Manage self not Time

For years I’ve been hearing about Time Management. However, time is elusive and really can’t be managed. Instead, manage yourself. The real key is that effective self managers define their priorities and schedule activities, they don’t manage the clock as there are only 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. If you manage it, it will not grow or accumulate, so you really must manage how you use time, manage your work, and control your actions.

The trap that most super busy people fall into is believing that he/she can do it all. You might be able to do it all, but perhaps not at the same time or not with the same focus, tenacity or results. Everything doesn’t deserve equal time or attention. Therefore, you really must make conscious decisions about what’s really most important. Multi-tasking has been proven ineffective in numerous studies, so make choices and focus on the most important tasks first.

Time is a precious commodity. However, many people waste valuable time getting stuck in one or more of the following habits:

Being a Perfectionist: Believing that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable. This belief is often marked by low productivity as individuals lose time and energy on small irrelevant details of larger projects or mundane daily activities.

Procrastinating: Putting off, avoiding or deferring actions or tasks to a later time.

Crises Management: Reacting to threats, elements of surprise and urgencies but having no time for the routine matters that might be more important.

Being Unfocused: Lack of concentration on a particular task or activity which is evident usually by switching, floundering or multi-tasking.

Allowing Interruptions: Distractions and interruptions are costly to individual performance and the bottom-line. In fact, unnecessary interruptions consume about 28 percent of the knowledge worker’s day, which translates to 28 billion lost hours to companies in the United States alone (“The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity,” Jonathan B. Spira and Joshua B. Feintuch, Basex, 2005). At an average cost per hour of $21 (U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics June 2005), that costs U.S. companies $588 billion per annum.

Emotional Blocks: Boredom, daydreaming, stress, guilt, anger and frustration all reduce concentration.