Managing your time Effectively

I have noticed as I have grown older that there just doesn’t seem to be enough time. Time flies by so quickly and once it’s gone it won’t come back again. I have developed a very low tolerance in my latter years for people or activities which waste time. I grow irritated when I deal with people who just don’t have their stuff together and waste my valuable time. I am always looking for ways to do more with the time that I have but there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do all that I want or need to do. The key to effective time management is organization. The organized person can get more done more efficiently than the disorganized person. He or she will save you time and money if they are an employee of yours. If you are not an effective time manager this is probably your problem. When I was in the military I used to think that people who worked until late at night were really putting out a lot of effort. They were in fact putting out a lot of effort but it wasn’t necessarily productive effort. As I began to watch people I noticed that many of them effectively wasted their day with activities or events which were unimportant. Many would spend time in meaningless meetings or dialog with others that wouldn’t get anything accomplished at all. I learned that I could finish all that I had to do well within the confines of the working hours of the day and more. The biggest thing that I had to do in order to be super productive was to maintain my work focus. Now it helped to make a list of the tasks which needed to be accomplished each day before hand and to put them in the easiest order to get them done. Once I had listed the tasks in order I had to focus on what they were and eliminate them one at a time. After I had done all of the necessary tasks for the day I would step back from the tunnel vision and go back into my planning mode. I found that no matter how daunting my list of to do things seemed to be I could usually get them caught up before lunch time. This left the remainder of the day free for me to do whatever else that I needed to do. I also found that I couldn’t allow other people to waste my time. Most of the phone calls that I got were usually from people who were in some way attempting to get me to do things for them that they had the ability to do for themselves. I learned to not even answer the phone unless it was my boss during the time that I was attempting to get caught up on my assigned task list. After I had taken care of my job I would attend to the needs of others. I knew that on certain days we had staff meetings. During these meetings we were required to brief our areas of expertise. I learned to gather the information that I needed well in advance to avoid the last minute rush that I saw other people get caught up in each week. It is imperative that you put yourself on a schedule so that you will accomplish all of the events that you need to accomplish. I also found that sticking to my schedule insured that small tasks didn’t slip my mind. Proper planning makes you an effective time manager. Plan tasks all of the way through. Walk through the tasks required to accomplish your objective then execute. Confer with experienced people to for see probable pit falls. I have learned through many hard experiences that it pays to really listen to those who have been where you need to go. The valuable insight that they will give you will save you from many unintended problems. The Good Life