Effective Time Management

Stop looking! You will never find time unless you become more conscious of the choices you make. This is the essence of time management. Time only needs “managing” because you don’t seem to have enough of it.

I am going to ask you to spend a few minutes with me now, in order to save a lot of time later.

Life is full of situations that really don’t make any difference in the long run or even in the short run. If you are making your decisions by rote, you are probably not doing yourself a favor. What takes your attention? – a letter, a fax or an email. I think the email takes the cake. It beats them all.

Does the delivery mechanism have a bearing on the importance of the content? I don’t think so. That email message may not be important at all. Unless we take conscious control of our decision making, we will tend to react to the urgent, even if it’s relatively unimportant; and disregard the important unless it also carries a tag of urgency. Right!

Let’s try to understand the distinction between “Important and Urgent.”

Important – “An activity that is of great significance or value, motivation that steers your life.”

Urgent: “Any activity that demands your attention right now.”

Effective Time Management requires you to remember this distinction. Not everything that is important is also urgent, and not everything that is urgent is necessarily important.

To grasp this key distinction and to enforce it meaningfully to your life, you need to take a few minutes to think about your own activities and then classify them.

The four quadrants that emerge from your activities are:

Quadrant 1 - Urgent and Important relates to core values and needs immediate attention e.g.

•     I get a call from my son’s school that he is throwing up and is running a fever.
•     I have to make an impromptu presentation for the CEO today in 30 minutes from now.

Quadrant 2- Important but not Urgent-No sense of immediacy but important in the long run.e.g

•     I know that regular exercise is important for me.
•     I need to plan my son’s higher education.

Quadrant 3 – Urgent but not Important – Does not touch core values e.g

•     I am running late for a meeting, which I know is a sheer waste of time.
•     Email with a red flag.

Quadrant 4 – Neither Important or Urgent – Any other stuff that does not fall in the above mentioned quadrants

e.g

•     Indulging in gossip.
•     Watching useless TV soaps.

You should try to come up with your own examples from your own life in each category.

I will not cease to importune you to ask yourself these three questions, whenever possible:

Do I really need to be doing this? Or

Do I really want this?

If you say yes – you have made your decision consciously. Do I really need/want to be doing it NOW? If you neither need nor want to be doing it, now or ever – STOP

There are three catchwords – Need, Want and Now.

If you stick with the want /need question you will catch yourself red handed doing things you cannot justify – A secret to effective time management.

You have to make time by shifting activities from one quadrant to the other. You will be in a happy position if you have more items in the quadrant no. 2. If you manage your second quadrant well, you will have fewer emergencies and hence your quadrant no. 1 will be fairly empty.

Trust me, this simple technique can have such a positive impact in the way you live. Effective time management isn’t always a matter of time at all.

Action Item: Make time for important things in life by reducing time spent in the quadrant no. 4 – “neither important nor urgent”

Don’t wipe it out completely because it could be your avenue for unwinding. You can also create time by chopping some of the “urgent but not important stuff”- Quadrant no. 3

I finally leave you with one fundamental question on effective time management:

Name the activities that you are not doing, which, if done regularly, will have a positive impact on your personal and professional life.

Most probably, your answer will fall under quadrant 2. Does it ring a bell – how are you spending the time of your life?

 Importance of Time Management

What the heck is Pareto’s principle? Pareto was an Italian economist in 1890. In simple words, Pareto’s Principle means:

“A few causes account for most of the effect.”

It is also commonly known as the 80:20 Rule. It has proven its validity in a number of areas. For example:

80% of success comes from 20 % of your key activities.

80% of your measurable results come from 20% of your TO DO items.

80% of your interruptions come from 20% of your people.

80% of revenue comes from 20% of your clients.

80% of my income goes on 20% of my expenses (rent and education).

80% of your employee problems come from 20% of your employees.

80% of customer complaints come from 20% of your products.

80% of the value of the stock comes from 20% of the items.

The list goes on….. but I hope you understand what I am trying to say. You can apply Pareto’s law to anything and certainly to the importance of time management.

Why do some managers have enough time?

Why do they never seem to be in a rush, irrespective of the responsibilities they assume?They have learnt to segregate the vital activities from the trivial. With practice, they have developed an increased ability to separate the essential from the non-essential. They do not waste time running after trivia.

Pareto’s principle is the secret key to saving time

Whenever you have too much to do in a limited time, apply Pareto’s Principle. Whenever you are wondering what you can safely delegate, apply the same principle. Very few people apply this concept successfully with respect to the importance of time management. 

Therefore, they don’t manage their tasks effectively and efficiently. They are unable to recognize that not all tasks have the same importance.

It is worth quoting Peter Drucker here, who says,

“Some business people tend to confuse efficiency with effectiveness. Effectiveness is doing the right things; efficiency is doing things right. There is nothing so useless as a supervisor doing, with great efficiency, what he should not have done at all.” 

Remember: Managing your time effectively is the key to successful business leadership.

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