So you have a nice set of inspiring goals that you are raring to achieve. You have diligently kept a time diary and analysed how you use your time and have managed to free up an hour a day to work on your goals. What is the next step to take if you want to ensure that you use this time effectively and make progress on your chosen goals?
One of the most effective tools at managing your time effectively is the simple list. Call them to-do lists; action item lists or task lists; they represent one of the key habits that you can develop to boost your personal productivity. Working from a list can ensure that you always remember what tasks need to be carried out. This can be especially important when working toward large complex goals.
How to start.
Getting started is fairly easy, simply write down all the tasks that need to be performed in order to complete your goals. If one of the tasks seems too large, in that it would be impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time (A few hours up to a days worth of work) then it needs to be broken down further. Take this large task and break it down into component sub-tasks. This sub-tasking process is continued until all of the tasks listed meet this criteria.
Now Prioritise.
The next step is to prioritise this list of tasks that you have created for yourself. This is critically important as it ensures that you are always working on your most important tasks on an ongoing basis. It also has the added benefit that you do not get bogged down performing the myriad low priority and unimportant tasks that often make up a large goal.
To do this simply run through your list of tasks and assign a priority ranging from A – C to each task (A being the most important and C being the least important). Once this process has been completed rewrite your list in priority order starting with your highest priority tasks first.
How to use your list.
Now that you have your prioritised list you simply start with the tasks listed at the top (your A ranked tasks). Completing these tasks first has the most beneficial impact on your progress towards attaining your goals. If at any point you think of more tasks that need to be completed simply assign them a priority and add them to your list.
You should aim to review and update your list daily. This ensures that you make time to add any new tasks that emerge and remove any tasks that have become unnecessary. It is also a convenient time to review the priority of any time critical tasks and adjust them accordingly (i.e. increasing the tasks priority if it needs to be completed in the near future).
If you have never tried using lists to organise your time effectively, then why not give them a try now. You might be surprised at how effective such a simple tool can be.
Peter Ikin
July 3rd, 2006
Tags: Personal development, time management, to-do list,
There is an interesting article over at mindful entrepreneur about information products. The article provides a good introduction this type of product in general and also provides some interesting links to other articles as well as some statistics on how demand for “paid for” information is growing.
Information products are great start-up ideas for anyone looking to venture into beginning their own business. They have a relatively low cost of entry in terms of start up capital and yet have the potential to be built into a serious revenue generating business. One of the most attractive features for the entrepreneur is that most people have the potential to create an information product from their own specialist knowledge. Information products can be created either from knowledge gathered from your work life or from any hobbies that you are passionate about.
The Chances are that whatever topic you want to create your product on someone, somewhere will be interested in it. That does not mean, however, that you should not do any market research. Carefully selected products, that satisfy an identified niche in the market are what you should aim to produce. This type of targetted product stands a far better chance of success than simply another product on an overpopulated topic.
Overall, creating and selling information products are great choice for anyone looking to bootstrap their own business.
Peter Ikin
June 29th, 2006
Tags: information products, mindful entrepreneur, start up idea
So you have come to realise that your time is an important resource and that your poor management of it is severely impacting on your personal efficiency. So what is the first step to take to try and take control of your time?
Keeping a time diary.
The easiest step in taking control of your time is to keep a time diary. You probably have no real idea of how you spend your time on a day to day basis. Without this knowledge it is difficult to say how you can improve upon your current situation. You need to know where you are before you can get to where you want to be.
The best way of keeping this time diary is simply to carry around a notebook or pad of paper with you and make a note of all the major activities that you do and how long you do them for. Just go about your normal day to day routine and make notes as you go along. At this stage your not trying to improve anything you are simply taking stock of where you are. Try to keep this up for a week so you get a decent picture of what an average day looks like to you.
Now that you have your time diary for an average week its time to try and draw some conclusions. By looking at your time diary you may be surprised at what you actually spend your time doing. The most obvious activities that take up a lot of time will be things like watching TV; browsing the internet; chatting on instant messaging services; driving etc. If you look at these time eating activities you might be surprised at how little time you actually spend on productive activities such as working towards your goals.
What you should do now is take a long look at the activities that you spend most of your time on and ask yourself how much value that they actually add to your life. Can you spend one hour less watching TV every day or perhaps spend less time browsing the internet. Can you limit the time you spend on these activities. If you can free up two hours a day then you have about 730 hours a year to spend on working towards your goals. This equates to approximately 3 months of full time work (8 hrs a day). Imagine what you could accomplish if you could work full time for 3 months on your most important goal.
This is what keeping a time diary is all about, making you aware of how much time you spend on low value activities. Being productive is simply about spending your time on what matters most to you. Everyone has the same number of hours in a day, the distinction that successful people make is to spend this time on their highest value tasks.
If you want to try and take control of your time start off by keeping a time diary. Assess where your time is being wasted and try and limit or remove these activities from your day to day routine. Hopefully this will free up more of your time so you can consciously work towards your goals.
Peter Ikin
June 28th, 2006
Tags: time management, time diary, personal efficiency, personal effectiveness, sucess
Previous Posts
