Time is money. We’ve all heard it before, but these days it bears repeating. Yes, it’s always been important for workers to make sure they’re doing the right things and staying on task, but in shaky economic times, it’s a matter of survival — your own, career-wise, as well as your company’s. Yet nearly all of us are guilty of sabotaging our performances to some degree because we fail to go on the offensive against two specific threats: disorganization and poor time management.
There’s no doubt about it: organization and time management are essential for job stability, career advancement and contribution to your company’s well-being. Following are some ideas to help you take control of your time and boost your own hourly value.
Learn to live by the 80/20 rule. Generally speaking, only 20 percent of the things you spend your time doing produce 80 percent of the results you want to achieve. To maximize your productivity, then, you need to identify the key 20 percent activities that are most effective and prioritize them.
To get started, take a look at how you currently use your time. What do you spend most of your day doing? How many things on your to-do list get checked off? Then, identify what you'd like for your 80 percent – your results – to look like. Once you know where you stand and where you'd like to go, reflow your priorities and focus the first fruits of your time and energy on achieving them.
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize! Prioritizing definitely falls into the "easier said than done" category. After all, there are so many responsibilities that have to be met and so many "what-ifs" are involved in each decision. It's enough to give anyone a headache, so most of us simply manage by putting out the fires that are burning brightest instead of drawing up battle plans for tomorrow, next week and next year.
If you want to tap into your productivity's full capacity, though, you've got to know exactly what's in front of you and what's coming — and you also need to know in no uncertain terms which ones should be done in which order. In that way, you can progressively work through all the minor tasks that lead to the greater steps that, in time, lead you to achieving your goals (see sidebar, “Prioritizing Pointers”).
Divide (and conquer!) your documents. For many workers, the volume of papers and e-mails that cross the desk on a daily basis is nearly overwhelming — and figuring out how, when and if you should address them can take up more time than the actual tasks themselves. To make sure that you don't drown in a sea of memos, directives, spreadsheets and more, you need to figure out immediately what to do with each one.
Whether you're dealing with physical papers or electronic documents, you have four options to consider whenever something new comes into your possession: Act on it, file it away to be acted on later, delegate it to another or toss it. That's it. Make it your goal to touch (or click on) each document only once before putting it into one of these categories. This will ensure that you handle each item as quickly, efficiently and accurately as possible. The boldest move you can make is to be honest with yourself about what you can and will make time for — then having the courage to pitch everything else.
