which time-management technique helps you succeed?

I asked my LinkedIn network for some ideas on Time Management. Here is what suggested.

You can read Brian Tracy’s idea’s on time here and here.

Another article on time management is here.

Here is an article on how to make use of some of your leisure time for learning to help you succeed.

Here is an article by Orison Swett Marden on time which starts with a great story teaching about time from Benjamin Franklin.

I work on a goal basis. I have a set of Goals I want to reach. And each day I create a To Do list to meet objectives along the way for that goal.

Each day, I create a new list of actions. Sometimes, yesterday’s action carry forward, sometimes they don’t. In any case, since I know all my long term goals – finding actions each day to carry me forward helps me meet my goals.

Different systems for time-management are outlined in the comments below. Read on and pick a strategy that is right for you, or if you already have one that’s working, feel free to contribute it through a comment at the bottom of the article.

Click here to find the original question and answer on LinkedIn Answers

The Success Stories series provides case studies from people about what it takes to become successful. Each of us is unique in our goals and aspirations, but we have things in common with others. Through the 10,000,000 people in my LinkedIn network we can share ideas and solutions that will help you achieve your goals. While I don’t always agree with all the comments I receive, I include all that are presented coherently and could help at least one of my readers.

The questions have been slightly edited for grammar and presentation. Comments and Kudos, while always appreciated, have been edited out.

Click here to read all the Success Stories.

One of the greatest tips I ever heard in time management was called the "2 Minute Rule". If something takes 2 minutes or less, always do it at the time you learn about it. Our schedules are so often littered with unfinished 2 minutes tasks and those unfinished tasks can often be very hard on business relationships or easily forgotten all together.

I use my own 4 Dimensional – 4D- system.

Do – If it takes a couple of minutes it’s best to do it straight away. Saves a lot of time in the long run.

Delegate

Delay – but set a time in Outlook or so. If I delay it a second time I will either Delegate or

Dump – it’s amazing how often you can say no or don’t do something and the world is still turning.

This works for normal life (job, young children, social life etc).

For my long term strategies I use a combination of Outlook, MindGenius and OneNote. MindGenius to shape my thoughts/ideas/plans, OneNote to collect everything related to these thoughts. That in itself is inspirational as it can take any shape and form you want it to take. I then attach small but manageable tasks – linking to Outlook- to these notes.
As I work my way through them I get nearer to my goals.

Sounds a bit cumbersome but it works a dream for me. I get a lot done on a day to day basis but never lose sight of my overall plan.

My mentor took me to a time management seminar where I picked up an extremely helpful system which I still use today.

Each day BEFORE I leave the office I make sure my "to do" sheet is filled out for the following day. This is the most important step. Before I learned this technique I found myself restless at night worrying I may forgot something important that needed to be accomplished the next day. Now when I go home I know my list is prepared, and as Coach Bill Belicheck says “The hay is in the barn!”. This leads to a more restful sleep!

Every task that is high priority and needs to be accomplished the next day, I place in the A column. The A column needs to be completely checked off no matter what. Sometimes column A is checked off early in the day, sometimes I work extra at night before I can go home to finish the A column, but either way the A column is finished before I leave the office.

Every task that is important but not a priority I place in the B column. If the day is over and my column A is completely checked off, even if not one single B task has been accomplished, I can go home and sleep well. (Providing my list is updated for the next day!)

The rest of my “to do’s” are placed in the C column. These are task that may or may not need to done. Many times task in the C column are dumped after a day or two. Many times these things end up not being very important.

I have found this system to work extremely well for me and it has helped me to be less stressed and more organized. Especially in the mid to late nineties when I was heavily compensated by commissions I saw a direct correlation between my improved time management skills and my increased commission.

I don’t use TO DO lists either since I find them completely annoying and give me the feeling of never accomplishing my plans. I do use my blackberry to develop goals, mission statements, ideas, stock diary, etc., which I then review at least once a week. That way I can think of what I need to do and what is ultimately the most important in my life vs. a To-Do list.

 I find using a pda phone to be the best way to stay organized for meetings, setting meetings, conference calls and planning. The best version is the blackberry IMO and I had a Palm Treo and Nokia e94 to compare to over the short term.

