How do I manage my time? General guide to get things done

Tools and techniques to effectively manage time, presented by Zsolt Galfalvi

AGENDA

• General ideas

• Time Management

• How to manage time effectively?

• What is prioritization?

• Prioritization techniques

• Group prioritization techniques

• Online time management tools

GENERAL IDEAS

• At first glance, many of the tasks we face during a day seem equally urgent and important. Yet, if you take a closer look, you will see that many of the urgent activities we are involved are not really important in the long run. At the same time, things that are most important for us, like improving ourselves and our skills, getting a better education, spending time with family, often are not urgent.

• With good prioritizing skills, you finish as soon as possible all the important urgent tasks, the ones that would get you into a crisis or trouble otherwise. Then, you focus your attention and try to give more and more time to those most important, but not urgent tasks, the ones that are most rewarding in the long run.

• Prioritizing principles can be applied to both planned and unplanned activities.

• For planned activities, like the ones included in your to do list, you can mark each of your tasks with "A", "B", or "C", depending on its importance. The "B" tasks should be done only after you are finished with all the most important "A" tasks, the ones that just must be done. If you have time after you are finished with the "B" tasks, you can move on to the "C" ones.

• When you set priorities in to do lists, also keep asking yourself if any of your tasks can be eliminated or delegated.

• When you prioritize unplanned activities, you often need to make quick decisions, and you don't have time to analyze the situation in full. It is best just to keep in mind your goals and rely on your instincts. Your effectiveness in such situations depends very much on the clarity of your goals.

YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR OWN TIME!

1. TIME MANAGEMENT

• What is time management and how can it influence my life in a positive way? Time management refers to numerous techniques and skills that can help a person to make use of the available time in the most efficient way and to accomplish goals, tasks and projects within the predetermined period of time. Time management skills vary from, but are not limited to, prioritizing tasks, planning, scheduling, organizing and the delegation of functions. However, it also includes an analysis of the time spend for different activities as well as close monitoring that allows one to improve his time management skills. An individual that applies time management techniques can improve his productivity, which allows this person to get more work done within shorter amounts of time. Time management allows us furthermore to take control over our professional as well as personal life, as it helps us to know what needs to be done and what goals need to be accomplished on a daily basis. Effective time management can be a true advantage for an employee as it allows him to meet deadlines of projects without having to delay the completion of it.

HOW TO MANAGE TIME EFFECTIVELY?

• Organization

• Organization is the alpha and omega of time management as it helps you to get an overview about your plans for the

current day and what tasks need to be accomplished. Being organized helps you to avoid procrastination and

postponement of all kinds.

#1 To-do-list

You can organize your workday by taking yourself up to 10 minutes in the morning, where you specify the tasks that need to

be accomplished, the projects that need your attention, the problems that need to be solved and the goals that you would

like to achieve in this day. You can do so by creating a task list (to-do-list) where you write down the main tasks that need to

be done, mention the necessary steps that lead to the completion of projects and where you split your main goals into

subgoals and work towards their achievement. Sometimes it can be also very helpful to write some ideas down on how you

plan to accomplish some of the more difficult tasks and problems.

Make sure to keep your to-do-list in mind and cross-check it every once in a while, whether you are ahead of your planning

or not. When you have solved a problem, accomplished a tasks or achieved a goal that was part of your task list you can

cross it off until you have accomplished everything that was written on the list. Furthermore it is important to set prioriti es

when you create a task list, e.g. by high-lighting some of the most important tasks with a marker, but more on that in the

following, where it says: Prioritization.

#2 General task lists

Besides a daily updated to-do-list you can also create a general task list that includes all of your main goals, split into

subgoals. This task list can include instructions or ideas on how you plan to reach these goals, delegate tasks or possible obstacles and how to overcome these. I would also recommend you to include a particular section into your general task list

where you list some of your regular tasks that you have to accomplish on a daily basis .

HOW TO PRIORITIZE? TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

WHAT IS PRIORITIZATION?

