Time Management for All Leaders
Time in the organization is constant and irreversible. Nothing can be substituted for time. Worse, once wasted, it can never be regained. Leaders have numerous demands on their limited time. Time keeps getting away and they have trouble controlling it. No matter what their position, they cannot stop time, they cannot slow it down, nor can they speed it up. Thus, time needs to be effectively managed to be effective.
On the other hand, you can become such a time fanatic convert by building time management spreadsheets, creating priority folders and lists, color coding tasks, and separating paperwork into priority piles that you start to waste more time by managing it to deeply.
In addition, time management techniques may become so complex that you soon give up and return to your old time wasting methods.
What most people actually need to do is to analyze how they spend their time and implement a few time saving methods that will gain them the most time. The following are examples of some of the biggest time wasters:
Worrying about it and putting it off, which leads to indecision
Creating inefficiency by implementing first instead of analyzing first
Unanticipated interruptions that do not pay off
Procrastinating
Making unrealistic time estimates
Unnecessary errors (not enough time to do it right, but enough time to do it over)
Crisis management
Poor organization
Ineffective meetings
Micro-managing by failing to let others perform and grow
Doing urgent rather than important tasks
Poor planning and lack of contingency plans
Failing to delegate
Lacking priorities, standards, policies, and procedures
The following are examples of time savers:
Managing the decision making process, not the decisions.
Concentrating on doing only one task at a time.
Establishing daily, short-term, mid-term, and long-term priorities.
Handling correspondence expeditiously with quick, short letters and memos.
Throwing unneeded things away.
Establishing personal deadlines and ones for the organization.
Not wasting other people's time.
Ensuring all meetings have a purpose, time limit, and include only essential people.
Getting rid of busywork.
Maintaining accurate calendars; abide by them.
Knowing when to stop a task, policy, or procedure.
Delegating everything possible and empowering subordinates.
Keeping things simple.
Ensuring time is set aside to accomplish high priority tasks.
Setting aside time for reflection.
Using checklists and To-Do lists.
Adjusting priorities as a result of new tasks.
