Today is day three of the special Time Management series from my guest blogger, Rodger Constandse. Be sure to come back every day this week for a chance to win valuable prizes to enhance your productivity.
Are you struggling to find enough hours in the day? Do you feel like you have too much to do and not enough time? Are you wondering when you’ll finally get caught up and get everything done?
One of the most important lessons in time management is to realize that you’ll NEVER be able to get EVERYTHING done. In our modern day world, there’s more available for us to do than we could ever accomplish in our entire lifetime.
What this means is that we need to figure out how to use our limited amount of time in a better way, focusing on the really important things, the ones that can truly make a difference in our lives and business. And your time management approach makes a HUGE difference in how well you do that.
Here are three signs that your current time management approach isn’t really working for you…
- You find yourself wasting time on unimportant things. Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re actually being productive. Your time management approach isn’t working if you feel busy but you’re not really accomplishing what you want or taking steps toward your important goals.
- If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and have no time left for your friends and family members or for the hobbies, interests and passions you enjoy. You’re probably overwhelmed because you’re spending your days spinning your wheels and focusing on low value tasks and busywork.
- If you feel as if you, and your attention, are being pulled into several different directions. The result is scattered and unfocused thinking. Multitasking is what people call it but the truth is multitasking doesn’t work. You’re much more effective and efficient if you can focus your time and attention on one thing for a block of uninterrupted time.
If you find you’re experiencing any of the above, then chances are your time management approach isn’t working for you. You’re probably spending too much time on low-value activities and busywork instead of accomplishing what really matters to you.
The right time management approach helps you create goals that have purpose, passion and vision. It helps you create strategies to achieve those goals and provides tools to make it happen.
Effective time management is a skill that you can learn and improve with practice. And when you do and you apply it to your life, it helps you achieve your most important goals and still have the time and energy left for a little fun.
For more information, tools and resources on how to accomplish what really matters to you, check out Goals to Action.
Do you have any insights or lessons that you’ve learned about time management, productivity and getting things done that you’d like to share?
The prize for the best comment is a free copy of my Effective Time Management course.
This post speaks to me. Even though I use lists and try to stay organized, I find it’s easy to start “spinning my wheels”. Instead of attacking a problem or actively pursuing a goal, you end up doing the things on your list which are easy – or which you think you can do quickly. Then the larger issues and projects can get neglected. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how to effectively set goals and priorities – and then to follow them up consistently with action.
Some of the time management practices that i am putting into practice taps into your body’s natural Circadian Rythym and allows you to tap into your natural up and down cycle.
Here is what i do:
1.Plan your work day: Is it 8 hours long? schedule breaks and take them.
2. Work out your productive times of the day; for me its the morning between 8am and 10am then i between 2 and 4pm. Lets call them PEAK periods.
3. Schedule your toughest project in the first of these high (Peak) productivity periods.
3. In your off peak periods, where you find yourself losing focus, perhaps schedule this time to do your less intensive activities such as sort your email, return phone calls, pay bills, followed by an activity you like such as reading or researching for personal development. The 2nd off peak period, you could even reward yourself for a productive day by assigning some time to work on a hobby or a low priority/ high personal interest project.
4.Lastly, the one i am struggling to keep is getting 8 hours sleep. Its vitally important to a fully functioning mind and body.
Hope that helps some of you!
Another great post — really liking this week’s series. The most important point today, I think, is this one: “Effective time management is a skill that you can learn and improve with practice.”
It’s okay to try, fail, try again, succeed a little, modify, adjust, etc. When I find myself drifting away from the principles that work best for me, I don’t worry about the missed opp’ys: I just re-focus and make the most / do the best with what’s most important in that moment. Often, that gives me all the momentum I need to get back on track.
One tactic that works for me is to resist trying to schedule *everything.* I’ll start with a flexible “To Do” list that lets me adapt to unexpected changes during the day, week or month — always keeping hard deadlines visible and top-of-mind.
Then I’ll break the day into project blocks, as described yesterday. Meetings and conference calls depend on group availability. And some projects — e.g., group presentations — work best when they’re scripted and rehearsed down to the minute. So I wind up with a blend of fixed appointments, project mgmt. work time and recurring tasks on my calendar. But I jealously guard some blank space each day to grab sudden opportunities (like commenting on this blog!).
