Time Management: part 1 of 4

Time management: all those tasks and corresponding documents awaiting your attention.

Is this still a challenge for most of us? With all that stuff hitting us left and right in the office environment, we need to assess and reassess our processes. With our extended world today, it is even more imposing and it becomes a daily struggle to keep on top of all those electronic messages and workload.

"Time is of the essence" is a popular saying that says it all. In business, clients, time management, and efficiency are synonymous with success. If too much time is spent with processes, email management, and finding documents, you will need to assess and define your priorities, your goals, and what needs to be done at the end of each day.

Survey:
Create a spreadsheet and start a survey for the period of one week and log the time it took to find documents and all related material, make phones calls, attend weekly and monthly meetings, and work associated with preparation and post meeting work, all visits with clients, and in marketing.

Begin with listing each major category and log your tasks under each category.

Make a list of tasks for the week and prioritize. Include time for email responses, report writing, drafts and revisions, phone calls, meetings, accounting, and other activities for the week.

Online and manual agendas and calendars:
Use your paper based or electronic calendar. Write your time schedule for the week. Allow room for extra interruptions, and they do occur.

Minimal time period:
Start dealing with tasks that require little time. Get them out of the way. Don't procrastinate with tasks you don't like to do, do them with the same intensity as you would other tasks,and it will soon become a new habit. Tasks ,which do not demand a great deal of effort or thought, can be taken care of quickly and dealt with early in the day. The pile will diminish quickly.

Response to emails that can be handled easily and do not need a lot of your time and attention due to the nature of the message, can be put on the top of the list. The list of emails will shrink considerably since we do get a lot of transitory messages. Phone calls that require you attention can be dealt with immediately.

Maximum time:
Important new and ongoing projects, conference calls, out of town meetings, ongoing activities, which require more than one hour, must be well estimated.

Log the maximum time you think it would require to write a report that day, work with your colleagues on a revised document, attend a meeting, etc. Prioritize and follow simple good practices and the stress and piles will look much better by mid morning.

Francine Renaud
Records Management Consultant
http://www.timeouttoorganize.com/
Tel: 250-763-3988