 Another great feature is learning to maximize sorting in Outlook to automatic folders. You create a boss folder and other subsequent folders based on projects, etc. Then you can respond to the most urgent and political on time with little thought. Also you avoid getting stressed seeing 150 emails in your inbox.

The first rule of thumb I pull out of my hat for myself and for my clients is this. Before you start working every day, ask yourself "What is the one most important thing I could do today?’ This is different than what you have to do or what you should do. It is the most important thing you could do. The answer, if you think carefully, is usually something that requires courage and integrity and not a lot of time. For instance, resolving an ongoing issue with a coworker or talking to your boss about the future of your career or hiring a personal trainer.

When you consider To Do lists, they are infinite. In other words, there is an infinite amount of stuff you could do. So the best leverage you can get is making sure you do the most important thing first.

It seems to be a human quality that we are tempted to do things that keep us busy but don’t really give us great results or great leverage in our lives. For instance, we’ll answer all our emails and go to every meeting we are invited to. You don’t have to worry about doing "normal" work items like this. They will always be there. But you can make significant positive change in your life and the life of others if you make sure to do the one most important thing each day.

Create, Prioritize and Schedule tasks in a “To Do” list every day.

Maintain an activity log.

It is extremely helpful to create a “To Do” list so that you know exactly what must be accomplished that day. Prioritize the items in the list based on business importance, resources and time required to accomplish the tasks. The goal must be to always find ways to minimize time, resources and scope. For example, if one of the items on the list is to respond to all business emails within 24 hours, do not feel compelled to answer every single email you receive on which your name appears in the “cc” line. Set up a filter so that only emails addressed to you are flagged for action. In addition, delegate tasks that can be done by others which will free up time that you can use to focus on the tasks that you need to do. Identify tasks that really belong to someone else in the organization and move them out of your list. Scheduling tasks or deciding the sequence in which the tasks must be completed is also important. Energy levels fluctuate during the day which means that it must be a factor that must be considered while scheduling tasks.

Finally keep an activity log of how you spend your time. This will help you identify your most productive times during the day and will also help in more accurately estimating time and resource requirements.

I would like to contribute a practice I adopted some 7 years ago and I teach it in my communication and leadership programs.

When interrupted, I encourage participants to tell others how much time they can afford to give them. For example, Melissa notices that John is in his office so she decides to drop by.

When Melissa says, "Hi John, how are you today?"

John should reply by saying something along these lines:

1) "I’m doing great Melissa. I have about 5 minutes before I have to get back to a report I am working on. How may I help you?"

2) "I’m doing great Melissa. I have about 20 minutes before I have to head out to a meeting. How may I help you?"

The key is that about 1 minute before the time limit is reached, John has to be assertive and remind Melissa that he has to move on to his other work. If John fails to do this, he will lose credibility and Melissa won’t take him seriously the next time he says he only has 10 minutes.

Personally, from experience I have learned that if we cannot get on top of events they will eventually swamp us, so I try to as much as possible to manage or drive events rather than the other way around…. this way you can control to some extent the flow of tasks that consume time.

I always have a piece of paper that I use to jot down the things I need to do today!

I tick them off when done.

I cannot do EVERYTHNG so I prioritize… giving due attention to the important items and filtering tasks that consume unnecessarily large amount of time with little benefit.

I have a to do tracker for long term goals that keep me focused on the path to achieving them… this is constantly revised as we go forward duly taking into account impacting events!

I organize a lot so I can have at my fingertips all the information that I need. This helps quick turnarounds saving me time to do other things!

Automate as much as you can – do not do repetitive tasks manually which are huge time wasters.

Meetings – learn to do them well instead of having them consume your time.

Above all, the cardinal principle dear to my heart is that everyone, no matter how rich or poor, has exactly the same 24 hours each day. How you make use of it is entirely dependant on you – you manage it well you get more mileage – you don’t you fritter away time forever.

