Time Management
Published: 2009/02/01
Choosing Your Tasks
Selecting the right tasks for your task list is a major component to time management. Valuing your time properly can assist you in this process. Generally, your value to your company is twice your annual salary, accounting for systems, insurance, work space, etc. This gives us a formula for your hourly value of: (Annual Salary * 2) / 2080.
While considering your hourly value, ask yourself: what is the goal of the task? Why am I doing this? This can help you eliminate tasks that accomplish very little. Also, remember that doing the right task is often more important than doing a task right. Most day-to-day tasks are evaluated on a pass / fail basis rather than the elegance of the end result.
Putting Tasks in the Right Order
Always do the important tasks that are due soon first. Once complete, the next tasks you should focus on are not the unimportant tasks that are due soon, but rather, the important tasks that are not due soon. After all, if your important tasks are all complete the unimportant tasks don't matter as much.
| Due Soon | Due Later | |
| Important | 1 | 2 |
| Not Important | 3 | 4 |
When choosing the first task of your day, always pick the worst one. This way it is finished early and is out of the way.
Plan Your Day, Week and Month
Set a list of goals for each day and communicate these clearly to anyone involved. Daily updates via email are useful for larger projects that involve multiple stakeholders.
Immediate Time Savers
Interruptions typically last for the duration of the interruption plus five additional minutes. Keeping these interruptions to a minimum will mean much more time available for tasks during the day.
- Dual monitors
- Speaker phone
- Turn off email notification
- Schedule email review for specific times during your day
- Use your calendar only for events (this eliminates the need to move tasks from day to day)
Meetings
- Always have an agenda for a meeting
- Do not leave until someone provides minutes / action items
- Refuse to attend meetings without a published agenda
Tracking Time
By measuring the time it takes to complete various tasks you can become better at estimating the time needed to accomplish new items on your task list. This can also help you say "No" when appropriate. You can use our WorkTimer software found on our free software page.
- Monitor your time in detail to allow you to focus on problem areas
- Track your time against task "types"
- Phone calls
- Reviewing email
- Organizing files
Saving Time for Others
- Never break a deadline but do renegotiate as needed
- Have an agenda for phone calls
- Announce the agenda at the start of the call
- Consider standing up
- Be ready with a reason to end calls
- Group your calls (before lunch, before the end of the day)
- When delegating make your task as specific as possible with a deadline and penalty for incompletion FOR YOUR DELEGATE
- Thursday at 3:30 pm
- cc: their manager
Sorting Tasks and Saying No
- Use an Open Item Review Panel
- It should be management's job to prioritize between departments
- Requiring additional information / effort from a person requesting help can often eliminate the request
- Conditional yes
- Offer to be a fallback option
- Track how often no other options are found