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The Art of Time Management

"Time is money" . . . how cliche can I get!?  But it is true. We have all found ourselves in the position of "being under the gun". "Crunch time" comes around more frequently than we would like. The deadline is near and we need to get our project done; "knuckle down or knuckle under"! OK enough of  the corny cliches. The point is that time management is vital to the success of all our businesses.

Everyday we balance a multitude of personal and professional activities. How do we manage all of them? Now, granted, I am not perfect in the area of time management, but I may have an idea or two here that will help you out; so please don't tune me out just yet . . . I know you are busy!

Three main points come to mind when I think about how I manage my time. They are Prioritization, Systems, and Delegation.

Prioritization:

The first task I need to deal with when managing my time is to determine an order of priority. As eager as I am each morning to take on the world, the reality is that I only have so many hours to get things done in any given day.

Each morning I determine how many hours I am going to work. It is a good idea when doing this to keep in mind that how much you want to get done doesn't come into play here. It is strictly a matter of identifying how much time you can plan on having available after taking into consideration meetings, lunch, family activities, and so on.

Now that I know how much work time I can plan on, I can take a look at the tasks I have to do and assign a priority to them. There are many things to consider at this point. Do I have deadlines to meet? Do any of my clients have deadlines to meet? Which tasks are older than the others? Are any of the tasks unnecessary today? ( I don' t have to wash the car today, it can go another day with a little dirt on it!)  In short I need to spend a minute or two making some judgment calls.

Now I have a list of things in the order of how I need to do them, I need to guesstimate on how long each task will take. How much time will each take out of my day? It is a good idea to figure a little on the strong side. If you end up with some extra time you can always find something else to do, start on tomorrow's to do list for example. But if you take longer to finish a task than you thought, you will find that you don't have the luxury of adding time into your day.

Wow, that's alot of work so far. Probably took all of ten minutes. but lets review what we have accomplished.

• I have determined how many hours I have available to work
• I have an idea of what is more important to get done and what is not
• I have an idea of how long I expect each task to take

Now it is a matter of listing out what it is I am going to do today.  This leads into the next of the three areas.

Systems:

This is where you apply this new found knowledge into a system that keeps it organized and on track. Now, not to be a stinker about it, I am going to push this off for the moment and move on to the third area of managing your time, delegation.

Delegation:

One very important thing we can do to better manage our time is to delegate our tasks to others. Sounds simple enough to do, until you try to do it. Trusting someone else to do what you are responsible for can be stressful and take a little practice to pull off.

The idea behind delegating is that you are freeing up a large block of time and replacing it with a smaller block of time where all you need to do is supervise the task. Take a few minutes to explain what you need to have the delegate accomplish, make yourself available for questions, check in with them once or twice, then review their work when it is done.

Here are some key points to keep in mind when delegating work:

• Select a delegate that has the necessary skills
• Be clear with your instructions and expectations
• Let the delegate know when you expect to see the project completed
• Be available for questions
• And above all do not MICRO-MANAGE! This will only eat up the time you thought you were going to save.

OK, now we can talk about the systems I use to manage all of this and keep myself well organized and productive . . . but we aren't going to. What I would like to do is talk about that next month. I would like all of you to think about how you manage your time and email me any ideas you think may benefit others reading this article. I will then add those items into next months newsletter along with my own words of wisdom. Email me at .

In case you haven't noticed this newsletter is a few days later than usual, like I said, when it come to time management I am not perfect! ; -)