The following breakdowns are two different time management techniques to help you cope with different activities in your life. These time management techniques are divided into two parts - Scheduling and Time Leverage.
*Scheduling for Better Time Management*
Priorities and goals are the two terms that give essence to time management. These words define a person's aspiration. And time management scheduling is one way of materializing your aspirations and leading a goal towards reality.
Scheduling is the process of dividing your available time, sharing it equally according to a task's needed span, and following it according to your planned schedule.
Scheduling brings many benefits.
• One - it helps a person understand what's realistic from what is not.
• Two - it helps utilize and maximize time the best way possible.
• Three - it brings better time control, leaving sufficient amount of time for things that require prioritization.
• Four - it helps preserve contingency time in handling unexpected events
• Five - and lastly, it can help reduce stress by defining the most valuable task to accomplish from less valuable ones.
Scheduling is best done on a regular basis. The following are steps on how to correctly prepare scheduling:
1. Identify your available time. Remember, the amount of time you can only schedule for each task is dependent on your free resource. To free yourself more time, evaluate your daily task and set unimportant tasks behind. (You can always deal with those later after you finish your priorities first)
2. Identify and prioritize tasks that are absolutely important, and block tasks that are unrelated to your work. These things are often tasks that you are assessed against.
3. Assess carefully your 'To-do' list and rearrange them according to their priority. Include tasks that require maintenance or tasks that can't be avoided.
4. Set a contingency time for unexpected interruptions. This way, while your task is being interrupted your momentum won't break of so easily.
Remember, time management techniques may vary in their approach, but their goal to manage time is the same.
*Achieve More through Leverage*
Leverage is also an important aspect that should be combined together with scheduling. Time leverage is considered as time management's fundamental element for success. Leverage in time management means maximizing time, which is not only limited to a person, but to other people as well.
Leveraging your own time and leveraging time through others are two different things. To leverage your own time, you need to:
- You need to practice effective time management first. You can easily do this by doing series of assessments. Eliminate unproductive tasks, and focus your time more on valuable things that really matter.
- You need to learn how to prioritize. Not all tasks carry the same value, especially in working for a particular goal. So try to invest your time more on activities that would give you better returns.
- Lastly, you need to learn how to set goals.
In leveraging other people's time, you need to:
- You need to learn how to properly delegate different work to different people.
- You need to empower and train other people to make them efficient.
- Close other people's gaps in skill by bringing in consultants, or by sponsoring seminars.
