Good time management requires competence in four key areas. Don’t underestimate the toll that poor time management can take on one’s career and personal relationships. Understanding the cause of one’s poor time management can help identify the tips most likely to improve it.
Awareness
Two games to help you lose track of time
- The Short-Time Guessing Game: Set the timer for two minutes. Check it when you think it’s been 30 seconds and again at 90 seconds. Repeat until you can always get fairly close to the end goal.
- Longer time guessing game: For your next few activities, write your estimate of how long you think each task will take. Keep playing that guessing game until your estimates are usually within 10 to 20%.
Now, log how long the tasks actually took. Keep playing that guessing game until your estimates are usually within 10 to 20%.
Respect
- Many time management problems stem from insufficient respect for the victims of poor time management
- Put yourself in their shoes and consider how you would feel if you were to be late for an appointment and your victim waited for you instead of saying, “It’s OK, don’t worry about it.”
Arrangement
- Put time-sensitive to-dos in your week-at-a-glance calendar
- Anything you want to do in the next day or two but needn’t be done at a specific time goes on a 3×3 memo cube
- Both sit on your desk, and you can check them often throughout the day
Adaptation
- Stay vigilant to a moment of truth: the moment you become aware of a higher-priority task or of a distraction
- The goal is to consciously, not reflexively, decide whether it’s wise to complete your current task before turning to the highest-priority one, whether to allow the distraction and, if so, how long to let it distract you
