Time up!
SMALL steps go a long way towards better time management.
Do you wish you had 30 hrs a day or 9 days a week? Or wish you had four hands to answer calls and type emails? Perhaps wish you could work less than 14 hours a day and finish your day's work in a jiffy? You are not the only one with a wish list like this. Almost everyone wishes for these things occasionally. But in the fast-paced life led today, you probably wish for such things everyday. Before work overload makes you a nervous wreck, look into these tips to manage your time efficiently.
Avoid time wasters
Start out by critically evaluating how you spend your time -- question some of your habits affecting your efficiency. In your time log, assess time slots that could have been better used-- time killers can be figured out easily. The most common ones are social time wasters in the form of phone calls, friends dropping by, casual conversation around the workstations or at the coffee machine etc. Of course, we do need some non-work related activity---a break. But it should not be at the cost of some important unfinished work. Take specific time out for breaks. Time is often wasted during a transition between activities. To avoid this, you could group similar tasks together thus avoiding the delay of `start-ups'. Try not to fiddle around with tasks that could be better handled by others, delegate them to subordinates or other teammates. Don't take on others' workload; let each person deal with his share of work.
Prioritise your work
The vital key to managing time is to prioritise your work. Sometimes, everything you come across might seem a priority, but you have to learn to discriminate between things that are necessary from things that seem necessary. Get a firm grip on the work situation and don't allow it to control you. Focus on work that is critical to the success of your project. Make a list of all the activities to be done. Then mark out the most important and urgent work first (the do now), then comes the urgent but not so important (do it later), then mark the important but not urgent (start it before it becomes urgent) and the last is not important and not urgent (don't do it). In case of further problems talk it out with your boss--- ask him to help you prioritise your work.
A word of advice
It is not always of vital importance to answer each and every mail, message, or call. Fix a time at the end of each hour or so, according to your convenience, and do all the replying and checking then. Maintain a personal planner. Spend some time to make note of all the activities at the end of the day. Also, make a list of the activities to be done the next day. Learn to say "no" to tasks, and responsibilities that can be given a miss. The trick is not to stretch time to accommodate work but to crunch work to adjust to Time!
MARIA JAMES SINGSON
maria james.hyd@cnkonline.com
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