Which is what I want?
You may not be aware that you have some real options for managing your time. You can choose to stop doing some time-consuming and low-productivity activities once and for all, without negatively affecting your work or personal life. In fact, by consciously stopping some unproductive and unnecessary activities, you will be in time to invest in more satisfying and productive tasks.
What is your job?
Managing working time requires, first of all, reviewing "What it does," so you can find out why you are doing it, what you want to achieve, and whether you are doing it the right way.
If you want to get serious, you can start by writing down the different tasks that you carry out over a week. It may be very annoying, but only when you know how you are spending your time, will you be able to make judgments about whether or not you spend it on what you should. Then you can think about how you should organize the day and decide which tasks are a priority.
Make a graph for the analysis of time and tasks; Write down any activity you undertake as assigned and the time it has taken up. You will probably be terrified to see how much time you spend attending, unscheduled interruptions, such as phone calls you want to attend to immediately, instead of waiting to finish the task you are currently doing, or talking to a colleague who comes by the office to a chat.
Surely you have not realized how many tasks you have started and not completed, or how little time you have spent on very important matters.
Undefined roles and responsibilities can lead to tremendous losses in time and efficiency. The clearer the agreements, expectations, functions and responsibilities are, the more possibilities one has to manage his time.
An analysis of the time and task analysis graph would act as benchmarks so that both the subordinate and the manager begin to clarify how much time should be invested in each area.
In the case where the person is occupying a new administrative position, the first step is to work closely, at first, with their immediate supervisor to determine what the roles and expectations are. Whatever the specific function or responsibility you want to clarify, it is up to you, therefore it is your responsibility to have as clear as possible what is expected of you in your position.
The time and the administration process.
When human beings want to change something, modify it, gain efficiency, for example, use of our time, we are usually talking about two things: How are we? And how do we behave in relation to what we want to achieve? This is what makes the difference between determining our path or being toys of the circumstances.
Most of the activities that man has in modern life are complex, suffering the interaction of many different factors. Pretending that they spontaneously converge towards our goals and well-being, is as much as pretending that everything works out for us magically.
All of us, in one way or another, have to manage, in the sense that we all have to manage heterogeneous resources and situations that open ways for us to achieve desired objectives.
Managing time is the art of making it serve the benefit of individuals and societies. Since time does not exist in itself, the administration of time is the administration of the self; the adequate management of resources of all kinds, since there is not a single reality that is subtracted from time.
Administration is a process that goes through at least four phases:
- PlanningOrganizationOperationControl
Most of the problems and the waste of time arise from acting without thinking. The good use of time requires planning equally our medium future (long-term objectives) and our immediate future (medium and short-term objectives) and knowing how to manage it as a process that requires revision.
Set priorities
The key to prioritizing productive tasks is to clearly understand our goals and values. If we have not had time to determine what is important to us, it will be difficult for us to realize even what our time is worth.
When we know that there are several things to do during the day or next week, it is useful to give each task a priority in relation to the others.
A valid suggestion that will help you clarify how priorities are set; it is to make a list of everything you have to do, not only of immediate daily problems, but of long-term goals and tasks. You do not have to follow a specific order, analyze it thoroughly and write what you can think of. The to-do list contains small or large, urgent and not-so-urgent, boring and exciting tasks, short and long term. The first thing to do is determine which of these are active and which are reactive.
Active: These are the tasks that you must carry out to achieve the objectives of your work. They are the ones that answer the question; What am I here for?
Reactive: These are the tasks that make up the daily routine and must be completed in order for things to work. They will never praise you or thank you for doing them, so you should try to get rid of them as soon as possible.
You need to know two things about a task before giving it a certain priority:
How much time do you have to spend on the task? Determined by the importance of the task.
How fast should the task finish? Determined by how urgent the task is.
Importance and urgency are not the same. An urgent task does not have to be important. It can be urgent but trivial.
Reactive tasks are usually not important, while active tasks are almost always important. If something is important and urgent, it must be given the highest priority.
Planning and goal setting.
Planning means acting proactively or anticipating events. Once you define exactly what you are going to execute, according to the importance and urgency criteria, the strategy for setting goals is immediately applied.
Sequentially, the goal is set, time is set, other resources are assigned, activities are established, obstacles are foreseen and levels of excellence are established. This process is cognitive, affective and involves action; In such a way that it generates a manifestation of motivation to achieve or a tendency to overcome.