• As a principle, it means doing 'first things first;' as a process, it means evaluating a group of items and ranking them in their order of

importance or urgency.

• Prioritizing skills are your ability to see what tasks are more important at each moment and give those tasks more of your attention, energy, and time. You focus on what is important at the expense of lower value activities.

• Prioritizing is about making choices of what to do and what not to do. To prioritize effectively you need to be able to recognize what is important, as well as to see the difference between urgent and important.

2. PRIORITIZATION

• Prioritization is essential as it helps you to focus mainly on your tasks and duties with the highest priority before you turn to tasks with lower priority that are not related to your main goals or not contributing towards your intended output. Prioritization is an effective time management method as it enables you to be more productive in stressful times when you are facing work overload as you can cast aside time intensive, but unimportant tasks. There are numerous techniques that help you to set priorities from the simpler “ABC” prioritization and the “1-10” prioritization scale, to more in-depth and precise techniques like the “Pareto Analysis” (20% of your tasks contribute to 80% of your outcome, but will also take 80% of your available time), the method to prioritize tasks from “important and urgent” to “not important and not urgent” and the POSEC method that prioritizes by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing. I personally prefer a combination of scaling my tasks from 1 - important to the least important task arranged accordingly to their urgency and due date. However, I recommend you to have a look at all the different prioritization techniques that are being explained in the following and then to choose whatever techniques fits your needs most

2.1 THE ABC ANALYSIS

• The ABC analysis allows you to prioritize your tasks into three different categories: A - Tasks that are important and urgent B - Tasks that are important but not urgent C - Tasks that are not important and not urgent

• What are the advantages of the ABC analysis? By prioritizing your tasks into three categories you will get an excellent overview of all your tasks, their importance and urgency. What are the disadvantages of the ABC analysis? The ABC analysis is not an in-depth analysis and not as precise as other prioritizing methods. It should therefore be combined with the Pareto analysis or be extended by adding two more characters to imply the urgency and importance of specific tasks (e.g. “A-1” or “AAA” for the utmost important and urgent tasks and “B-1” or “BAA” for very important tasks that are just slightly urgent to “B-2” or “BBA” for important tasks that are not urgent, etc.).

2.2. SCALING FROM “1-10”

• Prioritizing tasks via a scale from 1 - very important to 10 - unimportant can help you to create a simple to-do-list with the most

important tasks at the top of it. The advantage is that such a scaled list can be created in short amounts of time, but it also lacks precision.

2.3. PARETO ANALYSIS (20 – 80)

• The idea behind the Pareto analysis is that we can accomplish 80% of our tasks and duties within 20% of our

available time, which also implies that the remaining 20% of tasks will take up to 80% of our remaining time. The

80-20 rule also implies that only 20% of our tasks contribute to 80% of our outcome. The Pareto analysis is an easy,

but time intensive method to manage time and improve your productivity.

How to apply the Pareto analysis?

You can apply the Pareto analysis by writing down a list of tasks that need to be accomplished (to-do-list) that is

ranked in order of their importance, with the slight difference that importance in regards to the Pareto analysis

means the contribution of this task to the overall outcome of your goal/project. Put simple: you rank your tasks

accordingly to their outcome. If a task does not contribute towards the aimed outcome it is regarded as

unimportant. Once you have finished the list with all tasks ranked accordingly of their outcome you can spot the

top 20% of all your activities that result in an outcome of 80%.

• What are the advantages of the Pareto analysis?

The Pareto analysis allows you to focus on the accomplishment of the top 20% of your tasks that contribute

towards the maximum of your outcome, which allows you to set aside 80% of your tasks until the most important

ones are accomplished.

What are the disadvantages of the Pareto analysis?

The Pareto analysis does not consider the urgency and overall importance of a task, such as tasks that need to

be performed in order to maintain customer friendliness (which does not result in the top 80% of the outcome and

would have been put aside), but could have negative impacts if not performed.