I have a pda treo phone which I place dates of scheduled projects [with reminders at least 7 days in advance to "prepare me to get ready to work on it"], then use the Task Manager in it to break down each project so when done, it gets checked off. Also to mention, I make sure to place an estimated [clock interval] time to get each project done [each day]. My company’s website and email package also allows us to program reminder emails to be sent to our cell phones [at specific times in case we're busy at the moment to check To-Do lists and pda's] as well; therefore, there are many ways to stay on top of time for us…the question is do we have the strength?

Next, if any of the projects or appointments involve meeting someone OR if by chance I bump into someone while in the middle of doing a task, I do preface the conversation with something like "I only have so-and-so minutes before I have to leave" so they don’t think I’m rude when I’m ready to depart and continue my task.

In addition AND in closing, the way I figure out which one is priority for me to do…is I meditate [beforehand] which task or project stands to be more detrimental to me if NOT done. Or I may make that decision based on difficulty level (ie. difficult things done first because you never know when and if a headache/ fatigue may set in and you then don’t have the "will" to get said task done that day again….in other words, easy tasks can get done no matter how you’re feeling…also good to schedule breaks, naps and/or downtime for rejuvenation of strength between tasks) ….thanks Palm Treo.

I manage my time effectively with a combination of methods, however the biggest breakthrough with time management for me was communication. When given a task, I always establish the following:

1. How Urgent is it?

2. Is it actually your task to do? (if not delegate)

3. Where does it fit into my current work schedule?

I then give the person who allocated the task a truthful time span on when I can get the job done, that way their expectations are realistic and I can work to a planned timeframe.

Steven Covey and his Seven (+ 8th) habits have always helped!

As for an example, I think the best one I can give was being asked by one of my directors to help consolidate 7 warehouses into 2 (with a Landlord-imposed 6 week deadline). The job had been up in the air for 2 years.

A number of other managers had had been tasked with doing it, tried and failed.
I did the following:

Who do I need in my team who can add value?

Can I divide the work up into smaller projects working in Tandem?

Is the timeline actually achievable? Was it S.M.A.R.T?

 So after establishing a team:

Setting up the timeline with all the tasks etc. I then looked at what was achievable and went back to my director with a date of 8 weeks and justified why we would fail if we agreed to 6 weeks.

 Once I had his agreement, he then went to Landlord with a completion date, they agreed it, we got the job done in 7 weeks and exceeded their expectations instead of saying yes to 6 weeks and failing.

Communication is the key to achieving success, manage other peoples expectations as well as your own!

Very simple, Sleep less. You can have all your sleep after you leave the world.

 I found that thought motivating and has cut out almost 90 min of sleep, 6 days a week. Moreover it helps me to focus and achieve better results.

Try less sleep, good exercise, results to manage time better will follow.

Reverse planning.

Find a way to only spend time doing what matters to you !

 If things keep cropping up to absorb your time that are not important to you… create a plan, a form, and allocate staff to deal with removing the offending time absorber!

 If you only spend time on what really matters to you… time comes freely.

Time is money so we need to spend it where we have to and conserve when we must. Time management should be dealt the same way as money management. You can borrow pointers from here and there, but after all we all have our own personal clock built in from childhood. I follow following rules:

·        Be informed but do not dwell in unproductive activities (useless meetings, chats, telephones etc).

·        Do not use phrase – “I am busy” or “I have no time.” We all have time to do what we like. Time can be bent and stretched if you have enough gravitas. People who are most productive have the maximum available time (try to call a mid level manager vs. an executive. I get through in one or two calls maximum).

·        Do those things first at which you are best at. Look for someone who is better at doing those things.

·        Combine different tasks with similar purpose and do those things first which has multiple uses/outcomes or domino effect.

·        Do those things first which you are able to and others need it. For example, answer that e-mail where customer is waiting for critical information which you already have.

·        Do those things first which have long term impact on you or someone.

·        Be first and do not wait until last minute to do anything. It takes twice as much time and produces half as good results.

·        Leverage informal relationships to get things done by others (this is one thing I have mastered).

·        Other people’s time is as valuable as yours. Respect it (I was at USPS this morning and realize what a mess it is!).

 Turning over assignments in time is my key competitive advantage.

Here’s an overall of how I get strong results in reaching goals:

1)      Every day has the long term goal in mind.

