Time management techniques

•    Daily goals. First, identify your specific daily goals. Know what you want to accomplish each day.  List the work goals, in order of importance. Then tackle the most important goal before you to the  others in your priority list. Have time to work on your own until you finish your major goals. There should be no interruptions and distractions during this time of your total concentration. Establish your office routine to operate even if you are not there.

•    Deadlines. Set specific deadlines with time targets to achieve the tasks. Let your deadlines be realistic and achievable. Do everything possible to meet your time targets.

•    Taking notes. Maintain a notebook or diary all the time. Write down your established keypoints to provide a permanent record of committee meetings, telephone conversations an your discussions with others. Record your own thoughts and ideas plus future appointments, things to do, names and telephone numbers of the people you deal with.

•    Use telephone. Use telephone as the main communication link between your office and others in your working world. Keep letters to a minimum except where necessary. Use also telex, fax and e-mail facilities to communicate with your working world. Telephone is particularly good because it provides a two-way conversation. Hence it is quick for solving problems as opposed to long meetings or letters.

•    Self-motivation. Successful entrepreneurs are highly motivated individuals. Motivation helps them to accomplish the tasks which are to be undertaken within a planned period of time. Self –motivation is used as another technique of time management because it helps them accomplish many tasks within a given time period.

•    Action oriented. Be action-oriented if you want to manage your time-well. Once you decide to do something, eg. solving a problem, do it promptly. It is advisable to take time to plan your work and then implement it.

•    Work plan. Plan your work in detail for today and tomorrow as well. At the end of a day’s work, it is logical to prepare another work schedule for tomorrow. Reduce the danger of procrastination. At the end of each day, you will examine ways in which time was wasted and use the experience to avoid time wasting activities in future.

•    Ask managerial questions. Before you start working, you need to ask helpful and relevant questions. Examples of helpful questions are: What? When? How? and Why? These questions are actually managerial questions because their answers help you to find out more effective and efficient ways of attaining your goals and objectives.

•    What activities do you need to delegate to your staff?
•    What are your priorities in decision-making process?
•    Do you have properly scheduled activities? Are they accomplished within the planned
•     Time?
•    Do you concentrate in one activity at a time or do you handle many activities without

 Proper concentration?

•    Avoid doing everything. It has been said: “if you want something done, have a busy person do it.” You are a busy entrepreneur with purposeful actions. Concentrate your efforts on the important things that lead to significant results. Select your work activities and try as much as possible not to do everything. If some activities are not directly connected with your priority goals, it is advisable to say “no” because they are time-consuming.

•    Reflective thinking. Acquire this art of learning from one’s past experience, present and potential future activities. People think about what they do, hence they do not find time to be alone while resting or before sleeping. It may be when one is traveling, waiting for transport or walking alone. You can use such times for reflecting on your work,

•    Review and evaluate your experience. If you review and evaluate your past experiences you, will determine which ones were interesting and productive. You will know which ones are likely to face similar experiences in future, you can choose the activities you consider useful an productive for your future activities.

•    Working in blocks of time. It is advisable to perform some tasks within a given period when you feel most effective. This can give you an opportunity to work undisturbed for the period of block time. This maybe for 3 or 4 hours. Lunch – time can be included in which case you take a good breakfast and miss lunch. This can be critical to your success if you are dealing with a special problem or situation.

Your twelve master keys of time management.

Key I  Find out where your time goes.

What did you do for a whole day?
Did you keep track of your activities?
Did you record all worthy or unworthy activities?

Key 2:    Find out why your time goes.
Did you put your efforts on worthwhile things.
Did you deviate into other activities from your planned work?
Did your boss, peers, family or customers deviate your attention?

Key 3:    Minimise your time commitments.
Do not over stretch yourself; balance your time for everything you do. Then you will be effective
and efficient in your work.  

Key 4:    Prioritise your work or tasks.
Separate what has to be done first from that which can be done later.
Have your priority order for one day, a week, a month and a year. Build this into your plans.

Key 5:    Cut down on your time wasting activities.
Reduce trivial activities
Invest on useful activities.

Key 6:    Be ruthless with interruptions, especially unnecessary ones
Discourage disruptions, especially telephone calls, people, etc
Avoid unnecessary social conversations, gossips, etc
Cut down too many instructions to people, this will reduce wastage of time

Key 7:    Learn how to locate the required information .
Do no spend a lot of time searching for the information required to do the work.
The information search occupies about 20% or more of one’s working time.

Key 8:    Build your time control plan.
This plan should fit your personality or job
It should fit your unique personality as an entrepreneur
It must reflect realistic and effective usage of time.
It must fit your unique perception of time.

Key 9:    You should use other people to your advantage
Get others (by inspiring them) to do your work, eg. by delegation of work to others capable of
carrying out the work.

Key 10:    Become creative in using time
Replace old fashioned ways with new modern ways of doing things eg computer, telephone, e-mail
Fax machines, etc.
Adopt the modern ways of doing things in your working culture.

Key 11:    Avoid temptations to put off difficult tasks and unpleasant work.
Plan to tackle difficult tasks and unpleasant work according to your priority order.
Avoid the persistent and unwise temptations of delaying what is planned in your “things to do list”
especially if it is difficult.

Key 12:    Learn how to use your time smatter and not harder.
Avoid straining over your time, use modern technology
Adopt communication technology which helps your to accomplish your tasks at a lesser time.   
Computers, telephone, e-mail and fax machines are recommended for communication technology

Remember these useful TIME GOALS: -

•    Concentrate on important activities
•    Avoid the deadline trap
•    Plan time management
•    Recognise time constraints
•    Minimise disruptions
•    Get information quickly
•    Consider time as your major asset and invest wisely in time management.