Mastering Time Management Skills

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same umber of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

• H. Jackson Brown, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Life’s Little Instruction Books

Learning about time management has one inherent flaw: usually you find yourself most in need of time management skills exactly when you have the least amount of time to dedicate to the task. Without investing days of your time, the following tips will help you make the most of your time—whether with family, at work, at school or in your community.

Concentrate on Results, Not on Being Busy. Many people spend their days rushing around but achieve little of importance because they are not concentrating on the right things. The 80/20 Rule, or Pareto Principle (named for Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto), states that 20 percent of your time results in 80 percent of your returns. For example, 20 percent of the time you spend studying accounts for 80 percent of the grade you are going to get. The trick to making this rule work for you is to identify what you need to spend the 20 percent of your time on to maximize your results.

Find Out How You Use Your Time. No matter how productive you believe yourself to be, after keeping a daily activity log—written on paper, not in your head—you will be surprised to discover how much time you waste and how much your energy level varies throughout the day. Keep an activity log for several days; every time you change activities—brushing your hair, making breakfast, driving to work, opening junk mail, studying for school—jot down the time of the change as well as how you feel (alert, lethargic, energetic). When analyzing the log, identify and eliminate time-wasting jobs and learn the times during each day when you are most effective so that you may build your new schedule around them.

Recognize and Set Personal Goals. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve—whether it is in school, at work, or with your family—you know what you have to spend time on. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll also know what you don’t need to spend time on. While daily or monthly goals are often the easiest to come up with, don’t make the mistake of overlooking the larger picture. Short-term goals should lead you towards lifetime goals. Here are some categories to consider setting goals in: career, artistic, family, financial, physical, community service, education, pleasure.

Organize Your Goals Based on Priority. Now that you know what you want to do with your life, assign each goal a priority from A to F (A being high priority). Try to space goals as evenly as possible at each priority level. Remember, you have the power to change the list at any time.

Keep a Prioritized To-Do List. Items on your to-so list are things you should do in the short-term to work towards your goals. To help you recognize which to-do tasks deserve the most time, Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests thinking of to-do priorities in terms of two dimensions, importance (I) and urgency (U). Note tasks as urgent (U) or non-urgent (NU) and important (I) or non-important (NI). (An example of an urgent task is one with an imminent deadline; an important task is one with a direct bearing on a goal.) Each task should now be able to fit into the table below:

	1 Important Urgent 2 Important Non-Urgent 3 Non-Important Urgent 4 Non-Important Non-Urgent

Obviously quadrant 1 tasks are high priority and quadrant 4 low priority. Don’t make the common mistake of many poor time managers and overlook less urgent but highly important tasks in quadrant 2 in favor of those in quadrant 3.

Schedule Your Time Realistically. By knowing what you need to get done today to achieve what you want down the line and knowing what times of day you are most effective, you’re already ahead of most people in the time management game…and in the perfect place to start scheduling your time. Take the times of day in which you are most alert and effective and schedule in your quadrant 1 tasks. Next, decide between quadrant 2 and 3 activities and schedule them. Because you cannot completely erase interruptions, schedule in some contingency time as well. (You’ll learn how much of this you need through experience.) Finally, if you have time left over, pencil in any quadrant 4 tasks you can’t write off as irrelevant. This method works equally well for daily or weekly schedules.

Conquer Procrastination. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” Wiser, and truer, words may never have been spoken. Alan Lakein, in his landmark 1974 book, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, describes an anti-procrastination method he calls “Swiss Cheese.” Break whatever task you are finding hard to do into smaller bits and work on just one bit for a set amount of time. Alternately, set the same amount of time—15 minutes is usually doable—and work on the big task. You can tell yourself 15 minutes isn’t that long and before you know it, you’ll reach a point where you’re able to keep going.

Learn to Say “No.” The most powerful word in the time management vocabulary is often the hardest to say. Try focusing on your goals and priorities…and thinking about how important they are. Once you realize their importance, saying “no” becomes easier. Practice helps as well. It can also help to put those most often asking for your time—family and friends—into quadrant 1; eliminate the need to say “no” by actively scheduling time with them.

Reward Yourself. Goals are little fun to achieve when you don’t stop to enjoy them. Celebrate each success, no matter how small, with an indulgence for yourself: five minutes of meditation, a new CD, a dinner with your spouse. Doing so not only helps maintain balance in your life but can keep you motivated.

Good luck!