Basic Rules of Time Management
To truly understand the benefits of time control, you have to learn the basic rules of time management first. This way, you can truly understand how time is relates to effectively manage your own time as well as the time you have to spend with your family. By having a solid grasp on the basic rules of time management, you can truly manage your own time well, ensuring that you actually spend more of it doing the really important things. If you can master the basics of management and apply them to your daily life, then you will find yourself with an effective system that truly works for you.
Time management begins with understanding the importance of prioritizing. Prioritizing is not about deciding what needs to get done first. Rather, it is about making sure that important tasks are handled first, while unimportant tasks are put last. When prioritizing, it is important to determine what projects are the most essential and what projects should be moved to the bottom of your priority list.
Once you know what projects should be placed at the top of your priority list, you must prioritize. This is where the real benefits of proper time management comes into play. By prioritizing, you eliminate the stress levels associated with not finishing projects on time. When you have high stress levels, you cannot focus on the projects at hand. You also cannot work efficiently because the energy spent on finishing projects is not utilized for the best work possible. Thus, you end up using up most of your valuable work hours in futile efforts to keep your project on track.
After prioritizing, it becomes necessary to set goals for each priority list. Again, the benefits of proper time management become clear. A well-constructed time and attendance management (TOAM) system will help you make the most out of your work hours by giving you clear expectations regarding productivity and workloads. Proper time and attendance management also help you work within your allotted time to ensure maximum productivity.
Once the project is at hand, you can effectively use time and attendance management systems to ensure maximum productivity. One of the basic rules of time management is to spend the most time on the projects that offer the greatest return. Thus, it is a good idea to spend a majority of your working hours on projects that yield the greatest ROI. On the flip side, spending a majority of your working hours on projects that yield marginal or no ROI means that you spend too much time on projects that do not yield any real or noticeable return on investment.
It is important that all your daily tasks are prioritized in order of importance. This is why your TOAM software should allow you to prioritize your tasks. If you must set priorities, make sure your system allows you to change them as often as you like. If you want a tool that allows you to change priorities and mark them off, go for a system that allows you to do so through the simple click of a button. Other features that may come in handy include the ability to create sub-priority lists and alert you when it is time to prioritize another area of your working day.
To determine the best time for any task, identify the main aspects of the task and then think of the main points that need your concentration the most. This process is known as planning. By planning out the most important tasks for the day, you can ensure that these tasks get the most attention. This will lead to an optimized working day where you can spend the majority of your working hours working on the most productive tasks.
To get the most out of your time log, be sure you track all your activities. Create lists of the important tasks you perform on a daily basis and label them accordingly. Once the day comes to an end, tally up all your completed tasks for the week. Divide this total number by the number of hours you have worked and calculate how many hours you could have spent on less important tasks if you had not been scheduled to work. This rule of thumb is one of the basic rules of time management and an important one to live by. It will help you stay on schedule and maximize the value of your resources.