Does it ever seem like some people have all the time in the world to get things done, whereas you can barely remember what you’re even supposed to be doing?
Or maybe you're constantly drowning in work and rushing to meet deadlines even though you should have had enough time for everything. Time is the one thing we can never have enough of.
Luckily we can hack time by improving our ability to manage it. A general guideline I like to use is the four ps of time management. The 4 P's of time management are: Planning, prioritising, performance and purpose.
Understanding the role of each can help you figure out where all the time goes and how you can better spend it.
Planning
Planning is your ability to think ahead, clarify your objectives and develop an achievable strategy to meet your goals. It helps you create a clear picture of the steps you need to take.
A lack of clarity of what you need to do and when to do it is one of the worst time management mistakes. Creating this bad habit leaves you meandering through some of your tasks while having other urgent things out of your field of awareness.
Two things to consider are when to plan and how to plan.
When to plan
One strategy is to split up your goals into a monthly, a weekly, and a daily plan. The first two will be an overview of what you need to accomplish, and the latter will be a far more detailed account of what your day needs to look like to meet your weekly and monthly goals.
You can create your daily plan either:
At the end of the day: Before going to bed, set aside 15-20 minutes to jot down what you need to accomplish for the next day.
In the morning: When you get up, take a moment to review your previous day's accomplishments and what tasks you need to complete today.
How to plan
Planning entails that you create a detailed account of your required activities. Here are some tips on how to do that:
Have a to-do list
This is a list of the tasks you need to do, organised in order of priority. You can write your list on paper, on post-it notes or through digital means like an Excel spreadsheet or a time management app.
Create limits for your work and stick to them
Limits can be in terms of time and quantity. With time limits, you can decide to work on something, say from 9 am to 10 am.
It's helpful to add a “time cushion” to help you transition between tasks. So if you plan to complete an activity at 10 am, set a cushion of 15 - 25 minutes before you have to start the next job.
A benefit of doing this is that if one task takes longer than planned, you can work on completing it without depleting the time set aside for the proceeding activity.
Alternatively, you can use this time cushion to take a break and recharge for your next undertaking.
With quantity limits, you resolve to complete a certain amount of a specific task. For example, if I'm checking my emails, I could decide to read only 5 of my most important ones before moving on to something else.
Break your activities down into smaller steps
This step speaks to the previously mentioned need for clarity in your goals. Instead of writing a vague “morning routine” on your schedule, be specific about what that routine entails and how much time you plan to spend on each step.
An important reason for this is to prevent feeling overwhelmed by goals that seem large and vague. If an activity appears too big, it's hard to feel motivated. Breaking tasks into smaller steps helps make them feel more manageable.
You also benefit from quantifying what you have achieved and how much work is left. This will help you feel more in control over your life.
Practice task batching
This technique entails grouping similar activities together and finishing them at once. The aim is to avoid wasting mental resources by switching between disparate tasks.
Task batching helps build focus on activities with similar contexts, which can improve the momentum needed to complete them all in one go.
Plan for unexpected situations
When creating a daily or weekly plan, leave some extra time for situations you may not have foreseen. Nobody can see the future, and an unpredictable activity will inevitably require your attention.
Be aware of your wheres
If you have a particularly challenging task on your to-do list, you may want to offset the difficulty of doing it by planning to do it in a soothing or novel environment.
Changing your work environment is not something that many of us think of doing naturally, so it helps to plan to do an unwanted activity in a pleasant environment.
This productivity hack is intended to overcome the anxiety and inertia that accompany difficult tasks by associating the experience with something positive.
Don’t forget breaks
Ironically, it's necessary to plan for times you won't be working. To avoid exhaustion and burnout, make sure your schedule includes regular break periods.
You could spend your breaks meditating, taking micro naps or doing light exercise. All these activities correlate with improved focus, more creativity, improved motivation and better productivity.
Prioritizing
The next important p is having good priorities. There is not much use in creating a plan if you are unaware of what should take precedence and what you can leave for later.
Having poor priorities is why so many of us end up in the nerve-wracking situation of rushing to complete things the night before a deadline.
I've been reading the book 7 habits of highly successful people by Stephen R, Covey. In it, he suggests breaking down your tasks into 4 quadrants based on the Eisenhower Urgent-Important time management matrix:
Important and urgent: These are the tasks that are our highest priority. They are urgent because they have pressing time constraints and are important because not completing them could lead to serious consequences for our jobs, school or social life.
Important but not urgent: These are activities that are necessary for our overall well-being and career success but have no set time limits for when we need to do them. An example of this is exercising or career networking.
Not important and urgent: These activities also have time limits, but they may not be so important for our long term success. This could be an interruption like a phone call or helping a coworker with a request.
Not important and not urgent: These activities are largely unnecessary for your goals and you don't need to do them. You can classify tasks in this category as distractions.
Keeping the above quadrant in mind, assign grades to your to-do list items. Mindtools suggests using an A to F system whereby A is assigned to the most essential items on your list and F to the least important.
After assigning these letters, you’ll probably notice that the tasks in the important and urgent category are generally assigned more As and Bs, whereas those in the not important and not urgent category are generally assigned Fs.
If you find that your list has too many unimportant activities, you may want to modify your list and replace them with higher priority tasks. You also want to think of which tasks can be delegated. These will generally be in the not important and urgent category.
Once this is done, rewrite your list in the order of highest importance and tackle the high priority tasks first.
A fun quote I like to remember by Mark Twain is, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”
It’s an odd analogy but based on solid logic. Do your most difficult tasks in the morning before your energy has been depleted. After you’ve completed them (or gotten through what you needed to) you may feel a sense of relief and accomplishment that will motivate you for your lower priority activities.
Performance
Ok, you’ve planned and gotten your priorities in order. Now it's time to perform. Do your best to execute your plan per your start date and due date.
Supplement your ability to perform with good lifestyle habits like exercise, mediation, and adequate rest to ensure your productivity doesn't wane due to burnout.
Appraise the quality of your performance using periodic self-evaluations. This is the process of reviewing your performance with a focus on your accomplishments and areas that need improvement.
The role of evaluating your performance is to get a picture f how well you are meeting your goals and sticking to your plans. During your evaluation process, you may discover that you have issues estimating how long tasks will take, procrastinating, prioritising effectively, staying focused etc.
Once you’ve identified a point of concern, you can take the necessary steps toward improvement. Not living up to your goals does not signify failure. It reveals an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and improve.
Striving for continuous improvement ensures you don't get stuck in bad habits in your ongoing journey of improving your time management skills.
While evaluating yourself, you may also recognise that you have met or even exceeded some of the expectations that you had set for yourself. Acknowledge your hard work and reward yourself.
Purpose
It's vital to be intentional about the larger purpose driving your goals. Everyone has a personal purpose behind why they do things. Perhaps they want to make a name for themself, invent something new, or are simply passionate about their work.
A sense of purpose will keep you motivated when work feels monotonous or when your goals seem too far away.
Conclusion
Time management is a skill anyone can learn with the right tools and knowledge.
The 4 ps of time management are planning, prioritising, performance and purpose.
These attributes help you gain clarity on meeting your objectives through deliberately, purposefully detailing a strategy for tackling your goals and organising your schedule.
Komentáře