Time Management

Aarti Takawane

Time Management Methodology

Time Management Implies

• Appreciating Value of Time

• Treating it as a Resource

What Time Management Allows You ?

Eliminate time wastage. Reduce excessive workloads due to mismanagement. Ensures that important task is not missed out due to time

constraint due to lack of focus Ensures that important task is completed first Allocate resources appropriate to a task’s importance. Ensure that long-term requirements are not neglected while

focus is on short term priority. Plan each day, week, month or quarter efficiently. Allows you that work missed today should be planned

tomorrow on top priority Helps you to achieve your target

Time Management

• Efficient

• Successful

• Relaxed

• Healthy

makes you :-

Common Obstacles

•Unclear objectives

•Disorganization

•Inability to say “no..to what

you can not do

•In-ability to delegate trying to do every thing yourself

Common Obstacles

• Interruptions by phone calls, mobile phone has made it even worse

• Interruptions by people, meeting unexpected people

• Periods of inactivity—spending too much of time in leisure or watching excessive T.V etc,

The Urgent/Important Matrix (I)

• Managing time effectively, and achieving the things that you want to achieve, means spending your time on things that are important and not just urgent.

– IMPORTANT: These are activities that lead to the achieving your

goals and have the greatest impact on your life.

– URGENT: These activities demand immediate attention, but are often associated with someone else’s goals rather than our own.

DO NOW

• Emergencies, complaints and crisis issues

• Demands from superiors or customers

• Planned tasks or project work now due

• Meetings and appointments

• Reports and other submissions

• Staff issues or needs

• Problem resolution, fire-fighting, fixes

• Subject to confirming the importance and the urgency of these tasks, these tasks need doing now.

• Prioritize tasks that fall into this category according to their

relative urgency. • If two or more tasks appear equally urgent, discuss and

probe the actual requirements and deadlines with the task originators or with the people dependent on the task outcomes.

• Help the originators of these demands to re-assess the real

urgency and priority of these tasks.

Dealing with the activities in Quadrant 1 • Know your schedule

• Prioritizing in a logical way

• Be as productive and effective as possible.

• Look for ways to break a task into two stages if it's an unplanned demand

PLAN TO DO

• planning, preparation, scheduling

• research, investigation, designing, testing

• networking relationship building

• thinking, creating, modelling, designing

• systems and process development

• anticipation and prevention

• developing change, direction, strategy

• These tasks are most critical to success, and yet commonly are the most neglected.

• Include planning, strategic thinking, deciding direction and aims, etc., all crucial for success and development.

• Plan time-slots for doing these tasks, and if necessary plan where you will do them free from interruptions.

• Break big tasks down into separate logical stages and plan time-slots for each stage.

REJECT AND EXPLAIN

• Trivial requests from others

• Apparent emergencies

• Ad-hoc interruptions and distractions

• Misunderstandings appearing as complaints

• Pointless routines or activities

• Accumulated unresolved trivia

RESIST AND CEASE

• 'Comfort' activities, computer games, net surfing, excessive cigarette breaks

• Chat, gossip, social communications

• Daydreaming, doodling, over-long breaks

• Reading nonsense or irrelevant material

• Unnecessary adjusting equipment etc.

• Embellishment and over-production

• Habitual 'comforters' not true tasks. Non-productive, de-motivational.

• Minimise or cease altogether. Plan to avoid them.

Goal Setting

Setting SMART Goals

• Goal setting is critical to effective time management strategies.

• Goal setting can be used in every area of your life.

• Setting goals puts you ahead of the pack!

• Some people blame everything that goes wrong in their life on something or someone else.

• Successful people dedicate themselves towards taking responsibility for their lives, no matter what the unforeseen or uncontrollable events.

Setting SMART Goals

• Goal setting is critical to effective time management strategies.

• Goal setting can be used in every area of your life.

• Setting goals puts you ahead of the pack!

• Some people blame everything that goes wrong in their life on something or someone else.

• Successful people dedicate themselves towards taking responsibility for their lives, no matter what the unforeseen or uncontrollable events.

The Three P’s

Setting meaningful, long-term goals is a giant step toward achieving your dreams. In turn, setting and achieving short-term goals can help you accomplish the tasks you'll need to achieve the long-term ones. It is also important to make sure that all of your goals unleash the power of the three P's:

• POSITIVE

• PERSONAL

• POSSIBLE (REALISTIC)

The SMART Way

SMART is a convenient acronym for the set of criteria that a goal must have in order for it to be realized by the goal achiever.

• SPECIFIC

• MEASURABLE

• ACHIEVABLE

• RELEVANT

• TIMED

• Achieving challenging goals requires a lot of mental energy.

• Invest your mental focus on one goal, the most important goal right now.

• Choose a goal that will have the greatest impact on your life compared to how long it will take to achieve.

• A large part of goal setting is not just identifying what you want, but also identifying what you must give up in your life in order to get it.

Prioritize your work by urgency of the task:

1. Needs to be done now

2. Should have been done yesterday

3. Should be done today

4. Can wait until tomorrow

5. Can wait until time permits

After prioritizing your work by urgency, it should then be prioritized by the date it was received.

• Say no, followed by an honest explanation.

• Say no and then briefly clarify your reasoning without making excuses.

• Say no, and then give an alternative.

