Time Management
In his book, ‘How to be Smart with your Time’, Duncan Bannatyne, known from Dragon’s Den fame, has the following main content headings:
- Identify your goals
- What are you waiting for
- What’s stopping you
- Focus, focus, focus
- Don’t innovate, replicate
- Second best is close to ideal
- Play to your strengths
- Momentum
- Delegation
- Work with what you’ve got
- Stop kidding yourself
- Ignoring the little vice
- Just say no
- Detox your life
- What did you do yesterday
- Scheduling and planning
- The turbo-powered ‘to do’ list
- Clearing your backlogs (and making sure they never come back)
- The best way to start your day
- Get organized
- How to be smart at work
- What works for you
- Be decisive
- Beware: deadlines approaching
- Overcoming procrastination
- Communication matters
- Be a smarter commuter
- Teamwork
- Technology
These content headings alone give us some idea of how time management is more important than ever in today’s world. We have all attended some form of time management course over the years throughout our career and found them to be somewhat helpful and beneficial. Some of us too have read the books, such as Bannatynes book above, again to our benefit.
When it comes to time management, there are a few basic rules of thumb that I have found to be paramount:
- Do a work list / to do list either on your smartphone or paper diary every day
- Don’t delete / cross out anything until it is actioned / completed in some way
- Get up early in the morning, you will definitely feel so much the better for it from mid-morning onwards
- Try not to procrastinate, stick to the task you have to do at that time / that day
- Get your required amount of sleep time i.e. the experts say 7-8 hours