Hibr

Tips for Better Time Management

Time Management: Increase your Personal Productivity and Effectiveness is part of a series of books issued by Harvard Business Essentials that are designed to provide comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information and guidance on the most relevant topics in your everyday business, be it university, work or your personal life. This solution-oriented book puts trustworthy answers at your fingertips. 

The book deals with the subject broadly and in depth. “Every day contains twenty-four hours: no more and no less. And no matter how much we value it; there is nothing we can do to store it, to slow it down, or to put it into neutral while we prepare to use it.” Mastering time management helps us to balance the many pressures in our days and enables us to achieve our goals. 

The book contains eight chapters filled with detailed information and tips, such as how to use goals as our guide and how to transform goals into tasks – in other words, remembering that goals are the starting point of effective time management. To make us more effective at managing our time, the author provides an extensive range of useful implementation tools, such as daily activity log charts, goals worksheets, schedules and evaluation checklists, and a guide to effective meetings. 

As time management is one of the most effective ways of organizing our lives, the book responds to various questions. For instance, how to make time management a habit? How to increase our energy? How to limit our commitments? How to spend our time? He also offers advice on scheduling; dealing with time ‘robbers’, delegation or a time-wasting boss; how to manage one’s personal time; and what companies can do to help. 

To get the answers to these questions, you will need to read the book, which is available in most book stores, but here are ten top tips for enhancing your time-management skills: 

1. Make time for the things that matter.
2. Don’t delegate problems to your boss.
3. Avoid unnecessary requests.
4. Do those assignments!
5. Delegate effectively to the right people to accomplish tasks.
6. Resolve the “not knowing where to begin” dilemma.
7. Use daily ‘to do’ lists.
8. Use an appointments calendar.
9. Use daily and weekly planners.
10. Avoid procrastination.

To sum up, make sure you know which goals you should be concentrating on and always keep this famous quote in mind: “One always has time enough, if one will apply it well” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).   

Time Management: Increase Your Personal Productivity and Effectiveness by Richard Lucke, is published by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (2005).