Introduction to Time Management

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Work Smarter and Take Control of Your Workload

Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function exceptionally well, even under intense pressure.

What’s more, as you master these skills with ClientMagic software, you’ll find that you take control of your workload, and say goodbye to the often intense stress of work overload.

At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, because they’re not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most.

Discover Tools That Can Help You

How often do you find yourself running out of time or over-booking? Weekly, daily, or even hourly? For many it seems that there’s just never enough time in the day to get everything done.

When you know how to manage your time you gain control. Rather than busily working here, there, and everywhere (and not getting much done anywhere), effective time management helps you to choose what to work on and when. This is essential if you’re to achieve anything of any real worth.

Some of the tools you can use are Microsoft One Note if you are at a computer most of the day. Post it notes and even an old fashioned spiral notepad can help (don’t forget to date the start of each day) or a computer scheduling program like outlook or the ones found in scheduling software like ClientMagic.

Manage Your Time and Get It All Done

If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree – but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them in achieving things they’re capable of and disrupts their careers.

The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes.

Why Do We Procrastinate?

In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don’t understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren’t actually important.

Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you’re capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn’t going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do.

Plan Your Time and Make Time For Yourself

Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using an intuitive software scheduler properly, you can:

Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time
Plan to make the best use of the time available
Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do
Preserve contingency time to handle “the unexpected”
Minimize the stress of over-booking

A well thought-through scheduler allows you to manage your commitments, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you. It is therefore your most important weapon for beating work overload and inefficiency.

Maximizing Productivity Through Improved Focus

What is focus?

Let’s take an example. Have you ever seen a hassled mom trying to get her young daughter to leave whatever she is doing and do something else? It’s a common enough sight: Young children can get so wrapped up in whatever they’re doing that it takes a lot of persuasion to get them to switch their attention.

This ability to focus totally on one thing comes naturally to young children, but it’s one of the biggest challenges that most of the rest of us face. We struggle to concentrate and, because of this, fail to get on with the work we’re doing.

Maintaining Focus and Keeping Control of Your Time

Everyday interruptions at work can be a key barrier to managing your time effectively and, ultimately, create a barrier to your success. Think back to your workday yesterday and consider for a minute the many interruptions that occurred. They may have been phone calls, emails, colleagues stopping by, or anything else that unexpectedly demanded your attention and, in doing so, distracted you from the task at hand.

Because your day only has so many hours in it, a handful of even the smallest interruptions can rob you of the time you need to achieve your goals and be successful in your work and life. More than this, they can break your focus, meaning that you have to spend time re-engaging with the thought processes needed to successfully complete complex work.

The key to controlling interruptions is to know what they are and whether they are necessary, and to plan for them in your daily schedule when they truly need your attention.

Multi-Tasking is Not Reality

There are many studies to prove that the human brain can do only one thing at a time. In order to do something else you must task switch, or put the existing task on hold, and change to another. When you go back to the previous task it does take time to establish a train of thought again. When I task switch I make a comment in Microsoft One Note so O remember what I switched from. If I am away from my computer I will write a sticky note to myself which I carry with me. The importance of scheduling as we have discussed is very important and can be a huge time saver (studies say your production will go up by over 30% or more) allowing you to finish a task before starting another.

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