2)      Each action in the day has the long term goal in mind.

3)      Big items get top priority. Whatever will have the biggest impact on the long term goal gets top priority and is managed first.

4)      1 minute rule. I prioritize by giving things one minute of my attention. At the end of that, I’ve decided where it fits in the priority list for future action.

5)      I divide the day into hour blocks for larger actions. First block is to answer emails and prioritize tasks. This is done without interruption to allow deep focus. Remaining blocks are divided into 1 hour segments and done according to priority.

6)      I have a ‘sneak it in when I can’ part of my list. These are things that will benefit from little bits of attention when I find a few minutes here or there. These things are connected to the priority list.

7)      Time wasting is not forbidden, but is scheduled in. Like the junk drawer in your kitchen, it’s a way of managing a human need to be idle or chaotic in places. During time wasting, I end up playing with ideas, relaxing or ‘stumbling’. This sometimes leads me to the best insights for my goals. However, it needs to be managed, or it can overtake your larger purposes.

      I make sure there’s some time in the day that is guarded as uninterruptible. For example, while I’m doing emails or workouts. This time gives me mental space to reorient myself and keep a sense of focus.

I come from a banking industry. No matter whether you use PDA,Note Book, Agent, Blackberry. You will always find lots of things coming your way which you never expected in the first place. It is because

a. You didn’t do you job properly the first time

b. Some one else didn’t get the job done

c. There is a new job which needs to be done

Priority? Now that is quite debatable it self. What is not No.1 for you may be life for some one else. So how do you tell that person to “hang on, I’ll look at your life tomorrow?”

 Things come and need to done right now. We generally, before starting a day, make our BIG 5 which are to be done regardless of the what ever. Then there are Non Negotiable, which are to continue through out the year regardless. What ever comes excluding this needs to join either BIG 5 for next week. If its some thing which can be squeezed in between these times should be done to avoid next week’s burden.

[ZT – It never hurts to see things from the client’s perspective.]

I know this is "out of vogue" but I use Think, Do, Plan, Act (Deming on TQM) to keep things in order. It has never failed me

I use a simple A-B-C method, and it works well for me in conjunction with Outlook reminders.

 To give you an example, I always assign A priority to urgent tasks that either must be completed the same day, or would fall under a two-minute rule. If I have more than one A, I number them A1, A2 etc. I always try to have a maximum of thee to four As for any given day.

 In addition, I utilize Outlook reminders to remind me of an event and or task. Outlook allow you to setup reminders on communications prior to sending them.

 For example, you have assigned a C priority to a task, and would like to follow-up on Tuesday of next week. When you compose an email message, prior to hitting Send button, click on Follow up button (Office 2007), and set date and time, and them click on Send. This way you will never miss or forget to follow-up on delegated tasks.

For a purely positive psychological boost I write up a to do list as I complete the item, and put a large tick in the box. At the end of the day I smile when I see all that I have accomplished!

 Another handy rule of mine is: Don’t put off until tomorrow, what you can avoid altogether!

My own method is pretty simple and combines some of the elements I have read in other’s postings. First of all, I do take care of quick things right away and don’t allow them to pile up. Drives me crazy to think that I have 50 action items pending decisions or actions from me and makes me feel (correctly) that I have just become a roadblock for the success of other people. I don’t allow that to happen.

 But the most important method I use is: before each work day I set the 1 or 2 high level goals/projects/actions that I WILL achieve that day. No matter how crazy things get, failure is not an option. If that means I have to finish in the evening or over the weekend then no problem, but I will accomplish those goals (with only very rare exceptions due to extraordinary circumstances) before the next business day. This increases my sense of satisfaction and ensures that the 50 little things I mentioned in my first paragraph don’t get in the way of real progress that drives the business ahead.

I find these suggestions all very helpful, so I am not going to repeat what others already mentioned. 2 additional habits:

•  I take notes in every meeting, call and conversation in a notebook (not a computer… a paper notebook) and I mark the to-dos as they appear. This frees up my attention to solving the problem, and not to ‘memorizing’.
•  (I don’t do this all the time) I think of the cost of time: "How much would I have to pay to get this solved?" and I also add the cost of my time to the cost of tasks.

