Effective time management – The recipe for success

The term Time Management is a misnomer. You cannot manage time; you manage the events in your life in relation to time. You may often wish for more time, but you only get 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds each day. How you use that time depends on skills learned through self-analysis, planning, evaluation, and self-control. Much like money, time is both valuable and limited. It must be protected, used wisely, and budgeted.

People who practice good time management techniques often find that they:

• Are more productive.
• Have more energy for things they need to accomplish.
• Feel less stressed.
• Have more free time to do the things they want.
• Get more things done.
• Relate more positively to others.
• Feel better about themselves. (Dodd and Subdheim, 2005)

Finding a time management strategy that works best for you depends on your personality, ability to self-motivate, and level of self-discipline. By incorporating some, or all of the ten strategies below, you can more effectively manage your time.

Often, managing your time as a workplace leader means getting organized. A typical day as a workplace leader may start with 30-minute or one-hour blocks of meetings and conference calls. At other times, you will just have to learn to say ‘no’ if employees want four hours of your time to dive into the plans for an office Christmas party or to reorganize teams for a creative project.

At the end of the day, any of these strategies make it possible for you to manage your most precious commodity: time. Leaders must make tough decisions when it comes to protecting, investing, saving, spending, and planning their time. However, this can be difficult at times and the key to success as a workplace leader is to communicate early with your co-workers.

Once you learn to communicate and maintain time management measures, you will achieve freedom from deadline pressure and workplace stress in general.

Many leaders feel starved for time. Working under the assumption that long hours lead to improved productivity, they drive themselves and others to increase effectiveness—then try to “squeeze in” good, quality time with loved ones. Working people are expected to run at a fast pace and be highly productive; yet at the same time, there is a chronic sense of individual and collective slippage, less-than-optimal work performance, and impending burnout.

The ability of leaders to manage the increase in both workload and burnout more effectively is essential because their behavior has a significant impact on others. Recent studies confirm that under stress, people act more defensively, make poorer decisions, and literally lose the “executive” function of their minds. This is especially costly for leaders because they set the tone for their organizations. Their moods affect how others think and behave so people around them also tend to react in confused, defensive, and otherwise unproductive ways.

When we ask our clients what they know about how to manage time, they list many familiar approaches: set goals, plan ahead, delegate, track commitments to ensure work is completed, and create manageable “to-do” lists. When we ask if they use these tools, we get one of two answers:

We do all these things, and they are not sufficient for us to stay on top of the demands we face, or
We know we should do these things, but we don’t have time to do them.
Conventional approaches to time management are useful in organizing to get work done. However, increasing personal efficiency alone is inadequate for helping leaders resolve this key strategic issue: how to achieve high levels of sustainable, long-term performance while meeting the challenge of doing more with less. Powerful workplace dynamics lead people, individually and collectively, to spend large amounts of their work time pursuing non-productive activities. Leaders must understand the nature of these dynamics and what they can do to change individual and collective habits of action.

The purpose of this article is to help leaders at all levels update their approach to time management to better address the challenges of today’s work world. The key elements of this new approach are:

A focus on sustainable productivity

Identification and reduction of “phantom workload”—the work people unwittingly create for themselves by taking shortcuts around or trying to avoid essential, difficult tasks
Tools for managing time more effectively in four leadership domains
A behavioral change model that enables people to reliably put good time management ideas—both traditional and innovative—into sustainable practice.

Tips to Manage Your Time Effectively as a Workplace Leader
1. Do a calendar cleanse
As an organizational leader, it is often hard to decline an invitation to meetings. If you say ‘no’ or ‘not now’ to such an invite, it might sound like you are violating a cultural norm. However, if you were to evaluate all the meetings you attended the previous week, you may realize that many meetings you attend are pointless. As such, it will make better use of your time and help to build a management system if you get into the habit of asking about the agenda of a meeting when invited. This way, you can politely decline a meeting that is not a top priority. Here you can find a list of the best calendar apps that are easy to use, offer customization options, and make collaboration simple.

