Time Management

Work smarter and improve time utilisation

People who practise time management skills routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, you can optimise your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.

Set yourself specific and defined goals, and make sure that they are realistic and achievable. To do this, you first need to examine your present situation and assess what goals are important to you and what action you need to take to achieve your target. Break goals down into their components so that you can accomplish them one step at a time. Write these steps down, and try to be as specific as you can when you do this. When you achieve these goals, reward yourself to maintain your enthusiasm.

Prioritising is when you decide what tasks are urgent and important and to focus on these. It is important to list the tasks you have and to sort them in order of priority, and then devote most time to the most important tasks.

To Do Lists - the key to efficiency

To-Do Lists are essential if you're going to beat work overload. They are prioritised lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.

By keeping a To-Do List, you make sure that your tasks are written down all in one place so you don't forget anything important. And by prioritising tasks, you plan the order in which you'll do them, so that you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can leave until later. When you do use them effectively, you'll be much better organised, and you'll be much more reliable. You'll experience less stress, safe in the knowledge that you haven't forgotten anything important. More than this, if you prioritise intelligently, you'll focus your time and energy on high value activities, which will mean that you're more productive, and more valuable to your team.

Keeping a properly structured and thought-out To-Do List sounds simple enough. But it can be surprising how many people fail to use To-Do Lists at all, never mind use them effectively. In fact, it's often when people start to use To-Do Lists effectively and sensibly that they make their first personal productivity breakthroughs, and start making a success of their careers.

Preparing a To-Do List

Step 1:
Write down all of the tasks that you need to complete. If they're large tasks, break out the first action step, and write this down with the larger task. (Ideally, tasks or action steps should take no longer than 1-2 hours to complete.

Step 2:
Run through these tasks allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.

Using Your To-Do Lists

To use your To-Do List, simply work your way through it in order, dealing with the A priority tasks first, then the Bs, then the Cs, and so on. As you complete tasks, tick them off or strike them through.

When asked about your time management skills at a job interview, you know the question is being asked for a reason. The interviewer wants you to prove that you understand contract times and stipulations, the laws for reporting dates and organise your work within time frames. Time management questions are all about organisation. You have to show you can plan and structure your work and your times.