Ebiz Snap

How About Some Time Management Tips

Recently life has come at us fast monkeys in the trees to catch and alligators below to wrestle. You’ve got a million and one things to do, both professionally and personally.

Many of them feel urgent, even vital. But are they?

Of course NOT. And that’s why you need to prioritize your tasks, put them into a to do list (more on that in a later tip) and work through them in order.

If you don’t, you’ll end up going through your to do list in an inefficient way… perhaps doing work that only feels urgent (but really shouldn’t be that high on the priority list).

Let me give you a few examples…

Example #1: Will the world come to a screeching halt if you don’t make your bed today? Nope. And so you may consider that a lower priority as opposed to some of your professional activities like getting to work on time, answering emails from customers and so on.

Example #2: Your friend asks you to do something. It’s pretty urgent… to him. And somehow you feel like whatever is urgent to him is also urgent to you. But here’s the thing: You have your OWN urgent to do list. If you spend all your time helping others with their to do lists, you’ll never get yours done. And that means in many cases you’ll need to prioritize your work as more important than another’s work.

Note: See the section for “saying no” for tips on how to deal with these situations.

Some tasks will be fairly easy to prioritize.

Example: If you have kids, then getting them off to school and getting them to their activities will tend to be high on your priority list. This is especially true if you tend to put family ahead of other priorities and goals.

But what about other tasks that you can’t immediately determine how to prioritize?

Example: Which of two professional tasks should you tackle first?

It’s easier than you think.

The key is to first sit down and figure out what you want in life. What goals are most important to you?

Go ahead, make a list of everything you want in life and then rank them in order of importance. Once you’ve done that, create plans (blueprints) as to how you’ll achieve those goals.
Now that you’ve done this exercise, you’ve basically created an overall to do list for yourself. Whenever you’re trying to figure out how to prioritize a task, ask yourself this question:

“Does this task put me a step closer to reaching my goals?”

If not, put the task as a low priority.

If it DOES put you a step closer to your goals, then figure out which goal it puts you closer to.

If the task puts you closer to your #1 goal, then that particular task should be a high priority. If the particular task puts you closer to a goal that’s ranked lower on your list, than the priority level should also be lower.

Let me give you a fictional example to show you what I mean…

Goals (in order of importance):
#1: Spend time with your wife .
#2: Spend time with your kids.
#3: Keep up your journal.

Overall To Do List (ranked from high priority to low priority):
Take wife out to lunch. (helps achieve goal #1)
Take a day off go for a drive fall colors. (helps achieve goal #1)
Sing in the church choir with your daughter. (helps achieve goal #2)
Take my boys turkey hunting. (helps achieve goal #2)
Put the journal on the desk. (helps achieve goal #3)
Outline my memoir book (helps achieve goal #3)
Write my book (helps achieve goal #3)

Tags: Time Management

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