Time Management Tips

There are days when you’re just not feeling it. You feel pulled from pillar to post, the phone rings just as you find your stride and then dealing with whatever has come up takes you away from what you intended to do that day. You get to the end of the day and you don’t feel like you’ve achieved anything.

When people come to me and say they want to improve their time management, one of the first suggestions I make is that they learn and understand the difference between activities that are:

Urgent and important
Not urgent but important
Urgent but not important
Not urgent and not important.

Activities that are important and urgent include emergencies, customer complaints, tasks or projects that are due, meetings, appointments, staff problems, reports.

Activities that are important but not urgent are ones which are vital to your success. They include; planning, preparation, research, investigation, designing, testing, networking and relationship building, thinking, creating, modelling, developing systems and processes, and developing strategies.

Activities that are not important but urgent are ones that include: trivial requests from other people, apparent emergencies, minor interruptions and distractions, misunderstandings, and pointless routines or activities.

Activities that are not important and not urgent are those that include surfing the net, lots of cigarette or coffee breaks, social chats, daydreaming, taking social phone calls, or reading irrelevant material.

Simply creating a 'To Do' list of all the tasks you need to carry out can help you identify those that would come under the 'urgent and important' heading. They're the ones that you need to focus your energy on and do first. This kind of list will allow you to retain control of your time and energy. After all, it’s a lack of control that leads to boredom and procrastination.

Remember that you’re only human and if any of your tasks seem overwhelmingly large, break them down into manageable pieces. Keep breaking them down until you have something that you can begin to work on straight away.