Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Finding Hidden Time Tip #1

If it seems like you are always hustling about and under time pressure, you can change the situation by realizing you need merely to remove the proverbial straw from the camel's back.

Is there one activity you can shorten up or eliminate entirely, so you gain a few minutes in your day? Examples:

  • Unnecessary steps in meal cleanup--if you are routinely rinsing your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, either wash them by hand or use just the dishwasher.
     
  • Unnecessary steps in morning ritual--do you really need to shave up and down three times?
     
  • If you spend a lot of time waiting for meals in restaurants, eat at home (this will also reduce the amount of time you spend waiting in hospitals, as restaurant food is loaded with toxins like sugar and hydrogenated oil).
     
  • If you spend a lot of time making meals at home, create some large batches of items. For example, make a big stir-fry, and freeze the leftovers in containers sized for one meal each.
It's good if you can recover "hidden" time by looking at your various activities. But, why stop with just one proverbial straw? Remove all the unnecessary load from the camel and you'll have a much faster camel. Make a point of finding some hidden time each day. Examine one, two, or three tasks--whatever it takes. All the time you find will really add up.

 

 
A great way many businesses are managing time is using software. There are many forms of time and attendance software which allows managers to track and monitor employees time usage.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.