time management.
Time management is an interesting thing. I am a high capacity person, so when I am working and focused, I am cranking things out – however, when I can’t seem to get focused or my attention is drawn to something else, things start looking bad. Working from home is an interesting beast because I can have a lot of quiet, alone time, but often that does not equal focused time…that’s time to change!
At our (once like a spark) retreat this year we talked about kicking ourselves into high gear and maximizing our time, which, in turn will benefit the business…obviously! So, I am going to share a few of my new techniques with you!
1. Schedule – now, I don’t just mean your Google Cal or iCal, I mean a schedule for your day – and not even a minute by minute. Just a general blocking of your day, for example, my days are blocked as:
1 hour – email cleanup – try to get the inbox to zero…this is the goal
1 hour – Strategic Tasks
1 hour – email follow up to clients
1 hour – phone call follow up to East Coast clients
30 minutes – lunch, laundry break, brain break…whatever!
30 minutes – email clean up
1 hour – ShootQ – catch up on client management tasks
1 hour – Phone Call Follow up to West Coast Clients
1 hour – email cleanup!
2. You will see in my day I have several blocks for phone calls. With my job I spend A LOT of time on the phone. I have found the ONLY way I don’t forget phone calls is to put them in a paper calendar – my Google Cal does NOT work for this. I have WAY too many other events that overshadow the phone calls when I am quickly glancing. So, enter my new 2011 Calendar…and colored pens to indicate what type of call I have scheduled.
3. A timer. See the blocked schedule above? I am trying to stay as close to that as possible? When I finish something faster I can definitely move on to another project or take a few minutes to blog, but I am trying to stick to those guidelines. I picked up this little timer at Target this week and have noticed a big difference in keeping on task…it’s a lot of pressure when you only have 12 minutes left during a task!
4. A notebook. This thing is my brain. Honestly, I write down notes when I am on phone calls, put little reminders to myself and this also holds my to-do list for the day! I know Chalene Johnson might shake her head at me for not keeping it in my phone, but this is the method that works for ME. If you hate writing out to-do lists, maybe the phone method is for you…find what works FOR YOU and do it consistently!
5. This is the big one…StayFocusd. This is an extension to Google Chrome and is a total time saver for me. I can’t tell you how many times a day I absentmindedly click over to Facebook or Twitter just to see what’s going on….what a WASTE of time!!!! So, I added StayFocusd (and there are lots of similar programs out there) to my browser and it allows me 10 minutes a day (during “work hours”) on Facebook and Twitter, after those 10 minutes are up it flashes a screen that says “Shouldn’t you be working?”…amazing. I love knowing that my time is not being wasted mindlessly looking at people’s pictures and profiles…my time is worth more than that!!! Do you have a Facebook addiction during your work day?
So, these are some of my tips on time management and keeping track of what you are doing! Hopefully it was helpful, or perhaps you scoffed at my structure, but I do challenge you to be more efficient with your time…it makes a HUGE difference.
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