Time management
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[edit] Time Management
Time management is simply about managing your time, but doing so in an effective way. There are parts of time management that are art, and parts that are science. We will explore both of these parts.
[edit] Why time is difficult to manage
As with anything that we have a limited resource of, we have to prioritize how we use it. It is possible to work for 24 hours a day, and still have lots of things that need to be done. And some projects are so large it overwhelms us, since we don't know where to begin.
Some people don't like to have too much planning or order, so they resist this by doing none. But managing your time doesn't mean you have to account for every minute of the day -- it's there to help you, not constrain you.
[edit] What to do first - How much time do you have?
First, we have to know how much effective time we have. For instance, if we want time time manage our day at work, we have to figure out how long we have to do work.
This is harder then it appears. You may work an 8 hour day, but it is doubtful that you have 8 hours of effective working time in that day. Meetings, trips to the water cooler, discussions about last nights TV shows all cut into your working time. Many people are interrupted by others when they are working -- this can be in the form of phone calls, personal visits or urgent e-mails. If you don't know how much effective time you have, you can do an informal time study.
[edit] Next - What do you have to do?
This is the simple step - you simply record what you have to do. This can be done on a piece of paper, in an electronic organizer, or in some other form. Make sure it's not just in your head, though -- while you might have a fantastic memory, we need the information in some form we can manipulate it. Pick the form that you are happiest with, as it'll be you that has to work with it.
[edit] What is important?
Next thing is ranking the items. Make three lists, A, B and C. A is the list of items to do today; B are things that need to be done in the next week or so, and C are in the next month or so. Next, we'll put a number starting at 1 beside each A list item, until we run out of items in your A list. We won't order the B or C list right now.
[edit] How much time will it take?
We now go through the various A list items and estimate how much time it will take. Don't worry too much about being perfect, just be as reasonable as you can.
[edit] Do the planning
Based on what time you have available from our first step, we then schedule based on our estimate of how long it will take.
For example, after meetings and daily tasks, let's say we have 5 hours we can do work. We have 20 tasks, 8 of which are on our A list. We give the 8 tasks an order, and estimate that it will take 1 hour to do each task.
Now, from our plan, we know that we won't finish our A list today. We review to see if any of the bottom 3 items is due today (if they were, they should have been a higher priority, but we double check) and then we finalize our ordering, drawing a line after the 5th item (5 items giving us 5 hours of effective work). We then do the work.
[edit] Review the progress
As soon as we can after our effective time is up, we review our progress.
We only got through 3 items -- item A2 was 2 hours instead of 1 hour, and just as we got started on item A4 we got pulled away for the rest of our effective time for an emergency.
We learned a few things in this example. First, we underestimated item A2 -- so similar items should get more accurate in the future. We also learned that 5 hours is the maximum time that we have available, but we might have less. We can cross 3 things off of todays list.
[edit] Projects
[edit] Questionnaires
- Time Management Questionnaire (Wayne State University)
[edit] See also
- Time management (Wikipedia)