 

Susan Smoter

I have a clean desk all the time, I keep my inbox under control and I keep up with my workload. I do this by using an age-old practice… touch it once and move it along. I also use my blackberry to scan emails during short periods of downtime between meetings, and I have a daily folder for each day of the week where I file what I’ll need that day, as well as any notes pertaining to the things I’ll be doing on that day. Most importantly, I keep track of what I’ve done each week (usually on Friday as I wind down the week.) This way I can easily look back on what I did and who I worked with. I hope this is useful – it sounds easy, but it works for me.

1) Set priorities – if you are in business for profit, then decide what will be most profitable and be sure that it you do it.

2) Do only that which only you can do yourself. Anything which can be done by someone else should be delegated to the lowest level at which it can be done competently.

3) Touch it only once – either do it, delegate it or trash it.

4) If you can’t finish what you are doing, then do what you can do, break the rest of the task into pieces and either schedule them or delegate them.

I like to plan ahead, especially for tasks that I know would take a while to finish. For example, accomplishing tax returns or preparing a report for a client or setting up a PowerPoint presentation for a talk, even setting up an album of photos.

 What I do is designate a portion of time each week for specific tasks over a period of time. For example, tax returns are due in Australia by 31st Oct so I would set aside an hour each week beginning August for tasks to do with tax returns. I figure out which day it is, depending on what’s going on with work as I’m a freelancer so at any given time of the year, some days are better than others. By being disciplined in facing this task when it is scheduled in the week, before I know it, I’ve completed my tax return. I’ve given this advice to a friend who is writing a book and is taking forever to finish it and as a consequence, is now up against a tight printer’s deadline. I was thinking, sure, your life is busy, but if you only set aside a portion of time each week in relation to the book you’re writing, you wouldn’t have this problem.

 For shorter tasks, I schedule them into a PDA and the key is to, as much as possible, not reschedule them when they come up. Procrastinating really mucks up schedules and just produces an unfortunate domino effect

Whenever possible, I accomplish tasks in sections so that I can see what work has been completed, which is so satisfying, and seeing the results would inspire me to forge on with the rest that is yet to be tackled.

 We all have to do list, calendars, tasks. I have found the key to success is retraining your brain to learn new habits. How much more productive would we be if over the next year we concentrated on one habit a month, miracles would happen. I share with my clients and have adopted the “Just do it uninterrupted” theory.

 The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) says that 80% of what we do only produces 20% of our results. In other words, most of the things we spend our time on are not all that important. To me this is one of the most effective time management tools and has been around since 1906.

 As a trainer in email efficiency and productivity, I see how we all react to the constant barrage of emails everyday and stop what we are doing to follow the bing, bing, bing, bing! If we just took 20% of our day, 90 minutes uninterrupted, we could concur the world or maybe just gain back some sanity.

 Dr. Edward Hallowell said it best in an article released on January 10, 2006 in Time Magazine. We have all heard of ADD and ADHD he gave the new condition: the name of (attention-deficit trait), or ADT. He explains that “ADT takes hold when we get so overloaded with incoming messages and competing tasks that we are unable to prioritize”. The article goes on with other studies and basically explains that multi-tasking i.e. workplace interruptions is costing the U.S. economy $588 billion a year. I can’t emphasize enough the power of the Pareto Principle. I have an article in depth on my website under Tips and Resources if anyone would like more information on it.

[ZT – I have also heard the Pareto Principle expressed as: 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. So delegation is important too.]

I think that each task has, based in the goals, a "right time" to be done, and a "right person" to do it.

If you understand this clearly, we have our schedule, knowing what to do and when, and what to delegate, when and whom.

Additional tools are 4th quad (urgent and important identification), risks analysis, planning and first of all, vision.

Outside of the ones listed, two additional things that works for me

-while prioritizing To-Do lists, a key factor for me is that if it is not important to my boss (both at office and home, its probably not important)

-when a task is assigned to me, within reasonable time, I revert on when I will get the task done or by when I can revert on when I will get the task done.