2.4 POSEC METHOD

• POSEC is an acronym that stands for Prioritizing by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing, which shall help you to focus our attention on your daily responsibilities. The POSEC method can be summarized as a method to break the main goals into smaller subgoals and tasks, which makes it easier to address one subgoal after another until the main goal is finally accomplished. The POSEC method leads to an upward movement on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The POSEC method is comprised by the following stages: Prioritize responsibilities accordingly to your goals and the available time Organize what needs to be achieved regularly to maintain success (financial security) Streamline tasks you are not fond of, but have to be done (work) Economize tasks you would like to perform that are not urgent/important (pastime) Contribute to to others. (“Giving something back”, social obligations) What are advantages and disadvantages of the POSEC method? The advantages of the POSEC method are that it does not only focus on prioritizing tasks at the workplace but also helps you to prioritize pastime activities and social obligations. In contrast to this is it a disadvantage for people that want to prioritize their tasks and duties at work in a very precise way.

3. ELIMINATION

• The motivation behind time management techniques is to get more things done within shorter amounts of time and revolves around the

basic question, “How to get more out of my time?” However, the third essential part of time management (besides organizing and prioritizing) is the elimination of various tasks, responsibilities and distractions that are very time consumptive. The prioritization of your tasks helps you to spot unproductive and time intensive tasks and

allows you to eliminate these or delegate less important projects and responsibilities amongst your employees/subordinates. In the following you can find what exactly needs to be canceled/avoided:

3.1 FIGHT PROCRASTINATION

• Procrastination is a destructive habit that will distract you from your actual task, which after all leads to hastiness and stress whenever you cannot met deadlines. Being able to discover, fight and finally avoid procrastination is an important time management skill and absolutely necessary when it comes to using your time in an efficient way. The best way to overcome procrastination is by : a). Recognizing that you are procrastinating b). Evaluating the reasons you are procrastinating c). Taking counter-measures against procrastination

• One of the most common reasons why we procrastinate is when we have to accomplish unpleasant or disliked tasks and when we would rather like to do various other activities than performing our duties. You can beat procrastination by rewarding yourself after you accomplished an unpleasant task, clarifying the negative consequences of not performing a task and by simply starting to address the task step by step.

3.2 ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS

• Distractions of all kinds will decrease your concentration and interrupt you from performing your tasks. In order to manage your

time efficient you need to eliminate distractions that prohibit you from performing your tasks or delay the completion of projects. Distractions vary from the internet, emails or the telephone up to multiple tasks that are performed simultaneously (multi-tasking).

3.3 – 3.4 DELEGATE & ELIMINATE TASKS

• Try to delegate tasks that are mundane, unimportant but need to be done and those tasks you are not good at or lack knowledge

that one of your co-workers or employees possesses. This helps you to concentrate on the important tasks and leaves you more time to accomplish these.

• Every once in a while you might notice that you are performing tasks that have absolutely no outcome and are not even important.

Sometimes you might have even “created” your very own tasks that no one else is performing and that don’t need to be performed to accomplish your goals. You should try to eliminate as many of these tasks as possible, as these are simply a waste of time.

4. MONITORING

• Monitoring helps you to find out how much time you spend for different tasks and - which is more important - it lets you realize how

much time you spend with ineffective activities. You can monitor yourself by creating an activity report where you note down your activities, the time that it took and the importance of these activities. As soon as you have monitored your own behavior for a few days you can start analyzing it and if necessary reduce or

eliminate unimportant activities.

5. GROUP PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES

• This is a compilation of tools and techniques that I have found useful for participatory meetings and workshops during project reviews

and project meetings

5.1 SHOW OF HANDS

• 2 - 5 minutes; any number of people

• Obvious but effective. Run through your list or agenda and get a preliminary show of hands on how important each item is to the group. Those options that have less support are good candidates for being quickly scrapped. Remember to check with the people that made a suggestion before scrapping it - it's best to avoid upsetting them for the rest of the meeting. It's also possible that an

idea that's not popular at first glance can become the favourite on closer examination.

5.2 FIST TO FIVE

• 5 - 10 minutes; any number of people

• A more complex version of the show of hands. Group members stick up:

• Five fingers for strong support and a willingness to lead the proposal forward.

