A Guide to Time Management

By Inge Dowden

10 Herald Close l Bristol BS9 1DF inge@ingedowdencoaching.com

l 0117 3704204 l 07865 399013 l www.ingedowdencoaching.com

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10 things you can do

to get more done in less time

One of the biggest problems of business owners or anyone else in the workplace

for that matter is that there never seem to be enough hours in the day to get

everything done. In fact, many business owners cite ‘not enough time’ as their

biggest challenge and feeling under pressure is a well-known stress trigger.

The thing with time though, is that everyone gets the exact same amount of it, and

it’s completely inflexible: you get your 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, and

that’s it. Yet some people get lots done, and others are continuously overworked

and behind schedule. So how does that work?

Highly effective people are good at managing their activities. After all, there is not

much they can do about the amount of time they get, but they can influence how

they use it. So I’m going to share with you the techniques that highly effective

people use to get lots done, to give you the option to choose one or more of them

for yourself and get more done in less time.

1. Prioritise

Do you have one long to-do list and do you just add new things at the end of it?

And worse: do you start at the top and work your way down? In that case you

might be spending a lot of time on things that are not even that important, and not

enough time on things that are very important.

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The first thing you should do is prioritise your to-do list by adding deadlines and

priority numbers. There are only 3 options:

1. High priority (needs to be done this week)

2. Medium priority (needs to be done this month)

3. Low priority (needs to be done this year)

The easiest way to organise this quickly (and after all, you don’t want to waste any

more time!) is to put your entire list in an excel spreadsheet. Once you’ve done

that you can add deadlines where applicable, as well as the priority number. Then

you can sort the data by priority number and by date. Now you know what needs

to be done first and what can wait.

At the end of the week you’ll need to go through your list again and move some of

the medium priority items onto the high priority list.

2. Plan weekly not daily

Once you have your prioritised to do list, you need to start planning weekly, and

not daily. A lot of people start the day by looking at their to-do list, and then trying

to get as much as possible done. Invariably they get caught up in the day-to-day

business or meetings, and they don’t get a lot done from their list.

If however you start your week (or better yet finish your week!) by looking at what

you’ve got on the next week and then filling in tasks from your prioritised list, you’ll

see that things get done much more efficiently. If you know you’re going to be out

all day, don’t plan any additional tasks, as you won’t be able to do them anyway,

and you’ll just get frustrated with yourself.

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3. Learn to estimate correctly

This is a very important part of planning: estimating correctly how long something

is going to take. This is where a lot of people go wrong: they think something is

only going to take them half an hour, but in reality it takes an hour and half. If they

plan their day full of things to do, but they don’t get the timings right, they still end

up with a long not-done list.

One way to get good at this is by keeping a record with the following information:

task – estimated time – real time. Keep track of this for a week or so and you’ll

soon get a much better idea of how long something is going to take.

And when you plan in tasks in your diary, always allow for some extra time anyway,

say at least 25%. That way you’re more likely to plan more realistically, and actually

get stuff done. This also emphasises why prioritising is so important: you have to

make sure you do the most important things first as you definitely won’t be able to

do everything at once.

4. Use alarms

Once you get the hang of correct timing, you can use alarms to keep you on track.

When you know you’ve got an hour to do some work in between meetings, pick

the tasks that fit in that hour and then set yourself an alarm to make sure you stick

to it.

There’s a method called the Pomodoro technique which makes you schedule your

time in blocks of 25 minutes (called ‘pomodoros’), which you monitor by setting a

kitchen timer. The idea is that you spend 25 minutes of concentrated time on

something, and then you have a 5 minute break. Or you have 3 or 4 blocks of 25

minutes and have an entire ‘pomodoro’ break. This method works well for things

like studying, reading reports, writing marketing material or doing computer

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coding. If you’ve never tried it before, it’s well worth giving it a go, although it will

not work for everyone.

5. Get unstuck

Sometimes you can just feel totally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things to

do. In that case you can try a different technique to get unstuck quickly.

Take 30 minutes and do as many ‘quick wins’ as possible. Set your alarm and really

work as fast as you can to get as many small tasks done as possible. This will not

only clear your backlog, but it will feel like you’ve got lots done, and when you feel

better, you’re more productive anyway.

6. Switch off your email

One of the reasons why many people don’t get enough done is because they check

their email constantly. As a rule, if it’s really urgent people will not send it by email,

but they will at the very least try to contact you personally.

