Time is ticking – learn to manage it well!
Freeda Wilson
Acusis Training Team
Time Management
Time is money, spend your
time wisely.
What Is Time Management
Time management is the act or
process of planning and
exercising conscious control
over the amount of time spent on
specific activities, especially
to increase effectiveness,
efficiency or quantity.
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Why Time Management?
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Good time management paves the road to
success.
Helps you to be highly effective.
It helps maximize your efforts.
Brings about a sense of fulfillment at work.
Helps you experience greater peace and less
stress.
Work gets done on time, every time!
Bad Time Management
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Results in missed deadlines.
Poor quality work.
Not able to balance professional and personal
life.
A lot of stress.
Lack of concentration.
How Can I Manage My Time Better?
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Set Goals (long term and short term).
Break down goals into small manageable tasks.
Create a to-do list to achieve those tasks.
Schedule tasks well.
Prioritize your tasks.
Manage distractions.
Concentrate on results.
Self-Motivation.
To-Do List
Create a To-Do List
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Take time to write down a “to-do list”.
This can be done effectively through Microsoft
Outlook.
To-Do list helps you list down activities you
need to complete for the day/week etc
It helps you collect your thoughts.
It serves as a reminder.
Before you call it a day, check your to-do list
and check mark the activities that you have
completed and follow up on the ones you need to
complete.
Scheduling Tasks
Scheduling Tasks
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Scheduling Tasks is an important component of
time management.
All of us have different rhythms, different
times during the day when we feel most
productive and energetic.
Example:
You can make best use of your time by
scheduling the high-value work during your peak
time and low-energy work towards the end of the
day.
Prioritizing Tasks
Prioritize your tasks
When you are faced with too many tasks in a day
and with too less time to complete them, what
would you do?
Prioritization helps in these scenarios.
Identify the important and urgent tasks.
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Important tasks are the ones that provide significant
value.
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Urgent tasks are the ones which have to be done
immediately.
Great time management lies in being effective as
well as efficient.
Prioritize your tasks
To prioritize your tasks,
divide them into the
sections displayed
on the right.
Prioritize your tasks
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Complete the tasks which are urgent and
important.
Secondly, complete the tasks which are
important but not urgent.
Thirdly, complete the tasks which are urgent
but not important.
Finally, complete the tasks which are not
urgent and not important.
Manage Distractions
Manage Distractions
We need to manage our distractions so that they
don’t gnaw into our time.
The following will help us manage distractions
well.
 Schedule Breaks.
 Plan for distractions.
 Regulate Inputs.
 Know your productive zone.
 Increase your margins.
Schedule Breaks
The moments you spend away from your work
are just as much a part of your life as
those spent toiling away.
Treat them as such!
Scheduling breaks, especially when you’re
short on time and long on work, can make
the difference between productive success
and burnout.
Schedule Breaks
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Don’t wait until you’re frazzled –
Schedule your breaks!
No matter how brief your breaks are, it is
a way of “topping off” your energy
reserves instead of a way to come back
from an empty tank.
Stay on schedule – If you planned to take
a 15-minute break at 12:00, you’d better
be backing away from your desk by 12:01!
The same goes for ending your breaks.
Stay on time and you’ll find it easier to
move in and out of your focused “work
mode” without losing forward motion.
Schedule Breaks
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A break should be a restorative action –
Chatting with a friend online about your
project isn’t a break. It’s a distraction.
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The idea of a break isn’t to derail your
train of thought but to pause for restoration
and refueling.
Plan for Distractions
The following will help you handle distractions
Better.
Acknowledge the interruption – The best
interruptions are the ones we see coming.
Others come without warning –
For example, someone opens the door to your
office without knocking on it which causes you
to spill coffee all over some important papers.
However big the interruption, it’s not worth
your time to get annoyed! Doing so will just
make it that much harder to return to work once
the interruption is over.
Plan for Distractions
Bookmark your idea – During the moments after the
phone rings for the first time or you’ve said
“come in” to the person knocking on your office
door, you have a chance to note exactly where
you were heading with your project.
Part of planning for interruptions is to have
sticky notes or a favorite bit of software open
in order to jot down a quick note before the
phone rings a third time.
Plan for Distractions
Minimize your immediate involvement – Many
interruptions require more than just an
answer. Clients, partners, spouses,
children and friends typically want an
action and not just a conversation.
The trick to staying productive, in spite
of the interruption, is to schedule your
action for a later time.
If your friend needs to talk to you about
a family problem, politely inform your
friend that you are at work and you would
call her/him after you are done for the
day.
Regulate Inputs
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Silence your cellphone and put it out of sight
if you receive personal phone calls very
frequently.
Schedule phone calls so that you attend to them
only during breaks or after office hours.
Attend to only urgent/important phone calls
during your work hours.
Limit the number of times you check your email
each day and batch your replies when possible.
If you need to use Facebook or Twitter, do so
as part of your scheduled breaks.
Know Your Productive Zone
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When do you get your best work done?
Are you a genius in the morning but slow in the
afternoon?
Do you work best late at night when you’re
alone?
Most of us only have a few hours each day that
we can honestly point to as being truly
productive hours.
Those hours are what we call a “productive
zone.”
Do your maximum work during your productive
zone.
Increase Your Margins
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One of the most annoying things about
interruptions is that we almost never have time
for them.
In our rush to get jobs done at the last
minute, we miss out on numerous fun
conversations and inspirational moments.
If you give yourself enough time to complete
your activities at a high quality and allow for
a few interruptions and restorative actions
(breaks) you won’t find interruptions as
distracting.
You would have scheduled them after all!!
"The bad news is time
flies. The good news is
you're the pilot."
-Michael Altshuler