Time Management

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Time Management

• CCCSFAAA 2004
• Carole Ann Simpson
• Debt Management Consultant
• USA Funds

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I Wish.

• Complete this sentence with a list
• I wish I had more time for_________

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Identify some time bandits

• Complete this sentence with a list
• I sometimes waste time by________

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Todays session

• Why is time so important?
• What is time management
• Some tried and true practices for managing time
  at work and in life
• Time budget
• Whats really important

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My February 2005 so far
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Identifying Your Time Stealers

• Interruptions telephone
• Interruptions personal visitors
• Meetings
• Task you should delegate
• Procrastination and indecision
• Inadequate technical knowledge
• Unclear objectives and priorities
• Acting with incomplete information

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Identifying Your Time Stealers

• Dealing with team members
• Crisis management
• Unclear communications
• Lack of planning
• Stress and fatigue
• Inability to say no
• Desk management and personal disorganization

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• Practices that can put you at peace with the way
  you use time

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1. Come to Work to Work

• Are you able to get done what you need to without
  working extra?
• How much time do you spend not on task?
• Spend time planning and organizing
• Using time to think and plan is time well spent
• If you fail to take time to plan, you are, in
  effect, planning to fail
• Think of some of your more productive work days
  (the days before a big vacation, for example)
• What was so different?

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2. Be Cool!

• Attitude check
• Leave your problems at the door
• Act like you like it
• Be flexible
• Allow time for interruptions
• Plan 50 of your time to have time for
  interruptions
• When you expect to be interrupted, schedule
  routine task

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3. Set Goals

• Set SMART goals specific, measurable, achievable
  , realistic, and timely
• Optimum goals cause you to stretch but not
  break as you strive for achievement
• Goals give creative people a much-needed sense of
  direction

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4. Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

• Daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and career
• Schedule time for emails, phone calls, quiet
  time
• Schedule time to get rid of e clutter
• Schedule time to create and update a good file
  system
• Schedule monthly maintenance
• Schedule time for professional development

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5. A Place for Everything

• Clean it up
• Practice the art of intelligent neglect
• Eliminate distractions, trivial tasks, and task
  which have no long-term consequences
• 10 minutes a day to clean up
• Handle it once, which means either
• Do it,
• Put it on to do list,
• File it, OR
• Trash it

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6. Prioritize

• Use the 80/20 rule
• 80 of the reward comes from 20 of your efforts
• Isolate and identify 20
• Prioritize time to concentrate your work on those
  with greatest reward
• Use color, number, or letter system
• Flag items with deadlines will help you stick to
  priorities

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7. Use a To Do List

• Daily to do list
• Last thing from previous day
• First thing in the morning
• To do list with a calendar/schedule
• Running to do list
• Combination to do list
• The If I do nothing else today List

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8. Biological Prime Time

• Know your best time of the day
• Are you a morning person, afternoon person, night
  owl, etc
• Schedule this time of the day for your priorities

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9. Eliminate the Urgent

• Urgent tasks have short-term consequences
• Work toward reducing urgent things
• Important tasks have long-term, goal oriented
  implications
• Flagging items on a to do list may help keeping
  important things from becoming urgent ones

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10. Avoid Being a Perfectionist

• Some things need to be closer to perfect than
  others
• Perfectionism paying unnecessary attention to
  detail, can be a form of procrastination

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11. Conquer Procrastination

• When avoiding something
• Break it into smaller tasks
• Do just one of the smaller tasks
• Or work on the larger task for just 15 minutes
• By doing a little at a time, eventually youll
  reach a point where youll want to finish

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12. Learn to Say NO

• You must be convinced that you and your
  priorities are important
• Once convinced of their importance, saying no
  to the unimportant in life gets easier
• Saying no sometimes is really saying yes to
  whats really important in life.
• Prevents you from over-promising and
  under-delivering.

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13. Reward Yourself

• Even for small successes
• Celebrate achievement of goals
• Promise yourself a reward for completing each
  task or finishing the total job
• Then keep your promise to yourself and indulge in
  your reward

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What is your 1 Method of Time Management?
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Activity from Life Skills Module 3
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Big Rocks
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THANK YOU!

• csimpson_at_usafunds.org
• 415-291-8670