How to Win The Time management War - 3 Great Tips
By Richard Rutherford

Time management is a major issue in the workplace. When time is not utilized efficiently, it leads to sloppy work, missed deadlines, and way too much stress. Employers are constantly seeking ways to teach their employees to manage their time better for a simple reason - a team that manages its time well is a team that is productive and successful.

Good time management is one of THE major issues in the workplace. If time isn’t utilized efficiently it will lead to:

* Missed Deadlines
* Poor quality work
* High stress levels
* Reduced company profits

Pretty well all of us have done it at one time or another. A major deadline has been approaching for weeks on end. All the time you’ve been telling yourself that there’s plenty of time left, then suddenly HELP! the deadline is almost here and you haven’t even got started. Another all-nighter is on the way…

Now contrast that performance with a project where you have effectively managed your time. The difference is clear. You’ve worked on the project over the entire time span you were given, a little bit at a time. You haven’t had to scrabble for last minute information and you’ve had plenty of time to check the work for things such as typos. Most importantly, you don’t need a long vacation to recover from the stress.

Employers are constantly seeking ways to get their employees to manage their time better. Use these tips yourself to get your own personal productivity on the rise and get your career forging ahead:

1. Write a Daily To-Do list. This initial tip is really simple, highly effective and ignored by the vast majority of employees. Prioritize the tasks, work on the highest priority first, and carry over the uncompleted ones to the next day. There are numerous free software tools that can assist in this. If you have written “Spend 30 minutes on my big-project” on your list then it’s a lot harder to ignore it and you’ll find yourself actually doing it.

2. Write a Daily Activity List. If it seems like you never have enough time in the day, keep a journal of all of your activities. If you spend 20 minutes chatting by the coffee pot, write it down. After a week, look back over your activities. You may be surprised how much time you actually spend doing nothing. Now that you know, you can reinvest that time more wisely.

3. Stop Procrastinating! This one is undoubtedly the hardest of all. Procrastination is an easy and deadly (to career progression) habit to get into. Unfortunately the only way to get around it is by sheer will-power. When those voices in your head start arguing over whether to work on something now or put it off until later, listen to the work now voice. Give yourself manageable goals, like working on something for 15 minutes or 30 minutes, to get started. The good news is that it generally takes about 21 days before an action continuously repeated becomes an ingrained habit. So try your absolute hardest to stop procrastination for 3 weeks and you’ll likely have the problem licked.

Don’t delay, effective time management is vital to your career success, so don’t remain a procrastinator start putting these tips into effect NOW!

Find out how to stop your procrastination and your other deadly sins with my book “How to Get Ahead at Work” and 2 hours of MP3 uploads. There’s also a very useful 7 part free e-course.

What? You’re not Still procrastinating are you? Go on visit now:

http://www.howtogetaheadatwork.net

free time management tips, personal time management tips, tips on time management

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 7:38 am and is filed under Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.