Effective Time management- By Eka Academy

TIME MANAGEMENT

Topics to be covered

Formulating goals using powerful Goal Setting Techniques

Dealing with difficult tasks Getting organized Maximizing the available time The importance of right attitude Use of technology in time management Managing stress by effectively

managing time

Time Management

“You delay, but time will not.” –

Benjamin Franklin

Time Management

What is time management ?

Time management refers to the development of processes and tools that increase efficiency and productivity .

Time management doesn’t “just happen” for anyone – it is a skill that must be worked on, and that most people find to be a life-long challenge

Time is a resource. Your time is valuable, your employees’ time is money and good time management results in increased productivity and self-esteem.

Good time management is a major component of business success.

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Importance of time management

Since time is a valuable resource, effective use of time translates into efficiency, greater business profit and more time for family, friends and other activities.

Factors such as Event control, Productivity and Self-esteem are influenced by time management.

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Purpose of Time management

GOALS: To make progress towards achieving your personal and professional goals , one needs available time .

STRESS: Management of time prevents the amount of stress one goes through .

BALANCE: Effective time management enables a person to have a well balanced life.

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Formulating goals using powerful goal setting techniques

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Goal setting

In today’s world one needs to set goals in order to succeed in life. Goals help you to focus and also give a direction to your thought process.

Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are

Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it.

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Goal setting techniques

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1.Set goals that motivate you!!

When you set goals for yourself, it is

important that they motivate you, this means making sure that they are important to you and that there is value in achieving them.

If you have little interest in the outcome, or it is irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of putting in the work to make them happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.

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Its important to set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus, you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one

Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude.

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2.Set SMART Goals

The simple fact is that for goals to be powerful, they should be designed to be SMART. There are many variations of what SMART stands for, but the essence is this – goals should be:

Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Time Bound.

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Set Specific Goals: Your goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are unhelpful because they don't provide sufficient direction.

Set Measurable Goals: Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you have actually achieved something.

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Set Attainable Goals: Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence. However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. By setting realistic yet challenging goals, you hit the balance you need.

Set Relevant Goals: Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time – and your life – away.

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Set Time-Bound Goals : Your goals must have a deadline. Again, this means that you know when you can celebrate success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.

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3.Set Goals in Writing

The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might."

For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year," not "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10 percent this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an excuse if you get sidetracked.

Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself every day of what it is you intend to do..

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4.Make an Action Plan

This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way.

By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term

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5.Stick With It!

Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep yourself on track, and make regular time-slots available to review your goals.

Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term, but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly.

Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.

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Dealing with difficult tasks

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No matter what your profession is, or how well educated and skilled you are in the aspects of your job, there always seems to be a few tasks that we all tend to find difficult or shy away from (or skip completely) for various reasons.

When you work with the same people day in and day out , chances are you will eventually encounter a situation that can be very “explosive”. These situations are generally fueled by anger, frustration or any other highly unstable emotion you need to be careful about your attitudes since they can damage the career and our professional networking.

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Strategies

1. Inject Humor: We should be able to lighten the mood by using a little humor to show we are non taking it too seriously. This helps to reduce the level of stress , allowing everybody to think about the whole situation .

2. Invite a third party to mediate: Involve a respected third party can help both sides feel that they are being heard .

3. Shift perspective : you need to change our perspective about the situation and consider many different points-of-view.

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4. Compromise: Compromise is the necessity for any relationship , professional or personal remember together, a solution can be created.

5. Surrender : Non stop arguments can potentially damage the long term relationship with any person causing irreparable harm to the ability to work together.

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Things to remember…

Establish facts first Ask a lot of questions Actively listen Avoid Pre –judgement Act Professionally Aim for win-win Always remember .. There is no one

size fits all approach

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Things to remember…

Managers have no honeymoon phase when it comes to learning their jobs. Difficult situations, such as handling workplace complaints, employee conflicts and personal requests, never take a break.

Having the ability to handle difficult situations, articulate the reasons for policy and rules, and being clear on one's own personal stance on these issues, increases the new manager's credibility and predictability.

Gaining the basic skills to address these situations is a prerequisite for becoming an effective supervisor.

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Getting Organized

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ORGANISING..

 "Organising is the process of defining and grouping the activities of the enterprise and establishing the authority relationships among them.” Theo Haimann

"Organising is the process of identifying and grouping the work to be performed, defining and delegating responsibility and authority and establishing relationships for the purpose of enabling people to work most effectively together in accomplishing objectives.” Louis Allen,

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STEPS IN ORGANISING

Organising is a step-by-step process.

At each step, an important task is performed by the administrators working at the top-level of management. While organising, the top managers use the following process…

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1.Fixing the objectives of the organisation

At the top level, administrative management first fixes the common objectives of organisation. At the middle level, executive management fix the departmental objectives. Lastly, at the lower level, supervisory management fix the day-to-day objectives. All the objectives of the organisation must be specific and realistic. Time Management

2.Finding activities must for achieving objectives

After fixing the objectives, the top-level management prepares a list of different activities (or works) which are required to be carried out for achieving these objectives. This list is prepared at random without following any sequence or order. This is a very important step because it helps to avoid duplication, overlapping and wastage of efforts.