But that’s just what works for me: your mileage, as they say, may vary.
Some say that we cannot manage time; we manage ourselves. It may just be a matter of syntax, but still our suggestions involve ways to manipulate ourselves or to utilize our own energy.
Perhaps a good time management evaluation would include evaluating our likes/dislikes of kinds of work, energy cylces, avoidance techniques, ability to estimate time needed for projects, skills sets, etc. If we can fix the weaknesses, then maybe we can solve our time management issues.
I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t have clocks in our offices. We could start our day with our to-do list, and then we could go home when the list was complete. If we finished our work before 5:00pm, then we would have extra time for ourselves; however, if we finished after 5:00pm . . . our loss.
Maybe we would be motivated to stay focused on the work at hand.
My productivity tips are:
1) Stay at a job until finsihed (if it is a one time frame project and not a multiple day project). In other words, don’t waste time and energy getting your head into the project by stopping and starting multiple times. There is a mental warm-up period every time you start a project.
2) If you lose focus, take a 10-15 minute break. The loss of focus could mean you are in overload or need a nutritional boost. Take a break, get something to eat or drink, stretch, breathe some fresh air, have a laugh, then return to the project.
Hello, everybody and thank you all for your comments today. I feel like we have a panel of experts reading this column as I marvel at the sophistication of some of the answers. This is obviously a group of people who are motivated to get ahead in life and think carefully about how they spend their time each day. This is the type of person I strive to be.
Recently, I was having trouble finishing a project, as it extended into weeks and weeks and it gave the word “procrastination” a whole, new set of parameters! I could not believe how long this was taking me and I started to believe there might be something wrong in my genetic make-up!
However, I sat down and took the time to analyze what I was doing wrong, and I came to some simple conclusions that enabled me to institute a very simple technique that solved many of my problems! In reading all of the comments above, I also realized that many of them touched upon these same issues and that we are all, basically, in the same boat….the S. S. AVOIDANCE.
The task that was giving me so much trouble was to go over all of my “Back-burner” paperwork and mail, to make sure no important deadlines were being missed. For months, I had been going through the mail, plus finding things I wanted to do, on the Internet, and just “filing” them away, in piles, under the loose category of “Things To Do Later”.
Well, I don’t have to tell you, after a while these piles start to build up and become “mountainous” in size and quite overwhelming to tackle. The worse part was, I would not start any other project; things that were much more important to me, until this got done.
I realized that my main stumbling block came about because I took frequent breaks. And, these frequent breaks would turn into long breaks, sometimes for the rest of the day! Then, I came to another startling conclusion: I hated what I was doing! Well, call me Sigmund Freud, but that conclusion helped me to solve my problem…read on….
First of all, knowing that I hated it helped me to get through it. It was OK to hate picking up this huge pile of notes and envelopes and having to go through it, paper by paper, and re-file everything, or possibly even take some action on it, right there and then. So, the frequent breaks were just an excuse to get away from what I was doing.
I set up a system with myself as follows: everytime I wanted to do something, I would make a deal with myself. I would have to do a certain amount of work, and then reward myself with my
desired activity. So, let’s say it was 3:00 PM and I got an urge to break away and do something; I would re-consider it and write down something like this:
It is now 3:00 P.M. At 4:15 P.M., go to frig and have a chocolate pudding snack.
Or, it is now 3:00 PM. At 5:00 take a 1-hour break to watch
“Modern Family” (taped on TiVo) and “How I Met Your Mom”.
Back to work at 6:00 PM.
Well, this worked very well for me. Whenever I felt like breaking away, I would always “charge” myself some work-time before I did it. Two days later, I was done with everything!!!
I got back to my major project, the one that I have a lot of passion for, finishing writing my screenplay!
I know we are all different people and our minds make up different “mental” tricks to take us away from what we need to be doing, but, I hope these commets help at least a few people out there. Thanks to all for being contributors.
Marc Barry Greenstein
Thank you so much for sharing your successes as well as your challenges here for the rest of the world to see!
Today’s winner is Gavin, for his practical scheduling solution. Although some people are more naturally drawn to structured schedules than others (read Organizing Your Life, Your Way for more details), his suggestion has enough wiggle room in it to satisfy just about anyone!
Congratulations, Gavin! You win a copy of Rodger’s Effective Time Management course.
Come back soon for today’s post and a chance at another prize!