Believe me, I have been there. I used to think that being busy was extremely important, not till I found out that I was doing a lot of things, but nothing productive was done. In this world of multi-tasking, I asked myself is there something I could do to make myself more effective and yet have more time for myself?
The answer was a resounding YES! It is so simple and you could do it too. Now is the time to do less and yet be more effective. Follow these lessons and you will immediately gain back your lost time!
1. Dispel the Myth of Time Management
There is NO such thing as time management, only self management. We cannot technically manage time, but we can manage ourselves in the way we do things. We have to decide the difference between being productive and being busy. There is no other way.
2. Check your emails only twice a day
Emails are considered to be the most disruptive thing to work in our everyday work. We tend to have this compulsive urge to check out emails almost 20 times a day. When there are no emails, we tend to create them. Some of us even fall into the habit of replying emails thru and fro when it all takes is a phone call to quickly resolve an issue. If there are more than 2 emails replies going out from you, try talking over the phone instead.
My suggestion is to check emails twice a day at 10am and 4pm. This gives you the early morning to plan what you need to do for the whole day. By only checking twice a day, you also tend to clear emails faster than usual. Doing things in bulk give you momentum and you tend to be more selective in the way you read emails.
3. Avoid taking phone calls as much as possible
Taking phone calls can literally break your momentum when you do things. Have you ever got into the momentum of doing sometime and when the call comes, it just suddenly breaks your concentration? Even during meetings and discussions, phone calls can often disrupt the flow of thoughts and exchanges between colleagues.
4. Reduce Meeting Time And Set Clear Objectives For It
Long meetings with no clear objectives are often another potential time waster. It is always essential to have a clear agenda with a specific outcome you want to achieve. Eg, decide on our marketing direction by the end of this meeting or set out a timeline of programs for 2009. If you are clear on the objectives, you tend to stay focused on the topic and avoid wandering off to other issues. It is also wise to set an end time to the meeting. Instead of the usual 1 hr blocks for meeting, decide that its going to be no long than 45 minutes. Then slowly reduce future meetings to just 30min blocks. Reducing meeting durations also trains people to get straight to the point and not wander from topic to topic.
5. Kaizen Approach To The Way You Do Things
How many times do we fall into this trap of busyness and we do not spend enough time to plan and evaluate how to improve things? The Japanese have this “Kaizen” principle, which means Continuous Improvement. This slow, incremental improvement is always observed at all levels of work. If we are too busy, how can we set aside time to evaluate and improve our work processes? In my previous experience working with a manufacturing company, I’ve learnt that if you could improve an operation by just 2 seconds, you literally save thousands of dollars in man hours and machinery cost.
6. Do Not Multi-Task
I know this statement will offend probably many people; however I stand by this rule. Multi-tasking actually makes us feel very rushed and we tend to shorten our attention span on things. This makes us feel rather frustrated and unsettled. Intense multitasking can induce a stress response, an adrenaline rush that when prolonged, can damage cells that form new memory, according to a research study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by Dr. David Meyer. He mentions that multitasking actually makes a person inefficient. There is time lost between switching among tasks increases with the complexity of the tasks.
The best way approach to doing things is just doing things one thing at a time.
Source -> www.deepimpactonline.com
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