TIPS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE PERSONAL TIME MANAGEMENT
1. Give Time to Planning and Organizing: -
Planning and organizing-Once you have decided about your project and the key activities and their related work you can start the planning for your project. Planning the time for different activities of the project, which suits your personal needs. Many people find it useful to plan their time on the following basis:
· A daily To-Do-List, deciding first activity in the morning and putting others in sequence according to the priority of that day. Such a list can be a good track to complete the work on that day.
· A detailed weekly plans highlighting the important activities within seven days.
· If your project needs one month for completion, then a long term planning is to be done indicating regular and predictable events in every week.
When you are making a plan for a particular project, then
you are to consider your personal commitments. It will be better to identify all personal, family commitments and try to adjust them in your regular activities of the project. Once you have completed the activity sheet, detailing of all the activities in the order in which they are to be done according to the schedule time and give each activity a deadline for completion. This type of action planning will cover a range of time periods from a matter of hours to days and weeks, months or years. It will take only few minutes to plan but will be helpful in planning time. However, one should be realistic in planning all the activities, so that sufficient time is allotted for the completion of each task, which results in timely finishing of the project.
2. Goal setting which you can accomplish: -
You are to set goals of your life to spend better time of days, months, years and your whole life. First you will have to decide that what you want in your life, to become an administrator, doctor, engineer or a businessman. Once you have decided this, then take into consideration your capacity, capabilities and environment of your family. Goal must be specific, measurable, realistic and achievable. Your optimum goals are those, which cause not to break as you strive for their achievement in life. Goals decided after giving them all consideration for the creative people will serve the right direction of their life. So such type of decision should be taken at the earliest possible of starting your life.
3. Prioritizing: -
You must know what is important and what is urgent among the daily activities you are to perform. Suppose you are to take your co-worker for treatment under emergency, because he/she suffered serious injury during working, so this task is urgent than if you are to attend a meeting of the staff at the same time. So the urgency of the task and its importance depends upon the situation. When you are facing many different requirements on your time it is essential that you are to prioritize your workload and arrange the tasks according to its priority. So there are many factors affecting the priorities of daily activities.
· Difficulty of the activity
· Deadlines of the oncoming tasks
· Motivation/interest of individual
· Activity and skill confidence
Prioritizing is grading the individual activity according to its nature to others and arranging all others in that order for commitments and responsibilities. You must keep in mind the following.
· Some activities need immediate attention
· Some items can be predicted and planned accordingly
· Some activities can be prepared in advance
It will always be better to place the chart of planned activities on the table showing the urgency/importance of each in the column. Now you can apply this to your daily planned sheet and do the activities accordingly. Your ability to prioritize the time schedule will be helped by subdividing the activities into small parts and then take action in that area.
4. Use a To-Do-List:
To-Do-List is to be prepared in the evening before going to bed or early in the morning. You must take care of the activities to be included which are left over in the last list. It will be better if the priority is to be given to urgent items while preparing the daily To-Do-List. You are also to look into the Master diary, which should be prepared in the month of January, and should include all the important events of that year. A small pocket diary of 4”x 2 ½” size is available in the market with lines and square blocks on one side of the page. The blocks are provided to put the Serial number according to the priority of the event to be carried out during daily activities. You are to put serial number 1 at the top priority, which needs immediate attention being urgent on that day. Schedule of activity can be changed according to the situation or urgency of the work. It should be taken care that the brief description of the activity should be given with the time if required. When the task on the diary (To-do-list) is completed according to your satisfaction then it should be crossed or tick marked with red pen. If some problem comes during the performance of the task, then the proper remark should be given with red pen on that area.
5. Be Flexible:
Interruptions and distractions are always there in your daily life, you may have organized your daily tasks after proper planning, but the outside forces may interrupt your routine. You must allow sufficient time for each activity, so that the interruptions and distractions can be covered in that period. It is experienced that the flexibility of 30% extra time should be allowed to each task to cover such situations. Sometime there can be an emergency in your workplace as one worker became unconscious, and you have to accompany him to the hospital for immediate treatment. So if such a flexible time is allowed in our daily activity planning, then such an emergency can be easily tackled during that period keeping the schedule on the track. It is therefore strongly recommended that while planning the daily activities, and then the flexibility of time must be taken care.
6. Take your prime time:
Every person has his/her fixed time, when he/she can do the task most efficiently and with interest. Some can do the work in the morning time more effectively; others can do the same work in the afternoon. So the prime time of individual differs from each other. It is better that the priority work of the day should be done at the prime time, so that the task can be completed well in time and effectively.
7. Do the right thing right in first time:
Doing the right thing in the first attempt is effectiveness, doing things right is the efficiency of the individual. It is said by a management expert “ Doing the right thing is more important than doing things right”. One is to identify the activity, whether it is the right thing to do, then you are to concentrate on your efficiency by doing it right. It will save your effective time and also improve your efficiency of doing the tasks in time.
8. Eliminate the urgent:
While working for your prioritizing and time managed tasks, you are to provide the time for important work in such a way, that if an urgent emergency arises during that period, then the important work should be taken care of. Urgency do arises in emergency, as some of your colleague or family member fall seriously ill immediately and he/she needs urgent attention during your important task you are doing. To eliminate the urgent emergency means to cover the task in the scheduled important work and keep the activities on the right track for daily tasks planned in your To-Do-Lists. It is experienced that urgent tasks have short-term consequences while important work are linked to long-term, goal related implications. So urgent work must be given due consideration when emergency arises, and should be attended immediately without wasting any time.
9. Practice the art of intelligent neglect:
You will come across unimportant activities in your daily life. These types of tasks can be neglected depending upon the importance of the task in that situation. You will come to know with the experience of your life, the importance of the task and its urgency during the scheduled program. You are to prepare your To-Do-List in the evening or in early morning to perform the daily activities on that day, and then you can easily neglect the activities, which carries no weight in that project. You can also delegate some of the activities to others depending upon the capability to tackle the activity properly and in time. To eliminate or delegate some activities will give more time for the other more important activities.
10. Conquer Procrastination: -
Why you postpone or avoid doing the task assigned to you. It is due to the reason that either the task is very difficult or it takes more time to complete because the task is big one. It is better that you should break the task into very small activities, so that the small task will be completed in short time than big task. Another point is that you do not properly understand how to do the task. It may be that your in charge could not explain you the detailed procedure to take action on the activity. Interest of the person going to do the task is also very much important factor in postponing the task. It will be better to delegate such type of activity to someone who is capable in doing that. So procrastination can be conquered easily after controlling the above factors.
11. Learn to say ‘NO’:
The word ‘No’ is very small in our daily use, but it is harsh when you use it for others. When you argue with someone on some critical issue and you are not agreeing to his/her views on that topic then you are to say ‘NO’. Now in your daily planning of the activities, you fix the priority of important task to be completed within fixed time, but some emergency come in between the period, so you are to say ‘NO’ for the urgency of the situation. Blocking time for some important task, but often not scheduled in planning, so you are to use the word ‘NO’ at that time. Most of your problems will be solved if you say ‘NO’ for the unimportant task with which you are not convinced at all. Life becomes more easy for you if adopt such powers of saying ‘NO’.
12. Reward yourself for success:
Every human being will be encouraged, if he/she will be rewarded on achievement of small success. You are to celebrate your success with your friends or family members, because you have completed your goal. It is always better to promise yourself for a small reward may be in any shape on completion of the task. This will not only boost up your daily working, but also set an example for others may be your co-workers or family members. If you learn to balance excellence in your work, play and relaxation, then your life will become happier and healthier.
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