Developing Time Management Capabilities For Increased Productivity

By Martin Haworth

Many managers have difficulty with finding enough time to do their work - in fact it's probably the biggest gripe you hear.

Others may take on too many things at once and struggle to accomplish anything of value much of the time. Managing your time to balance work and play can be difficult for many.

Time management is not about managing time but what you are doing with your time. No matter how much you try there are only those 24 hours in a day, the same for all of us. Getting to the bottom of where you are wasting time is always a good place to start!

Perhaps you spend a lot of time reading unimportant e-mail or wastefully checking your Facebook pages. By ascertaining what you are doing when you should be focused and doing more useful tasks, you will give yourself a heads-up on the problem you face.

Once you know how you are wasting time then set yourself some productivity goals. These will help you change your behavior, making sure you get things done within the specified timescale. you might also develop your own time management plan that can help you see where you are successful and those areas that may still need improvement.

Reviewing progress towards effective time management goals will help track how successful the efforts have been.

There are plenty of tools to use for effective time management these days, from precise software or other proprietary tools. You could even simply just write down what you want to get done and what you are going to do with your time and see what that brings you.

By prioritizing goals and tasks for the day the most important tasks are likely to be done properly. Determining which tasks are crucial to be accomplished and which ones can be done another time - or even better, delegated, it's possible to make much more out of the available time.

In the workplace, it may be possible to delegate those non crucial tasks to someone else - developing them as well, along the way. Don't underestimate the value of delegation as a tool to empower and enable your people for the future.

Once you finally have a time management routine that you can stick to, you will find that your are much more productive than before. Once you have reached this point you should start setting time limits for yourself, being challenging and stretching and then you will see what really can be achieved with your mind set to it. - 30445

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