Knowing how to manage your time is the starting point to getting more accomplished in the day. If you’re struggling with figuring out why you’re not as productive as you should be, you’re not managing your time effectively. Time management is not about how efficient you work, but how effective you are with managing your time. By setting goals, breaking goals down to tasks, creating a to-do list, and prioritizing your tasks, you’ll be able to get more done, and feel accomplished at the end of each day.
Often times, people will take on tasks that are not an effective use of their time. In business, it’s a good idea to seek out and create strategic partnerships that improve your time management by delegating tasks and responsibilities to others. As the CEO of an IT company in Austin, Texas, my company helps businesses manage their time with our managed IT services. This complete IT solution will enable your business to focus on more important aspects rather than dealing with the headache of IT issues. If you’re a small business that needs an IT strategy, checkout this post on when small businesses should consider managed IT services to learn more.
How to Get More Done With Effective Time Management
Goal setting is the perfect starting point to getting more done. Everyone should have goals, big or small, but make sure your goals are time-framed, measurable, challenging, and yet achievable. To get more done, your goals should be aligned with your organizational strategy. To help with goal setting, ask yourself and team the following questions:
- What are our strengths and weaknesses as a company?
- How can we improve as a company?
- What goals will ensure business success?
- What standards are we striving for?
- How can we have the greatest positive impact on productivity and efficiency?
3 Types of Goals
After you answer the above questions, you’re ready to get started with creating a list of goals. Before you do, keep in mind there are 3 types of goals to focus on:
- Critical goals – These goals are essential to your success at work. Critical goals must be accomplished in order for your business or unit to keep running successfully.
- Enabling goals – These goals enable you to get more done. Enabling goals are important but fill a need later on, rather than immediately.
- Nice to have goals – These goals usually will be improvements to your business, a process, or activity. Nice to have goals are goals to help your business succeed.
Create Tasks From Goals
By understanding the types of goals, write out your goals in this order, critical, enabling, and nice to have goals. Once you’re done with creating and setting goals, you’ll need to break them down into tasks. It’s like the old joke, how do you eat an elephant? – one small bite at a time. With each goal, create organized and attainable tasks.
Start a To-Do List
Now with goals and tasks, you’re ready to create a to-do list. I typically set my to-do lists with a date at the top. I list my goals, and under each goal all the related tasks needed to complete the goal. Goals should be broken down into levels, company, unit, and individual. Your goals should seek alignment with the company’s goals. Be sure your goals and tasks follow this structure in order to be effective at time management.
Prioritize Your Goals With The ABC Priority Method
With a to-do list outlining your goals and tasks, you’ll need to now prioritize them. I prefer using the ABC method goal prioritization. (A) priorities are urgent meaning it’s critical, with high value, and should be handled with primary concern. (B) priorities involve your enabling goals and have medium value, but still should still be handled with some urgency. (C) priorities are conflicting because they could be urgent but with little value and/or little importance. I enjoy using an application called Wunderlist for my to-do lists. It’s easy to keep them organized, online, and they can be shared with others.
Summing It All Up
With effective time management, you’ll not only get more done but at the end of the day you’ll definitely feel more accomplished. By effectively managing your time, you’ll have control of your day to get more done all while be organized. You can help yourself, business, and team save substantial amounts of time by effectively managing the time you have. Set goals, break goals down to tasks, create a to-do list, set ABC priorities, and start getting more done!
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