Some time management tips

One of my friend ask me to help him with effective  time management. I don't have any special recipes for it and everyone has their own style time management. So, I tried to give him some tips that I used to organize my time better.

• Make a to-do list (It is recommended to be an electronic list - in excel, notepad etc)

• Order item in the list: the most important item first and work down from there.

• Make sure that what you think is important is really important. One way to determine importance is to think at consequence (what happens if you don't do it) .

• Make difference between the important  and the urgent. What is important couldn't be urgent and what is urgent couldn't be important. 

• Try to estimate how much long it takes every task.

• Bear in mind the working day have 8 hours, but productive hours are maximum 7. Ideal is to have a to-do-list for one day with 6 hour task.

• Concentrate on one  thing at time

• Rewarding yourself when you finish a very important task.

• Try to start with the most difficult part of projects in the morning (when in the part of the day when you can do the best)

• Have confidence in yourself and in your judgement of priorities.

• Don't make urgent and not important task instead of important task but not urgent. Try to delegate it.

• If a task takes less then five minutes do it

• Try to manage the interruptions ( read my previous articles about it)  

After 2 weeks my friend told me he kept in mind these tips and the first results came quickly.
Also I'll be glade if you share with us your own tips for time management.





 

 

About interruption - part 2

Re-experiment

A new month a new start.  A month with 20 working days, 160 hours, 9600 minutes with new rules for me.

- I have not to answer at every phone call

- When I answer the phone and somebody wants something from me I ask him to send his request via email

- When someone came to my office, I ask him to take place until I reach into working point which could easily resume.

At the end of the month I counted: 506 interruptions totaling 961 minutes. This time I don't count the time to come back to work. So, I assume that is the same as the last month: 3 minutes. (I have the feeling was less than 3 minutes this month).

Data analysis

961 minutes / 506 interruptions  = 1.9 minutes is average time for each interruption.

A month before that was: 2260 minutes / 682 = 3.3 

So, those new rules had a major impact in my work:

- significantly decreased the number of interruptions

-  time spent at each interruption decreased with 42%

 Keeping the same logical as previous month I lose  506*1.9 minutes +506*3 minutes = 2479.4 minutes -> 41.32 hours. 

 Because this month have only 20 working days, we can calculate:

 41.32 / 160 * 100 = 15.50%  of time was wasted time.

I decreased my wasted time  from 40.77% to 15.50%.

Conclusion

I think you can themselves conclude. 

If this article convinced you to repeat experience, please keep me up to date with that and with your  results. 

P.S. Now, no longer overtime for me

About interruption...

I don’t know if you are in the same situation as me  but one thing is certain: In my work I do the best in morning and evening. Basically, the most effective hours are the after hours work.  

Daily, I arrive to office almost one hour before the start of the program and I stay 2-3 hours late. Certainly in the 3-4 work harder and better, that is more effective than during normal working hours.

How is that possible?

 Morning and evening, there are not so many colleagues around, and those also have their concerns. No phone rings every 10 minutes, no more meetings, no one needed anything urgent  from me. In other words, I  do only what I have to do.

Almost 4 years ago, tired of so many courses and reading articles about "Timing management". I decided to made a little experiment to understand impact of interruptions in my daily work. 

Experiment

I observed all interruptions during one month with 22 working day, that means 176 hours = 1760 minutes. During this month I count 682 interruptions (average 31 interruptions per day). Interruptions that amounted to 2260 minutes.Average time for return to work was 3 minutes. So, 3 minutes multiple with 682 interruptions means 2046 minutes spent time for nothing.

Data analysis

A calculation showed me that I spent with interruptions 4306 minutes  = 71.76 hours from my time.

If I distribute these hours the number of days .... 71.76/22 = 3.26 is exactly the hours we spend at work after working time.

With other terms I would say

 71.76/176 * 100 = 40.77% of the time I should spent at work (8 hours per day) is wasted time.

Conclusion

To have more time and not spend so much time in the office should better manage interruptions.

After that conclusion I decide to implement small rules and remade experiment.

- I have to not answer at every phone call

- When I answer the phone and somebody wants something from me I ask him to send his request via email

- When someone came to my office, I ask him to take place until I reach into working point which could easily resume.

Do you want to know what happened?

 I will tell you next week.

At least 2 solutions

All my words from this blog I hope it will help you to find the best solution at your problems from work and from personal life. I tell you facts that maybe you already know but from other point of view.

Even I have more than 10 years experiences in management, planing, coaching and training I will try to approach things differently. Because it is important to know that all solutions are coming from you.

All depends on you to find at least two solution for each problem!