TIME MANAGEMENT

“You may delay but the time will not” - Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and philosopher.

            Today, the demands on our time are tremendous. Everyone has too much to do and not enough time to do. We live in the age of now. When everyone is more demanding than ever. They want every thing yesterday. We move faster than ever but never quite fast enough. When our society travels at electronics speed, we fall under the sway of a new force… the power of now. What used to take six months, now takes six weeks; what used to take six weeks, now is wanted in six days; what normally took six days is needed in six hours; and what used to be done in six hours is now expected in six minutes.

            In spite of all this, you can’t jam twenty-five hours in to a 24 hours day. Time is a non-renewable resource that’s consumed at a constant and relentless rate. Once an hour is gone, it’s gone forever; you can never get it back. Yet one can solve most of one’s time related problems simply by increasing the productivity of the one resource you can control –you.  i.e. the only person over whom one has direct and immediate control.

            The aim of this talk is to focus on effective time management. At times, our aim remains to engage them in long sports competitions so as to enhance comrade-ship, sportsmanship, fellow feeling, esprit- de- corps and the spirit of fight and boost their morals.

            My relentless endeavour is to find out and put together how to succeed in today; competitive fast- paced world by increasing our personal productivity so that one can get more done in less time and when put together in the form of teams. Going beyond conventional time management, it offers divers strategy and tactics in order to gain this productivity boost- every thing from planning, scheduling, organising and eliminating time wastage, to suggestions on improving life habits that give more energy so that one can work better and faster to use the latest technology to manage information and communicate more efficiently to transform.

            Habits that Speed up Work.             One can always find people quarrelling with time. It is so short to do something and so long to do nothing. But the ability to work faster and get more done in less time is not slavery; it’s freedom. You are going to have the same big pile of stuff to do everyday. If you can be more efficient you can get it done and still have some time left for yourself-whether it’s to read the paper, play with your kids, jog with your doggy or play.

            Make to- do-List.     Productive workers have schedules and stick with them. It is not enough to know the projects you are working on. You should break day into segments. I suggest

using hour increments, although quarters and half day can also work. If priorities change, you can change the schedule but do this in writing. Revise and post the schedule. Making list is a simple idea, but extremely effective. The more details you get on paper, the fewer you must remember and worry about. This frees mind up for more important tasks. The list can be daily-to-do-lists, projects to-do list and long- term to do lists.

            Determine Priorities.     Can someone always work on what you want to work on,  right when you want to work on it? No, sometimes, a pressing deadline needs putting aside a more pleasurable task to do something more difficult- even if you do not feel like doing it immediately. Its called ‘Rules of the office’ and it reminds me of the rule # 1 i e ‘First thing first.’ This means that one must get priorities and meet dead lines. Rule # 2, ‘Make sure it is a working meeting.’ This rule reminds to avoid meetings, with subordinates, unless these are a set working agenda. A recent survey from WFO research shows that the average professional in America attends more than 30 meetings  in a month and that US employees spend more than one fourth of their time in meetings. Meetings are one of the biggest time robbers, if not conducted efficiently. The following tips can be used for managing meeting time:-

1.         Decide in advance when meeting will start and stop. Let participants know this information before the meeting begins.

2.         Start and stop on schedule. Start in time even if every one is not there.

3.         Schedule time blocks for each item to be discussed.  Make sure meeting participants know how much time is allotted for each item.

4.         Keep track of time. Comments, such as ‘we have 30 minutes left’ help keep people on track.

5.         If meetings are more than an hour give five minutes break to keep every one physically and mentally available.

6.         Distractions, if any, should be avoided.

7.         Chairman to take the proceedings of the meeting as per his plan and not to let it lose its track by any other force.

            Overcome Procrastination .            Procrastination is the single biggest factor causing people to fall behind in their work, miss deadlines and turn in shoddy efforts.   No good is ever done by hesitation. The best way to make every hour of every day productive is to have an hour by hour schedule. People, who have such schedule know, what they should be doing every minute and therefore, do it. People who do not set a schedule, tend to drift through the day, stopping and starting tasks, jumping from job to job, without getting much done. Half the battle with work is getting started.

            ‘Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.’ In fact, the whole basis of project management is to break projects into tasks and tasks into activities. Then schedule each and do each small activity by the deadline on the schedule. Procrastinators frequently miss deadlines. They complete assignments at the last minutes, allowing no time to review the work before handing it in. And unfortunately they put themselves and their colleagues under undue stress. Putting off an easy thing makes it hard and putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.

            Eliminate Bad Habits that Waste Time.            First identify any bad habits you have that waste your time. For me it was sleeping an hour during daytime. I have overcome it and now utilize that one-hour time reading newspapers in afternoon. This bad habit for any other person may be over watching TV or surfing Net. It is not always possible to avoid this. But the more you control your time the more you will be in control of your life.

            Use the 80/20 Rule.            This rule states that 80 percent of your accomplishments come from only 20 percent of your efforts. The trick is to figure out what makes that 20 percent so productive. Then devote more of time to these productive activities and reduce time spent on unproductive work. Most of us have certain times during the day when we are most alert and perform better.  Once you have determined your pattern of physical and mental energy levels, try to adjust your daily schedule to mesh with it. If all else is equal, choose the morning. To maintain your productivity and energy, maintain peak enthusiasm and avoid boredom.