Learning Time Management Skills

Learning time management skills will help you deal with all the stuff you have to do day after day.

Learn to stay calm, and to keep your mind free from stress and worry.

Also, your brain doesn't always function very efficiently, otherwise it would remind you that you need milk when you are at the shop and not when you are back home.
Learning time management skills will help you deal with all of that.

So, what’s the aim of learning time management skills?

A good analogy is having a mind like water.

If you throw a pebble into a still pond, the water responds totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input, then returns to calm.It does not overreact or underreact.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

Steps to take:

1. Collect

To get you started on learning time management skills, collect everything that you want/have to do something about, everything that is not the way you want it to be, everything that has a should/need/ought to attached to it.
From home improvement projects to work projects.

There will be lots of things that are not ‘that important’, but that are on your mind anyway, because you haven’t made a clear decision about them (leave it, do it…).

Because of that it is controlling you, it is taking up energy. You can only feel good about what you are not doing if you know what it is you are not doing.

The reason something is ‘on your mind’ is that you want it to be different than it currently is.

A project is something that needs more than one action to finish it.

The first step to learning time management skills is to get everything together in one place.

Look for anything that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is, permanently.
This includes projects in your house, things lying around, things that have to be returned to somewhere else, pieces of paper with notes on it...

Collect all those things and put it into an in-tray (or an 'in'cardboard box, if it is a lot).

The objective for the collection process is to get everything into ‘in’ as quickly as possible so you’ve appropriately retrenched and ‘drawn the battle lines’.
If you find something that is very important and that distracts you, either deal with it immediately or create an ‘emergency stack’ to put it on.

Start with your desk:
Stacks of mail and memos
Phone slips
Collected business cards
Notes from meetings
Deskdrawers: any actionable items, anything that doesn’t belong in there, anything that doesn’t work?
Collect folders, reading material, stuff that sits where it doesn’t belong permanently

Once you have all the physical things, collect everything from your psychic RAM.
Write each thought, idea, project etc. on a separate piece of paper and put it in ‘in’.

Go for quantity, be sure to get everything, from save the ozone layer to get catfood.

Once you have collected everything, set up your office in a beautiful and functional way.

Find tips on decorating your home office here.

One of the best tricks for enhancing your personal productivity (and for learning time management skills) is having organizing tools that you love to use.

Have a good filing system in place,

use a A-Z alphabetical filing system (G – Gardening – Ideas, Gardening – pots…)

Have lots of fresh folders on hand

Keep the drawer less than three quarters full

You can store tax records etc. that must be kept but are not active anymore in boxes somewhere else

Regularly (at least once a year) go through your files and take anything out that is dated or that you don’t want to keep.

Make a tickler File (Accordion file with numbers from 1 to 31, plus all the months of year, insert what has relevance for the day in question)

2. Process all that you have collected

The second step in learning time management skills is to process:

Process top item first,
Process one item at a time
Never put anything back into your in-tray

Process does not mean ‘spend time on’.
It just means decide what the thing is and what action is required, and then dispatch it accordingly.

Key processing question:

What is the next action?

The action step needs to be the absolute next physical thing to do!
Until you know what the next physical action is, there is still more thinking to be done.


No action required

• trash


• no action needed now, but maybe later (incubate)


• potentially useful information (reference)

• Someday/Maybe list: Anything you can’t do now but would like to do at some later stage.


• Tickler File


• Reference: General reference file: Must be fun, easy to use, easily accessible, don’t be afraid to file just one piece of paper

• What project or outcome have you committed to?


• what is the next action required?

If it is a project: Capture that outcome on a project list that you review weekly.

The next action is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be done so the projects moves towards completion.

Having a total and seamless system of organization in place gives you tremendous power because it allows your mind to let go of lower-level thinking and graduate to intuitive focusing, a very important part of learning time management skills.

Once you have decided on the next action, you have three options:

1. Do it. If it takes less than two minutes, do it immediately
2. Delegate it, keep track on waiting for list
3. Defer it, track it on Next Action list

For actionable items you need:

a storage system for files or project materials,
s project list,
a calendar,
a next action list,
a list of things you are waiting for

Actions that have to happen at a specific time or date get entered in the calendar, write nothing else goes into your calendar!

Those that need to be done as soon as you can go to the next action list.

If the list is long divide them into categories (Calls, Errands, At Computer…)

When you have finished processing your In-tray, you will have:

• trashed what you don’t need


• completed any less than two minute action


• handed off to others what can be delegated and made a list of that


• sorted into your own system reminders of actions that require more than two minutes


• identified any larger commitments (projects) you now have.

The third part in learning time management skills it to process your list.
It is critical that the list categories are kept distinct from one another, that they have ‘hard edges’.

The biggest problem with most peoples personal management systems is that they blend a few actionable things with a large amount of data and material that has value but no action attached.

Review

Daily:
First look at calendarThen your action lists

Weekly:
Read through all the lists
Update your system (Friday afternoon?)
Collect loose paper, write down new projects, process your notes
Review calendar dates for remaining action items, reference information etc. and transfer that data into the active system
Look at future events, capture actions
Review next action list, mark off completed actions
Review waiting for list,
Get your head empty

Review your lists as often as you need to, to get them off your mind:

Review calendar daily
Review next action list every time you have a gap
Review project and waiting for and someday/maybe lists at least once a week

At the weekly review, gather and process all your ‘stuff’
Review your system
Update your lists
Get clean, current and complete

The more complete your system, the more you will trust it. And the more you trust it, the more complete you will be motivated to keep.


When to do what

So what will you do of the things you have to do?

• Context (where can you do it?)


• Time available


• Energy available


• Priority

In your daily work, you can either do:

predefined work (working of next action list)
do work as it shows up, or
define your work.


Priorities should drive your choices, to be able to do that you have to know what your ‘work’ is. An important point of learning time management skills is to get clarity.

Write vision plans for:

Your whole Life
Three – five year vision
One to two year goals
Areas of responsibility
Current projects
Current actions

Write Checklists for:

Personal Affirmations
Job Areas of Responsibility
Clients
Personal Development
Travel Checklist
House Sitter Checklist

Sit down with a yearly planner and put in all the things you have to do seldom but regularly (have car serviced, have pets vaccinated, de-wormed, colon cleanse or fast, hair cut, facial, garden related things….)

Allocate a date for all these things and put it in your calendar.

Change of season: Change bedding, change clothes, spring clean …

A good tool for learning time management skills is a Household Notebook:

It can include info on:

Important phonenumbers
Pizza service
Kids Schedule
Birthday Calendar
Videos or Books taken out


Other lists:

Recurring stuff (Once a year list: pet to vet, doctors visit, car service…)
Twice a year list: change clothes and bedding, mulch…
Monthly: Change contact lenses, make mealplans, buy supplies
Weekly: Change bedding, clean car…
Daily: Morning and Evening routines

List for House sitter
List of Pets Diet
List of Maid work
List of books you want to read
List of favoured presents
Meal Plan
Shopping Lists
Household Chores Checklists
Household Budget Sheet


And then sit back and enjoy a cup of tea and your wonderfully stressfree state of mind, now that you have mastered learning time management skills!

Return from Learning Time Management Skills to Organized Living Solutions