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Time Management Challenge - Are You Up
For It?
When I was just a kid, my mother tracked
every penny she spent for a year.
Literally. I was fascinated by it. She
explained that the only way she'd know
exactly where her money went was to do
that.
Recently, I had the same idea about time
spent in my home office.
Ever go into yours at 8 am, take 40
minutes for lunch, and finally emerge
for the day at 5 pm, and try to figure
out what you actually spent all those
hours on?
You might find it's easy to account for
three or four hours. After that, it gets
trickier.
Okay, so just like with invoices that
need to be filed, we all know what to
do. It's just the doing it that's the
challenge.
We know about to-do lists, prioritizing
of tasks, delegation of duties when
possible and practical, and attacking
the tougher stuff in the morning (or
when we're freshest).
But how do we still manage to spend
hours in the office without really
seeing the tangible results of that
time? Simple. Try tracking it in a log
for a week.
The first important thing here is your
commitment. You've got to track every
minute for five days, literally, if you
want to see where it's going. If you can
do that, then pick a typical week and
start making entries into a log. Divide
yours into fifteen minute blocks of time
throughout the day.
Just by virtue of doing this exercise,
you might be tempted to change your
normal behaviors into more
time-effective ones, but resist the
temptation to stray from your usual
activities just this week. If you finish
a big job at 10:30 a.m. and would
normally check, send, and delete emails
until noon, do that. Just be sure to
note it.
When the week is over and it's time to
assess your entries and draw some
conclusions, be practical. Allow a
little leeway in all time blocks of your
day. If you find you need twenty-six
minutes on average to address your email
for the day, allow for 30 or 35 instead
- or two sessions of fifteen minutes
each at the start and end of each day.
Once you've determined the amount of
time you'll need for usual tasks that
will occur most days, you'll need to
decide in which order to do them.
Routine is very good for effectively
using your time.
Don't box yourself in, however. One of
the joys of working from home is its
inherent flexibility. Try designing a
framework for your day which allows for
some switching around when needed or
desired.
Finally, after deciding upon the amount
of time you'll need for tasks and the
order in which you'll do them, post your
schedule prominently so that there won't
be any wasted minutes trying to remember
what to do next.
Besides using this plan in your home
office, you might repurpose this
approach for other areas of your life as
well. I teach a 50-minute class once a
week and use this process to set up the
class schedule,which helps me get the
very most out of every minute.
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