Time management is the systematic and disciplined method of planning
your time. The
purpose of time management is to have more time for the important things in
your work and in your personal life. You can
win an amazing amount of time every day through systematic scheduling.
Through a targeted time management, you have more time that you
can use freely. It's
time management but not that you free up more time for work, so you can squeeze
in during the 12 hours that you work with every day's work for 15 hours. Instead, you should create more freedom with your time
management, for example, for recreation, for ways to recharge your batteries,
hobbies or other projects that are important to you. So you can generally lead a more balanced and therefore happier
life.
Better time management will help you not only help you to gain
time, but it also helps you to do the really important things. This allows you to be more successful and happier. And you ultimately less work with these tasks than before
because you always have the consistent focus on the essentials, the important
things in looking through a systematic time management. So you can identify problems and potential trouble spots in
advance. In the
initial stage, such situations can usually resolve with much less effort than
if you are already in the middle.
But you
should ask yourself: Do you really want more time?
People who constantly have too little time to act, important and
deserve appropriate in our society. Because
of this, many people resist - perhaps unconsciously - to better time
management. We are
often no longer even used to having time for ourselves. Before dealing
seriously with time management, you should make a conscious decision whether
you want to really have more time. Otherwise,
it could be that you boycott it. And
then all time saving techniques will not help.
Inventory: How much time you consume?
If you
want to improve your handling of the time, you should first look at where your
time is actually going. To
eliminate time wasters, you first have to know what steals your time.
What areas
are there in your life?
First,
you can think again, in which different areas your life is divided, and how
much time you spend in each area. An
Example:
·
I'm working, working about 40 hours a week + 8 hours driving distance.
·
I play handball in a club and there I spend about 5 hours a week
with my training.
·
I run my household and need approximately 9 hours a week for
this.
·
With my friends I spend about 6 hours a week.
·
Other Areas
Get an
overview of your current life.
Check first inventory with a time stamp
To get
an accurate picture of your actual time consumption, you should do the
following for a week.
Write
in a time protocol exactly how much time you spend on what activities in your
life, from getting up to going to sleep.
This
requires a bit of discipline, but you see exactly how much time you actually
use for what. Select
one week as normal as possible and not just the holiday season or any other
time.
Analyze
your time protocol
After
a week, you can analyze your time-log.
Find
the activities for which you invest most of the time. Ask for each of the activities, if you
are still willing to spend so much time on it. You may also wish to spend more
time on some activities than before? For
this time, you have to cut somewhere else.
You
can learn this way of your time-log to see if and how you want to design your
daily routine in order to spend more time on the things you want to.
Here
you must meet any requirements or make someone else happy. Do not judge too hard on yourself if you
find that you fritter away or spend a lot of time with things that are not so
important to you - yes, you have the option to change at any time.
Scheduling - Part 1
After
you get an overview of your tasks and about what you want to achieve, you can
begin with the actual scheduling.
Planning spare time
Many
people claim that they have too much to do to plan. Planning saves time and results of planned time schedule have often a better quality in terms of output of final result. Previously
to plan well, it meant to work smarter, now it means how best to utilize your time.
Plan daily
for 5 to 15 minutes
Reserve
5 to 15 minutes uninterrupted time for planning. For example, the time in the morning after breakfast, so that you
can plan the current day. Or you can also plan about the next day in the evening before going to bed.
A weekly
schedule is possible
You
can plan for the entire next week at the weekend or on a Monday morning. The weekly schedule has the advantage
that your focus is more on the long-term and strategic results. Plan for a week, but you still need to
check your daily-schedule and consider for contingencies in your plan.
Plan in Writing and keep plans results-oriented
Your
planning should be in writing.
Start
with the question: "What are the most important things I want to do today
or need to do today"
The answers to this question - your tasks - should be written.
Formulate your tasks results-oriented, as if the result of the task would be
ready. Instead
of "write review" write "report is completed." You ultimately want to achieve a result
and not write the report for the sake of the activity. The phrase "report completed"
can also be more likely to open the possibility to delegate the task.
Scheduling - Part 2
Not
all tasks have the same importance or urgency. Therefore, it is useful to distinguish
tasks. Our next post will cover this in detail.
