Personal Time Management for Busy Managers
Personal Time Management for Busy Managers
Time passes, quickly. This article looks at the basics of Personal Time Management and describes how the Manager can assume control of this basic resource.
The "Eff" words
The three "Eff" words are [concise OED]:
• Effective - having a definite or desired effect
• Efficient - productive with minimum waste or effort
• Effortless - seemingly without effort; natural, easy
Personal Time Management is about winning the "Eff" words: making them apply to you and your daily routines.
What is Personal Time Management?
Personal Consider these two questions: what would happen if you spent company money with as few safeguards as you spend company time, when was the last time you scheduled a review of your time allocation?
Poor time management is often a symptom of over confidence: techniques which used to work with small projects and workloads are simply reused with large ones. But inefficiencies which were insignificant in the small role are ludicrous in the large. You can not drive a motor bike like a bicycle, nor can you manage a supermarket-chain like a market stall. The demands, the problems and the payoffs for increased efficiency are all larger as your responsibility grows; you must learn to apply proper techniques or be bettered by those who do. Possibly, the reason Time Management is poorly practised is that it so seldom forms a measured part of appraisal and performance review; what many fail to foresee, however, is how intimately it is connected to aspects which do.
Personal Time Management has many facets. Most managers recognize a few, but few recognize them all. There is the simple concept of keeping a well ordered diary and the related idea of planned activity. But beyond these Personal Time Management is a set of tools which allow you to:
•
and to do so simply with a little self-discipline.
Since Personal Time Management is a management process just like any other, it must be planned,
Time passes, quickly. This article looks at the basics of Personal Time Management and describes how the Manager can assume control of this basic resource.
The "Eff" words
The three "Eff" words are [concise OED]:
• Effective - having a definite or desired effect
• Efficient - productive with minimum waste or effort
• Effortless - seemingly without effort; natural, easy
Personal Time Management is about winning the "Eff" words: making them apply to you and your daily routines.
What is Personal Time Management?
Personal Consider these two questions: what would happen if you spent company money with as few safeguards as you spend company time, when was the last time you scheduled a review of your time allocation?
Poor time management is often a symptom of over confidence: techniques which used to work with small projects and workloads are simply reused with large ones. But inefficiencies which were insignificant in the small role are ludicrous in the large. You can not drive a motor bike like a bicycle, nor can you manage a supermarket-chain like a market stall. The demands, the problems and the payoffs for increased efficiency are all larger as your responsibility grows; you must learn to apply proper techniques or be bettered by those who do. Possibly, the reason Time Management is poorly practised is that it so seldom forms a measured part of appraisal and performance review; what many fail to foresee, however, is how intimately it is connected to aspects which do.
Personal Time Management has many facets. Most managers recognize a few, but few recognize them all. There is the simple concept of keeping a well ordered diary and the related idea of planned activity. But beyond these Personal Time Management is a set of tools which allow you to:
•
and to do so simply with a little self-discipline.
Since Personal Time Management is a management process just like any other, it must be planned,