100 Great Time Management Ideas

224 Pages·2009·3.41 MB·english

by  Patrick Forsyth

//Do your priority tasks really get priority?
//Are you constantly interrupted, and do you find fire-fighting
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a necessity?
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//Or do you see time as a resource that can be organized tr
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to maximize your effectiveness, and do just that? k

//Really? F
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Your personal productivity and effectiveness help determine your level of y
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success. Yet sometimes, the sheer number of things to do and the pressure and h
chaos that may pervade the workplace can overwhelm. The road to hell may be 1 100
paved with good intentions, but so is the road to effective time management. 0
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Using your time effectively can transform your work patterns, performance

and results, and the job satisfaction you get along the way. Time management G Great
is also a career skill, one that influences not just job success, but whole career r
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success, too. Yet it can be difficult to achieve, and success is in the detail. a
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100 Great Time Management Ideasis a book to dip into rather than read all Time
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at one sitting (a fact that already makes it time effective!). As the author, Patrick
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Forsyth, says, “One new idea may positively influence how you work; here, it is m
no exaggeration to say that a steady stream of ideas can revolutionize it.” e Management

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PATRICK FORSYTHruns Touchstone Training & Consultancy, an independent
firm specializing in training in marketing, management and communications a Ideas
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skills. He is also a successful author whose books appear in more than 25
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languages. In this series, he is also author of 100 Great Sales Ideas.
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Other titles in the 100 Great Ideasseries e
n from successful executives
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and managers around the world
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Patrick Forsyth
£8.99 in UK only
BUSINESS/SELF-HELP
www.marshallcavendish.co.uk
Cover design: www.stazikerjones.co.uk
SO8028_Time Mgt ldeas.indd 1 9/17/09 11:23:07 AM
100
GREAT
TIME MANAGEMENT
IDEAS
Patrick Forsyth
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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Forsyth
First published in 2009 by
Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
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Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
The right of Patrick Forsyth to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be
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The author and publisher have used their best efforts in preparing this book and disclaim
liability arising directly and indirectly from the use and application of this book.
All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain necessary copyright permissions. Any
omissions or errors are unintentional and will, if brought to the attention of the publisher, be
corrected in future printings.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-462-09943-9
Designed by Robert Jones
Project managed by Cambridge Publishing Management Ltd
Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
The ideas
1 See where time goes now 8
2 Plan, work—work, plan 10
3 Setting clear objectives 13
4 Speculate to accumulate 17
5 Using Pareto’s law 19
6 Tackling the tyranny of the urgent versus the important 22
7 Give clear instructions 24
8 Beware favorites 26
9 Use a “document parking” system 28
10 Aim at infl uencing particular result areas 30
11 Make use of checklists 32
12 Use abstracts 34
13 The best assistant 36
14 Communicate with your secretary 38
15 Be brief 40
16 A clear diary 42
17 What kind of system? 44
18 Good, better, best . . . acceptable 46
19 Trust the computer? 48
20 Cancellation as a time saver 50
21 Motivate your people 52
22 Thinking ahead 54
23 See the broad picture 56
24 Avoiding a common confusion 57
25 “Everybody’s gone surfi ng, surfi ng . . .” 59
26 And let’s send a copy to . . . 61
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27 Telephone effi ciency 63
28 A little help from some “special” friends 65
29 Give yourself some time rules 67
30 Don’t write 68
31 Avoid purposeless meetings 70
32 Handling telephone interruptions 72
33 Keep papers safe and tidy 74
34 Do not put it in writing 76
35 A magic word 78
36 The productive breather 80
37 Write faster 82
38 A cosmic danger 84
39 Morning, noon, or night 86
40 Technology to the rescue 88
41 Time to stay put 90
42 When being regular is a problem 92
43 Time to get noticed 94
44 The most time-saving object in your offi ce 95
45 What I meant to say . . . 97
46 Avoiding meeting mayhem 99
47 In the beginning—or not? 101
48 The confl ict/time equation 103
49 Too many head chefs 105
50 An idea that generates ideas 107
51 R eward yourself 109
52 Best time for appointments 111
53 But I know where everything is 113
54 One thing at a time—together 115
55 At the bottom of the pile 117
56 Resolve to “blitz the bits” 119
57 “If I had wanted it tomorrow I would have asked
for it tomorrow” 121
58 Be secure 123
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59 Where you are may be as important as what you do 125
60 Do a swap 127
61 Food for thought 129
62 Less in touch, more time 131
63 In times of (travel) trouble 133
64 While you were away 135
65 “Well, it’s always been done like this” 137
66 I was just passing 139
67 Encourage and help others 141
68 To meet or not to meet . . . 143
69 Categorize to maintain the balance 145
