Sensible Organizing Solutions

Successfully Managing Your Time  

Many of us agree that you can’t really manage time, you can only use it wisely to accomplish the most important things you need to do and want to do. Keeping in mind that most busy professionals have over 200 hours of uncompleted work at any one time, you can’t do it all! So, how do you decide what to do and when?

Here are some techniques I have learned and shared with my clients:

1) Complete your #1 priority item first thing in the morning, every morning. Don’t check e-mail or pick up the phone because you are bound to be distracted and led into conversations / e-mails before getting your #1 task done.

2) Stop work 15 to 30 minutes before your day ends to organize yourself for the next day. Return all paper and other items to their designated homes, plan your priorities, confirm appointments for the next day and list your tasks to be done in order of priority.

3) Every Friday, spend one or two hours developing your plan for the next week. There are several key steps to this process:

• Review your calendar from the past week for any undone action items you need to add to your To-Do list. Schedule appointments with yourself to complete them.
• Look at your calendar for next week. Do you need to prepare anything for upcoming meetings? If so, how long will it take and when will you do it? Schedule time to work on these items.
• Review your To-Do list for any urgent and/or important items and decide when you will work on them. Schedule in these tasks.
• Review any major projects, break them down into small action steps and book time with yourself to ensure you are moving them forward to completion.
• After doing all of this, consider whether your schedule is realistic. In general, you need to keep 20% to 50% of your week open for unexpected interruptions, requests and projects. Make adjustments, if necessary.

As you can see, each one of these steps involves scheduling commitments with yourself by blocking off time in your calendar as you would for any other meeting.

September is back to school and back to work – what a perfect time to plan for success. Remember, the effort put into planning Is far less painful than the consequences of not planning at all! 

Jana Hartwell, CPO
Sensible Organizing Solutions