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3.Grouping the similar activities

All similar or related activities having a common purpose are grouped together to make departments. For e.g. all activities or works which are directly or indirectly connected with purchasing are grouped together to make the Purchase Department. So various departments such as Purchase, Production, Marketing, Finance, etc. are made. The grouping of similar activities leads to division of labour and specialisation.

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4.Defining responsibilities of each employee

The responsibilities (duties) of each employee are clearly defined. This will result in the selection of a right person for the right post / job. He / she will know exactly what to do and what not to do. Therefore, it will result in efficiency.

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5.Delegating authority to employees

Each employee is delegated

(surrender or given) authority. Without authority, the employees cannot carry out their responsibilities. Authority is the right to give orders and the power to get obedience. The authority given to an employee should be equal to the responsibility given to him.

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6.Defining authority relationship

When two or more persons work together for a common goal, it becomes necessary to clearly define the authority relationship between them. Each person should know who is his superior, from who he should take orders, and to whom he will be answerable. Similarly, each superior should know what authority he has over his subordinates. Time Management

7.Providing employees all required resources

After defining the authority

relationships, the employees are provided with all the material and financial resources, which are required for achieving the objectives of the organisation. So in this step, the employees actually start working for a common goal.

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8.Coordinating efforts of all to achieve goals

This is the last stage or step in the process of organisation. Here, the efforts of all the individuals, groups, departments, etc. are brought together and co-coordinated towards the common objectives of the organisation.

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Maximizing the available time

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Time only seems to matter when it’s running out. --Peter Strup

Maximising time is all about focusing on the right things.

It is not important to just be busy, but

being busy doing the things that are important, matters.

People use time to complete

unimportant tasks rather than doing the things that really need sorting out.

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Ways to maximize time…

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Identify how you spend your time

Spending a short while working out what you normally do with your time will help you in the long-run. Identifying those areas where time is being wasted and where it is being well spent will help you to prioritise. What counts is not the amount of time that you put in overall, but the amount of time that you spend working on important, worthwhile tasks Time Management

Set goals

It’s all well and good being efficient with your time, but to what end if you really don’t know how you want to spend it? Many people spend precious time and energy trying to be more efficient without setting goals— in other words, they don’t focus on the things that are most important to them. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you will know exactly where to concentrate your efforts. Having set goals can also be a good motivator.

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Keep a ‘to do’ list

You can keep a list in your head of things that need doing, but it’s far better to free your mind of this by writing or typing a list, which you can then refer to throughout the day. Your list could be written on a piece of paper, typed and saved on your computer, or held in a Filofax system — it’s really up to you. Ticking off jobs as you do them can give a real sense of satisfaction and spur you on to complete the rest — plus, of course, using the list will reduce the amount of time you take up thinking about what you need to do

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Prioritise

It’s no good compiling a list if you put everything in the wrong order! There’s always a temptation to do the things that you want to do first, rather than the things that you need to do.

Sort out your priorities and deal with the important things first. Whatever is left incomplete at the end of the day probably didn’t need doing immediately anyway, and can be dealt with on another occasion.

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Do it right first time

If you try to complete a task half-heartedly when you’re not really in the mood for it, then it’s likely that you’re not going to complete it properly.

Make sure you take the time to do things ‘right’ or to the best of your ability on the first occasion, so that the fewer mistakes you make, the less time you will waste going back and having to do it all over again.

Doing the important things first — when you’re most ‘switched on’ and alert — means you’ll be more likely to do them correctly.

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Stop putting things off

Most people have a tendency to procrastinate and look for ways out of doing what they should actually be doing.

It is often best to do the thing you’d least like to do first, as all your avoidance tactics will often be aimed at putting off this one task.

Just thinking of the reasons why that task should be done should be enough to make you do it.

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Multi-task

It is possible to do a few things at the same time to get the most out of the time available.

Planning to do a ‘fun’ activity alongside a routine task will allow you to make the most of whatever it is that you’re doing.

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Delegate

It seems obvious, but you can free more time up for yourself by getting others to do jobs for you!

The idea is to hand over any tasks that someone else can do — particularly if they can do them faster or just as well as you.

In the workplace, consider delegating to a colleague: you never know, they may even welcome being given that particular task — especially if they are good at it!

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Importance of right attitude

It is your attitude at the beginning of a task that determines success or failure. -unknown

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What is meant by right attitude Attitude means a mental position with regard

to a fact or state; also can be defined as a feeling or emotion towards a fact or state.

Having the right attitude is developing the right emotion or taking the right mental position towards work and your career, it helps you develop the necessary personal tools and the needed network to achieve your goals and fast track your career.

The right mental attitude accounts so much for the success you can achieve in your career.

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Positive impact of right attitude

Career success Positive people get promoted and get raises not just because of their own work, but because they bring out the best in others.

Stress reduction Negativity leads to stress because it convinces you that the events around you are bad. Meanwhile, looking for the positives in a situation convinces you that the events around you are better, which reduces stress. Lower stress has a strong effect on personal health and health care costs.

