Written By: ViditPublished In: ROOT

How Successful People Manage Time

Effective time management is like playing chess. The master player knows the next move before he plays it. Such is the story of people who outperform consistently at workplace and are able to strike the work-life balance that the world seems to be whining about.

While there is never a perfect formula for managing time, we do have an impeccable checklist to help you manage your time as well as millionaires and CEOs do!

1.      Knowing what not to-do

Seemingly irrelevant but proven significant! Good leaders must know what is most important as well as they should know what doesn’t deserve much attention. Big companies define this prioritization in terms of core competencies. Similarly, you need to differentiate your to-do from your not to-do.

2.      Knowing your priority list

Once you know what tasks must be performed and the targets to achieve, it’s time to set your priority meter. Take out time to segregate your work into High, Medium and Low priority. This not only helps you to understand what needs most sincere attention, but also helps you chart a work-plan to achieve them with excellence.

3.      Know your weekly schedule

The reason why I used weekly and not daily is because as an optimist, I aspire to achieve each and every target on a daily basis but as a realist, I know that it isn’t always possible. Therefore, successful people understand this gap and allow themselves room for procrastination. A popular work strategy if the Friday 15 wherein, you spend 15 minutes on your Friday mapping out all pending tasks and evaluate a contingency plan to achieve those at the end of the week without any backlogs. Sounds smart, doesn’t it?

4.      Know the difference between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ breaks

Every individual has his own optimal performance times. These are certain time windows where you are able to deliver 100% focus to the task at hand. Accordingly, the human brain also drains of creative energy and needs refreshers. What successful people know is that a break doesn’t imply that you use that time to send pending mails, mark calendars or do other work-oriented things. A break must mean that your clear your head of stress and work-pressure and indulge in mentally relieving tasks. For instance, several people utilize a break for fitness, reading a book, playing video games or cooking. This is important to ensure that your brain gets a real change and you can pump yourself up for another round of hard-core work!

5.      Know your time

This phrase has dual perspective. First, maintaining a time-log on an hourly basis can help you understand if you are actually giving the right amount of output within the amount of time being spent on work. Secondly, it also helps you to plan similar tasks and assign them the adequate time on the basis of this thorough evaluation of your own efficiency. Several women at the top management level are now switching to multiple work shifts in order to give their family time during the evening hours and continue work later in the night.

 

Time-management is the key to optimum performance and consistency in work. A successful person balances his own strengths and weaknesses by keeping them aligned with the right time for the right task. This isn’t rocket science, it’s all about getting the right sense of direction and putting it down as a plan of action.

So get going! Time is running out!