Doing the latter helps me prioritize and de-stress much better. People tend to focus on the former leading to large scale time management issues for both the allocater and allocated

I use an overview list of tasks. When I want to actually execute them, I put a date on the overview and at the same time put it on my to-do list for the day.

At the end of the day, outstanding tasks are rescheduled.

I prefer to do it on paper.

In time management, I have been using my own way – EPAD for some time and I am very comfortable with it so far.

 EPAD stands for: 

E- Easy

P – Planning

A – Action

D – Dependent

Before I was using ABC Column method setting up priorities for all my work but later I found out that my schedule was too packed so I could never find spare time to finish tasks in column B and C so they just ended up moving to column A when time passed. So I categorize my work in a different way now – EPAD.

 E - Easy
This bucket refers to the tasks that can be done within a couple of minutes, like the ’2 minutes rule. These tasks should be done at the first place or once you are available to.

 P - Planning
This is a different way that how I handle the "Column B" items. Instead of setting a second priority to the bucket, I would set a timeslot everyday to do planning for these items. Most of the time, tasks that are normally cumbersome to do can be done in a much easier way or less time- consuming way by doing a proper planning in advance.

 After the planning, some new work that will simply your task may arise, like finding relevant sources for more information, directing the right persons to prepare something for you in advance, make delegation, etc. These items should then be put in the E – Bucket or A – Bucket correspondingly.

 A - Action
This bucket refers to the work that requires action but they are not like the easy tasks in the E – bucket. Time should be spared for these action-required work in the day.

 You may plan for your A – work not only for today but also tomorrow or the day that you have decided to act

D - Dependent
These are the things that are fully dependent on others to do but you still have to keep tracking on the progress of it. Just a reminder to yourself, action may have to be taken once the others have finished their responsibilities or something has gone wrong in the middle.

 The normal time for me to set up the EPAD in the day is at night time before going to bed (for the following day) and after work before leaving office (for the night session at home).

*5P – Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

[ZT Very similar to Brian Tracy's ABDE method described here]

I’ve learned through the years that prioritizing is essential for effective time management as much as keeping the goals "real".

So many times we wear ourselves thin trying to achieve the unattainable, and consequently set ourselves up for failure.

 Since very young I learned to set short, medium, and long-term goals, finding it very rewarding to check off each one as I accomplished them.

However, I have achieved my most long-term goal and so happy I don’t remember what else I had to do!

If you want the opportunity to contribute to these questions as they are posted on LinkedIn or to be connected to others interested in Success – Click here to join Zale’s LinkedIn Success Questions Group.

Click here to read all the Success Stories.

Add your insights and opinions in the comments section below!

Success Stories are part of my Success Through Balance approach to life. I believe that Success comes from living a balanced life. You can read more about being successful and the skills required here. 

Keyword Related posts:

1. How Does Adult Learning During Leisure Time Help You Succeed?Welcome to another article in the Success Story series.  The Success Stories series provides answers to some of the questions about what it takes to become successful. While each of us is unique in our goals and aspirations, we have things in common with others. By consulting my LinkedIn network of over 9,000,000 people, I [...]...
2. how has coaching helped you succeed?I have read numerous stories about coaching and how effective it is. I have a friend who has a short (10 minute) daily coaching call. Coaching appears to be one approach for people to become successful. It seems to have replaced finding a mentor, reading books, etc. I have asked my LinkedIn social network what [...]...
3. is it possible for a failure to help you succeed?My story – I had a very successful consulting business several years ago. The business grew in leaps and bounds, however, I never learned how to manage the cash flow properly. So while my projects were profitable, I ran out of cash. And then the business failed. I had to layoff 27 people in one [...]...
4. which success technique keeps your life in balance?I am a strong believer that Success only comes to those people who are in balance. Success is defined as setting and making movement towards those goals. If you are not moving towards the goals you are not successful. Balance means having goals in Personal Growth, Giving Back, Health, Financial Stability, and Relationships. (I have [...]...
5. Marathon Running Will Help You Succeed In BusinessA LinkedIn Answers Report on How Marathon Running Will Help You Succeed In Business....

Tagged as: LinkedIn, LinkedIn Answers, Personal Growth, Stories Of Success, Time