• Empathetically repeat the request in your own words, and then say no.

• Say yes, give your reasoning for not doing it, and provide an alternative solution.

• Provide an assertive refusal and repeat it no matter what the person says.

Critical Path Method is an effective and powerful method of determining:

• Tasks which must be carried out

• Where parallel activity can be carried out

• The shortest time in which a project can be completed

• Resources needed to achieve a project

• The sequence of activities, scheduling, and timings involved

• Task priorities

A logical sequencing of a series of events necessary for a successful research project.

• A list of all activities required to complete the project

• The dependencies between the activities

• The estimate of time (duration) that each activity will take to completion.

Activity: Hanging a picture

We need to define and list all the tasks that have to be done, so that the whole project is completed.

• Choose a place on the wall

• Buy the screws

• Choose the picture

• Drill a hole

• Screw in the screws

• Hang the picture

• Procrastination means delaying a task that should be a priority.

• It is important to overcome procrastination and tackle the important actions that have the biggest positive impact in your life.

”I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it” - Thomas Jefferson

• No clear deadline

• Inadequate resources available

• Don’t know where to begin

• Task feels overwhelming

• No passion for doing the work

• Fear of failure or success

1. DELETE IT.

2. DELEGATE.

3. DO IT NOW.

4. ASK FOR ADVICE.

5. CHOP IT UP.

6. OBEY THE 15 MINUTE RULE.

7. HAVE CLEAR DEADLINES.

8. GIVE YOURSELF A REWARD.

9. REMOVE DISTRACTIONS.

Crisis Handling

• With better planning, improved efficiency, and increased productivity, the number of crises you encounter should decline.

• However, you can’t plan for everything, so in this module we’ll look at what to do when a crisis does occur.

“In a crisis, be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity” - John F. Kennedy

Handling Crisis

• Don’t wait until crisis hits to put a crisis management plan together.

• Respond in a timely manner – The more you wait, the more damage can be done.

• Be quick, but be factual.

• Select a primary spokesperson to represent the organization throughout the crisis process.

• All communications (press releases/statements) should go through one channel – you don’t want the media going to other sources for information.

Handling Crisis

• Assign a designated back-up spokesperson to step in should the primary spokesperson be unavailable.

• Never say “No comment” (it implies guilt) or speak “off the record” (there is no such thing).

• Discuss whether the crisis calls for a video response by the primary spokesperson to give it a more human touch.

• Express empathy and concern when victims are involved – you don’t want to deflect blame and come off as insensitive and uncaring.

• Don’t bury bad news – It will get out eventually.

• Entrusting responsibility and authority to others who then become responsible to us for their results but we remain accountable to our boss what our subordinates do.

• The right to make decision

• Not merely the passing downwards of work

STRATEGY - A

•you ask to get facts •you decide what action to take

•instruct to respond accordance with you solution

STRATEGY -B

•Ask to investigate and deal with the issue as they consider

•as long as customer’s grievance is resolved and the customer is tied more closely to your company than

was before

Organizing Your Workspace • In order to effectively manage your time and

to be productive each day, you must create an appropriate environment.

• By eliminating clutter, setting up an effective filing system, gathering essential tools, and managing workflow, you will be well on your way to creative an effective workspace.

The only thing even in this world is the number of hours in a day. The difference in winning or losing is what you do with those hours. Woody Hayes

• To retrieve materials quickly, you’ll need an effective filing system that includes three basic kinds of files: – WORKING FILES

– REFERENCE FILES

– ARCHIVAL FILES

• Once clutter has been eliminated and other materials have been filed, the effective workspace includes only what is essential: a set of three trays to control the workflow on your desk (see the next topic), standard office supplies, a computer, and a telephone.

• DO: If a task can be completed in two minutes or less, do it immediately.

• DELETE: If the material is trash or junk, delete it. Or, if it’s something that you might use later on, file it, and move on.

• DEFER: If the task is one that can’t be completed quickly and is not a high priority item, simply defer it.

• DELEGATE: If a task is not yours to do, then delegate it.

• Remember, to take the S.T.I.N.G. out of feeling overwhelmed about a task, follow these steps:

– Select one task to do at a time.

– Time yourself using a clock for no more than one hour.

– Ignore everything else during that time.

– No breaks or interruptions should be permitted.

– Give yourself a reward when the time is up.

• Open and read urgent e-mails and respond accordingly. Non-urgent e-mails can be read later. Delete e-mail that you have no interest in.

• Create folders for different topics or projects, or by senders.

• Most e-mail systems also allow you to create folders and add keywords or categories to messages.

• Many e-mail programs allow you to create rules that automatically move messages to the appropriate folder. This can help you follow your e-mail plan.

• Finally, don’t forget to delete e-mail from your trash can and junk folder on a regular basis.

• A calendar is the obvious place to record meetings, appointments, and due dates.

• For people with multiple responsibilities, an annual calendar organized by areas of responsibility may be especially valuable.

• For each of these areas, one can list the major responsibilities month by month and thereby see glance what tasks must be completed in a given month of the year.

• Systems like Microsoft SharePoint, Wrike, Pelotonics, Google Docs, and Basecamp can give users interaction and collaboration tools from any location.

• These sorts of tools may be most beneficial for project meetings or situations where users need to peer review each other’s work.