• Four fingers for strong support, and a willingness to work on it.

• Three fingers for minimal support, but a willingness to work for it.

• Two fingers for neutrality.

• One finger for no support.

• Fist for no support and active opposition.

5.3 STICKERS AND DOTS

• 5 - 10 minutes; up to 50 people

• You can achieve the same effect by giving everyone a number of stickers or dots (1-6 usually works). Write up a list of the ideas. Ask people to stick their stickers or make their dots by the item(s) that they consider to be most important for the group to deal with. If you give multiple dots or stickers, people have the choice of ‘spending' them all on one item that they feel is really important/urgent, or

spreading them across a number of options.

5.4 RANKING

• 10 - 20 minutes; 5 - 20 people

• This is a great technique for using in small groups. Write each option on a card or post-it note and give each group a full set of cards/notes. Set a time limit and ask the groups to rank the options, or reduce the options to, say, three. Having a facilitator in each small group will help. It's also helpful to set out clear criteria at the start - for example:

• “You've got 15 minutes. We're looking for options that need to be done most urgently, are most important, and yet realistic within our budget. Also we've only got a week to make it happen, so please think about what we can realistically achieve in the time available.”

5.5 – 2/4/8 CONSENSUS

• 1 - 3 hours; 8 - 40 people

• This exercise will take time, but will help a group reach a decision that everyone can live with! Probably not one you'd use every meeting, but useful for the really important discussions. It's usually best to impose tight time limits at every stage of this discussion or it can take ages!

• Start in Pairs. Each pair discusses the list of options and is asked to agree their top three priorities.

• Each pair then comes together with another to form a group of four. The two pairs compare their lists of top three priorities and agree on a joint top three.

• Each group of four comes together with another to form a group of eight. Again, each group takes its two lists of priorities and reduces it to an agreed top three.

• Repeat until the whole group has come back together. Hopefully three clear priorities have emerged. In the worst case scenario the group has six top priorities and may need to reduce it still further through facilitated discussion or another prioritisation tool.

5.6 URGENT – IMPORTANT GRID

• 10 - 20 minutes; 3 - 50 people

• A classic time-management tool that can be applied to group prioritization! You can use this tool on paper, or as a ‘Spectrum Line'. The group ranks ideas according to their urgency and importance:

5.7 PROS AND CONS

• 15 - 30 minutes; 3 - 20 people per group

• Got several ideas and can't decide which one to go for? Simply list the benefits and drawbacks of each idea and compare the results. This can be done as a full group, or by asking pairs, or small groups to work on the pros and cons of one option and report back to the group.

5.8 PLUS – MINUS - IMPLICATIONS

• 15 - 30 minutes; 3 - 20 people per group

• A variation of the simple 'pros & cons' technique. It will help you decide

between a number of options by examining them one by one.

• Create a simple table with three columns titled Plus, Minus, and

Implications. In the Plus column write down the positive consequences

of the option. In the Minus column write any negative consequences of

the action, and in the Implications column write down other possible

implications whether good or bad.

• If this doesn't make the top priorities or decision clear for you, you can

extend the process by putting a score against each plus point, minus

point or implications point depending on how strongly you feel about

that point. Then add up the columns and see what the result is. If the

Plus column scores highest the option is good. If the Minus column

scores well, don't go with this option and so on.

5.9 DIAMOND RANKING

1: most support 2-3: next best ideas 4-6: other possibilities 7-8: little support 9: weakest idea

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8

9

10 - 20 minutes; 5 - 20 people

A variation of the general card sorting tool.

The group takes it's 9 top ideas and sort them into a diamond shape:

ONLINE TIME MANAGEMENT TOOLS

• The following is a list of free online time management tools

• Task management

• Task and time management tool with project mgmt functionalities

• To-do and planning tool

• Google task list, integrates with mail and calendar

• Evernote, all-in-one note and time management tool

• Tool to track times spent on projects

• Time and task organization tool – mindmapping

QUESTIONS?