2. Set Clear Goals
Most of the problems of time management stem back to setting goals that fall short in clarity in the first place. Setting clear goals is critical to motivating your employees if you are in organizational leadership. The ideal for workplace leaders is to set specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant goals. Moreover, each goal needs to be a time-bound objective to achieve and provide room for planning and execution.

3. Set boundaries
As a leader, the majority of your time will be spent at work. However, if you are not careful, that work might find a way to blend into your life at home. As such, it is critical for a manager to set boundaries around the workplace. These boundaries also show that you have a backbone and a clear understanding of your values and principles. Hence, it is as important to set out your limits clearly to your clients, boss, and employees. Moreover, it is also essential that you learn to navigate violations. Avoid getting upset by reinforcing and exercising your boundary to maintain their power.

4. Get organized
Success in the workplace stems from an organized calendar. Starting each work week is usually overwhelming and can be intimidating. As a leader, your main goal is often to prove yourself and broadcast your ability to produce high-quality work while staying on top of all the chaos. If you want to effectively manage your time in the workplace, then you need to stay on top of things right from the beginning. You will want to explore implementing management tools that automate the bulk of your work. The attendance management system, for example, helps you keep up with all your employee’s activities.

5. Learn to delegate tasks
Instead of trying to attempt tasks that require a skill you lack, it can be worthwhile delegating tasks. Delegating tasks allows you to focus your skills and energy on the tasks you are good at while delegating those that might be challenging for you, like a logo design for example. That said, you need to determine the tasks that are worth delegating and learn to let go of them. Take some time to understand your strengths and identify where you will need assistance. After that, identify the best people in your workplace to manage the task.

6. Schedule everything
At the start of every business week, it is important to schedule everything and stick with the plan. As a result, you are able to use your time effectively with more structure and discipline. Scheduling is essential because it reduces the time wasted every week. Besides, scheduling everything allows you to create a benchmark that will give you a baseline on the time it takes to complete a task. More importantly, if you realize that you are spending too much time on tasks of low importance, then you can delegate the work.

7. Prioritize
One of the most common struggles of workplace leaders is learning to prioritize. When you have more things to do and less time to do them, identifying the tasks that deserve your attention can be a struggle. However, mastering prioritization can change your life as a workplace leader. First, capture all the tasks you need to perform on a master list. Next, you can break down the list into monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Remember to always remain realistic about the number of tasks you can take on in a day to effectively manage your time.

8. Create ‘if-then’ rules
As a leader, it is common for your day to involve frequent interruptions. You may encounter unforeseen problems arising or have urgent last-minute tasks pop up in your schedule. Given the kind of role your play in your workplace, it is possible to see how you can be pulled away from high-priority goals or tasks. As such, it is important to set ‘if-then’ rules that automate the actions you should take in such scenarios. These rules will help you save time and allows your employees to work independently from you in such cases. Hence, instead of reprioritizing your entire schedule, you can ask your team to work on a solution.

9. Take a break
Just as you need to learn to use your time at work effectively, taking a break away from your work can prove to be a smart decision. The best way to manage your time effectively as you manage others is to identify time for breaks and communicate this to your employees. Taking a break at work also involves identifying what to do with your time away from your desk.

Productive leaders delegate the tasks that keep them from focusing on their priorities. Dr. Bina Patel, CEO of Conflict Resolution Centers, said “every manager should understand the talent and capacity of each individual on their team.” She explained, “by knowing an individual’s strengths, managers can assign tasks accordingly.”

Will Craig, founder, and director of LeaseFetcher said “sharing the load means that I have the time and energy to make sure my team has everything they need from me, and it helps my team learn how to effectively deal with clients, and make sure they’re happy.” A common mistake most leaders unintentionally make is they’ll end up micromanaging instead of trusting the employee to carry out the tasks themselves.

Alternatively, sometimes leaders avoid delegating because the amount of time it would take to explain and train an employee on a task takes longer than if they just did it themselves. However, team members are then deprived of gaining new skills and taking ownership of tasks. To prevent this, leaders should keep communication ongoing so they’re aware of the employee’s progress and challenges and can offer them support where they sit fit. Likewise, should similar situations arise, employees are already comfortable and confident in handling them. The dual benefit of delegating is employees are challenged with increased responsibility while leaders then have more time for their team.