70 On occasion, let’s talk 147
71 Well spotted 149
72 Fighting the plague 151
73 Let the plant grow 152
74 Over to you 154
75 Know when to leave well alone 156
76 Is that the time? 158
77 Making it clear 160
78 Soldiering on 162
79 Driven to distractions 164
80 A clear agenda = a shorter meeting 166
81 The most time-saving phrase in the English language 168
82 Work to rule! 171
83 A balancing act 173
84 Avoid duplicating information unnecessarily 175
85 The right methodology? 177
86 Make skills save time 179
87 Timing and meetings 181
88 Plan your journey 183
89 Working the plan 186
90 Allow for the unexpected 188
91 So cats can play 190
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92 Coping with IT change 192
93 Time to tell a white lie? 194
94 On the move 196
95 Never compete with interruptions 198
96 Meetings: where to hold them 200
97 A time-aware team 202
98 More possibilities 204
99 Focus on what achieves results 206
100 Follow Sinatra 207
Appendix
1 Chairing a meeting 209
2 Delegating 211
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INTRODUCTION
Regret for the things you did can be tempered by time; it is
regret for the things you did not do that is inconsolable.
Sidney J. Harris
Time to think
Time is a resource like any other. And an important one, respect
for which can boost effectiveness and profi tability—so time
management is a crucial skill. It can enhance personal productivity,
allow you to focus on priorities, and ultimately act directly to improve
your effectiveness and hence the overall success of the organization.
The inherent diffi culties
So, if time management is so much common sense and so useful,
why is not everyone a time management expert? Sadly, the bad news
is that it is because time management is diffi cult (but there is good
news to come). The classic author G. K. Chesterton once wrote that
the reason Christianity was declining was “not because it has been
tried and found wanting, but because it has been found diffi cult
and therefore not tried.” So it is too with time management. There
is no magic formula, and circumstances—and interruptions—
often seem to conspire to prevent best intentions from working out.
Some people, perhaps failing to achieve what they want, despair and
give up.
This is not an area in which you can allow perfection to be the enemy
of the good. Few, if any, of us organize our time perfectly, but some
are manifestly better at it than others. Why? Simply, it is that those
who are more successful have a different attitude to the process.
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They see it as something to work at. They recognize that the details
matter. They consider the time implications of everything and they
work to get as close to their ideal of time arrangement as they can.
Little things do mount up. Saving fi ve minutes may not sound like
much use; however, do so every working day in the year (some 230
days) and you save nearly two and a half days! Speaking personally,
I could certainly utilize an extra couple of days, no problem. If time
can be saved across a range of tasks, and for most people it can, then
the overall gain may well be signifi cant. The best basis for making
this happen, and the good news factor I promised was to come, is to
make consideration of time and its management a habit.
Now, habits are powerful. Those that need changing may take some
effort to shift, but once new ones are established, then they make
the approaches they prompt at least semi-automatic. The process of
getting to grips with managing your time effectively may well take
a conscious effort, but by establishing good working habits it is one
that gets easier as you go on.
The ubiquitous meeting
Perhaps nothing provides a better example of wasted time than
business meetings, especially internal ones. Which of us cannot
remember a meeting that we emerged from recently saying, “What
a waste of time!”? We all know the feeling, I am sure.
Yet there is surely no reason for it to be like this. Some meetings
can and do start on time. I can still remember an early boss of mine
asking me to join an important executive committee. I hastened to
my fi rst meeting, but could not fi nd it. The scheduled conference
room was locked and no one seemed to know where the meeting
was being held. Meeting up with my boss later and explaining the
problem, I remember he simply looked me straight in the eye and
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said, “When did you arrive?” The meeting was in the designated
conference room—but he had locked the door! I was never late for one
of his meetings again, and, barring accidents, nor was anyone else.
He not only believed it was important to start on time; he organized
things accordingly. The meetings tended to be constructive too.
This is a very good example of the effect of culture and habit within
an organization combining to save people signifi cant time. With
clear intentions, good timekeeping, and a fi rm hand on the tiller, as
it were, most meetings can be productive.
This attitude and approach can be applied in many areas. Respecting
how things must be done if they are to be effective and organizing
so that the best way of working becomes a habit for all concerned
pays dividends over time.
Plan the work and work the plan
The principles of good time management are not complex. Overall
they can be summarized in three principles:
•
List the tasks you have to perform.
•
Assign them priorities.
•
Do what the plan says.
It is the last of these principles that causes problems—and, to some
extent, the second as well. The logic is usually clear. For example, in
conducting training on presentational skills I am regularly told by
participants that there is never enough time to prepare. Yet this is
a key task. Skimp the preparation, make a lackluster presentation,
and weeks of time and work may go down the drain. Putting the
preparation time in the diary, setting aside a clear couple of hours
or whatever it takes, and sticking to that in a way that avoids
interruptions must be worth while.
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