Teamwork improvement The more positive you are, the better your interactions will be with the people around you. Think simply of how you react in comparison to the people around you – the same general themes are true with regards to how people interact with you.

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Customer relations improvement The same idea is true with your customers: the more positive you are with your customers, the better your relationship with them will be and the more business you’ll develop with them.

Motivational improvement This is perhaps the most unorthodox one, but it’s also true. If you look at your work with a positive attitude, it’s much easier to actually do the work than if you apply a negative attitude towards it, no matter what you’re doing

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Tactics to improve your attitude

1. Come up with a positive response to every situation you meet.

2. Look for the good in other people

3. Act happy, even if it’s a painted day-glow smile

4. Drop the sarcasm

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Use of technology in time management

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The progress of technology has meant that we are now connected all the time anywhere we are to the rest of our network which means our time can be used up much quicker than ever before. 

However , even though technology has increased the pace of development and put pressure on us by using up our time, it can be used in many imaginative ways to save time and make us productive in many ways that was not possible before. 

The following is a number of interesting ideas you can employ to become more productive using technology: 

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Use modern digital calendars to assist you in management of tasks. For example, MS Outlook is a good candidate to start with if you have never managed your days using digital calendars before. 

Create tasks and appointments as soon as something pops into your mind. Do not think that you will record it later. This will only leave an "open loop" in your mind which slows you down since you continuously are worried that you are going to forget doing this important task. 

Set reminder tasks for yourself to think of concepts and plan these for a long time into the future. The beauty of digital system is that you can plan for way into the future which also gives you more control over the direction of your life in general.

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Set automatic task/reminders to train yourself over a new habit. Habits take 20 days or so to form so you need to keep repeating a task until it becomes a habit. Set an automatic task with a reminder to remind you every day that you need to do the task at an appropriate time. Gradually you will learn to do it without the reminder at which point it becomes a habit. 

Use automatic reminders to warn yourself when you are becoming unproductive.. It is as if you have created a digital supervisor to look over you, even though the supervisor is your own creation. 

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Managing stress by effectively managing time

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Time Management helps you to reduce long-term stress by giving you direction when you have too much work to do.

It puts you in control of where you are going, and helps you to increase your productivity. By being efficient in your use of time, you should enjoy your current role more, and should find that you are able to find the time to relax outside work and enjoy life.

Good time management is essential for coping with the pressures of modern life without experiencing too much stress

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Work out your goals

This first step towards improving your time management is to ask yourself some questions. “Work out who you want to be, your priorities in life, and what you want to achieve in your career or personal life,” says Donaldson-Feilder. “That is then the guiding principle for how you spend your time and how you manage it.”

Once you have worked out the big picture, even if it's quite general, you can then work out some short-term and medium-term goals. “Knowing your goals will help you plan better and focus on the things that will help you achieve those goals,” says Donaldson-Feilder.

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Make a list

A common time-management mistake is trying to remember too many details, leading to information overload. A better way to stay organised and take control of your projects and tasks is to use a to-do list to write things down.

“Try it and see what works best for you,” says Donaldson-Feilder. She prefers to keep a single to-do list, to avoid losing track of multiple lists. “Keeping a list will help you work out your priorities and timings, so it can help you put off the non-urgent tasks.”

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Work smarter, not harder

Good time management at work means doing high-quality work, not high quantity. Donaldson-Feilder advises concentrating not on how busy you are but on results. “Spending more time on something doesn’t necessarily achieve more,” she says. “Staying an extra hour at work at the end of the day may not be the most effective way to manage your time.”

You may feel resentful about being in the office after hours. You’re also likely to be less productive and frustrated about how little you’re achieving, which will compound your stress.

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Have a lunch break

Many people work through their lunch break to gain an extra hour at work, but Donaldson-Feilder says that can be counter-productive. “As a general rule, taking at least 30 minutes away from your desk will help you to be more effective in the afternoon,” she says.

A break is an opportunity to relax and think of something other than work. “Go for a walk outdoors or, better still, do some exercise,” says Donaldson-Feilder. “You’ll come back to your desk re-energised, with a new set of eyes and renewed focus.”

Planning your day with a midday break will also help you to break up your work into more manageable chunks.

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Balance Situations – What’s really urgent and what’s not Another time management technique is to learn

to distinguish true emergency situations from situations that seem urgent but just aren’t that important.

Before you drop everything next time, ask yourself: Is this truly important or just urgent to the person requesting my help? What will the consequences be if I don’t handle this immediately? Do I actually have important and urgent things that should be done instead? Is there someone else that can handle this situation? Time Management

Practise the 4 Ds

We can spend up to half our working day going through our email inbox, making us tired, frustrated and unproductive. A study has found that one-in-three office workers suffers from email stress.

Making a decision the first time you open an email is crucial for effective time management. To manage this burden effectively, Donaldson-Feilder advises practising the 4 Ds of decision-making:

Delete: half of the emails you get can probably be deleted immediately.

Do: if the email is urgent or can be completed quickly. Delegate: if the email can be better dealt with by

someone else. Defer: set aside time at a later date to spend on emails

that require longer action.Time Management

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