Get into the habit of only checking your email three times a day: in the morning,

after lunch and in the afternoon and you’ll know that nothing ever gets missed for

more than 3 hours. You’ll be able to concentrate on your work whilst you’re not

being distracted by often unnecessary emails and get loads more done.

Some people find this very difficult because they feel they need to be constantly

available, but think about it: who’s in charge of your time? If you allow other

people to dictate your activity schedule, you can’t complain if you feel

overwhelmed. Take back control and manage other people’s expectations. Most

people find it perfectly acceptable to hear back from you within 24 hours, as

opposed to within 24 minutes.

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7. Delegate

Often you really do have too much to do for the amount of time you have, in which

case delegation becomes your key tool. This can be to members of staff (although

make sure not to overload them) or by outsourcing certain tasks.

You need to do the things that make the best use of your time (such as working on

the business strategy, getting new customers or making new connections); the

things that will have the biggest impact on the bottom line. However, there are

many other jobs that need to be done, and often these can take up large amounts

of your time. A good example is bookkeeping. This is absolutely necessary for the

success of your business, but can easily be outsourced at £15-£20 per hour. If you

know how much your time is worth, and it’s more than £15-£20, then outsourcing

is the right decision for you.

8. Eat that frog

This is a very good technique to help you with motivation and procrastination and

comes from Brian Tracey.

Question: “If you had to eat a live, ugly, frog, when would be the best time to do

that?”

Answer: “First thing in the morning so you don’t have to look at it all day and you’ll

know that the worst is over.”

The frog represents the item on your to-do list that is very important, yet somehow

unpleasant. Maybe you need to make a call to someone you don’t like, or you need

to do hours of research for it, but you know that if you did this, it would make a big

difference to your life or your business. Most of the time when I explain this,

people can immediately identify a few frogs on their list.

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So, identify which item on your list is a frog, and then do that one first. You’ll be

amazed at the difference this makes.

9. Have a system for diary management

Highly effective people have a systematic way of doing things, and they stick to

that system. It doesn’t even really matter what system you use, but you need to

use it all the time. Nowadays many people have smart phones with calendars, and

they are a great tool to use. However, the good old fashioned written diary works

better for some, and that’s just as good (although you can’t set alarms with it,

which are useful if you have a tendency to forget appointments). Outlook also has

a way to organise tasks and set reminders, and there are many more. Pick one and

use it.

I am forever surprised by people who regularly forget appointments, miss meetings

or go over deadlines because they forgot it was there. Those people clearly do not

have a system they use, and that’s where they go wrong.

10. Learn to say no

This is particularly hard for some people, who like to please others. But remember

that if you are overworked and burnt out, you won’t be able to please anyone, let

alone yourself. Highly effective people are in charge of their own time, and they

know (because they have planned well) what they can take on and what they can’t.

They are able to say no when needed, in a friendly but firm way.

If you find it hard to say no to people, just ask yourself the following question: ‘By

saying yes to this, what am I saying no to?’

Or if you find it really hard to say no to people’s faces, ask for a bit of a reprieve.

Say that you need to check your diary and that you will come back to them. This is

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also actually true (unless you have your diary perfectly memorised) and a very

good way to manage your activities.

So there you are, 10 ways to get more done in less time. I hope that you will find

this guide useful. You may not do everything on the list, but just pick the things

that you find the easiest or the most attractive. The single most important thing

you can do is to plan weekly instead of daily. So if you do only one thing from this

list, let that be the one.

A little bit about me: I’m the Business Growth and Happiness Coach, specialising in leadership and staff motivation. I am passionate about everyone being happy and successful at work, be that as a business owner or an employee. Because when you are happy, you are more motivated, creative and action orientated, which in turn makes you more successful. Owners and employees of small businesses who want to grow their business locally, nationally or even internationally and who realise that they need to be at their very best, are my typical clients. I use the DISC personality profiling system to help people understand themselves and others, become better communicators and avoid conflicts in the workplace. Based in Bristol, I’m also an accredited Growth Accelerator Coach with Oxford Innovation. Author of “The Happy Worker: how to find a job you love and love the job you have”, available on Amazon and from www.thehappyworker.co.uk.

Inge Dowden

“Because you deserve nothing less than happiness and success”

10 Herald Close l Bristol BS9 1DF inge@ingedowdencoaching.com

l 0117 3704204 l 07865 399013 l www.ingedowdencoaching.com