Managing your Time for Success

Time management is more than just setting a schedule and then sticking to it. Many people see time management as the setting of a list of rules that involve scheduling of appointments, goal setting, thorough planning, creating to-do lists and prioritizing activities. While these would be considered as the core basics of time management, there is much more to it than that.

In truth, there are more skills involved in time management than the simple core basics. You’ll need a solid grasp of your business’ big picture, meaning that you will have needed to set some long term goals first. Beautifully run time management is worthless if you are spending that time working toward the wrong goals. Skills such as decision making, clear vision and critical thinking are also essential to implementing successful time management skills.

While prospect of time management can be perceived as a stressful compacting of a lot of activity into a short period of time, it really isn’t that way at all. In fact, by focusing on the objective and stripping away all that is necessary, time management typically results in less work and less time needed to complete it.

For example, let’s look at a time managed task versus one where time management isn’t incorporated. Let’s say the task is scheduled to take two hours and requires several steps along the way including some time on the computer. In the time managed scenario, only the actions needed to complete the task would be done and that task would most likely be done on schedule. In a non-time managed scenario, poorly defined actions could result in distractions such as checking out news, responding to emails, and seeing who is on Facebook. In this example, the task takes longer than the scheduled two hours, delaying the start of the next thing to be done. Additionally, the quality of the work done on that task would most likely be inferior to the focused work which was done on the time managed task.

These scenarios would tend to repeat themselves in a business setting. The business where tasks are repeatedly done without time management would fall further behind the business that is time managing their tasks on a consistent basis. Which business would have higher stress levels and less time to engage in other pursuits?

A great way to incorporate time management is to have a firm grasp of the short and long term goals of your company. This can focus concentration on what needs to be accomplished while eliminating distractions and non-productive efforts. These other activities can be scheduled for all the down time you’ll have by using your time efficiently.