Seven Time Management Best Practices

There is a lot of literature on Time Management available, and the importance of managing time well is fairly well known. Even then, I see so many people (including myself) struggling to make time for the people and things that really matter. “I wish I had more time” is becoming an increasingly common wish. Every one of us appears to be really busy, and really short of time. However, here I am making time to write this, and you making time to read. Hopefully it will be time well spent – looking at a few practices to help manage time better.

1. Be aware of what your time is worth. To begin with, do you know how much one unit (say an hour) of your time is worth? A simple way to calculate would be to think of your weekly / monthly work hours and the corresponding work wages. From that, calculating an hour’s worth of your time is fairly simple. Even then, quite a lot of us don’t have this number easily available. Once you do know, then it can act as a fairly powerful motivator not to waste time any more. This is especially true as you move from your teenage years into adulthood, into middle age, and beyond. With age comes the realization that the clock is ticking relentlessly, we arent going to be around forever, and need to make the most of the time that we have.

2. Be clear about the benefits of managing time. While nobody disagrees that managing time is a good thing, how many people can quickly list out clear, tangible benefits? My favorites are: Work-Life balance, Work prioritization, Controlling stress, Improving productivity, and accomplishing the goals that are really important to us. The realization of benefits is another powerful motivator for us to get more organized and manage our time well.

3. Have a Time Management plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail. It is important to plan for each day, week, month, and year. A Time Management plan is a set of objectives with a schedule that works well for you. Creating a time management plan includes things such as setting your goals, prioritizing them, and setting timelines for each of them. A well-known practice is a “To-Do” list. In my opinion, more interesting is a “Not-To-Do” list. This helps you say “no” to whatever is not in your plan. Spending time doing things outside the plan is what results in the lack of time for what really matters.

4. Ensure that your task list is connected with your values. Your values are your belief system, the reason WHY you do something. They are the basis for your Goals, which provide the overall target you want to achieve. To achieve your goals, you create objectives, the intermediate steps to achieve your goals. Finally, to achieve your objectives, you put together your “To-Do” task list. The sequence goes, Values > Goals > Objectives > Tasks.

5. Prioritization is key. Another practice that helps is dividing your task list into four categories: Must Do, Should Do, Nice to Do and Do not Do. One way to understand these categories is using an “Urgent – Important” combination. Must Do are typically important and urgent things, Should do are the important but no so urgent things, Nice to Do are the not so important but urgent things and Do not Do are the unimportant things that are not urgent as well.

6. Watch out for Time Black Holes. A black hole in the universe sucks in everything, including light. A time black hole sucks in time. Interruptions, breaks, delayed meetings, unimportant and transactional emails are all time black holes. Try to avoid them as much as possible.

7. Avoid procrastinating. The most important and most urgent things are typically the most difficult. Human tendency is to procrastinate them and say, I’ll do this some time from now and rationalize by saying “I’m not in the best frame of mind to do this right now”. As the Must-Do items pile up, you find less and less time available for getting them out of the way, affecting all the future Must-Do items that will inevitably come up. The net result? “I just don’t have time!”

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