving Time Management Skills and Techniques

1. Time pressure is often a symptom of one or more other problems.  If you can figure out what those problems might be, you can begin to address them.
2. You’ll be more successful when you do less rather than more.
3. Be disciplined.