{"id":418,"date":"2014-04-15T16:52:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T20:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2014-04-15T16:52:59","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T20:52:59","slug":"time-management-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Time Management Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The best way to get the most out of your day is to take your time seriously. \u00a0I&#8217;ve already talked about the importance of <a title=\"The Power of Showing Your Work\" href=\"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=368\" target=\"_blank\">tracking your time<\/a> and <a title=\"Tips For Running Meetings\" href=\"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=223\" target=\"_blank\">reducing the time-thievery of meetings<\/a>, but here are some additional things that I have found help me to maximize the time in a day.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Keep a to-do list<\/strong>. \u00a0There are three key elements to this. \u00a0First, capture everything that needs attention so that nothing slips between the cracks. \u00a0Second, scope the tasks; a rough ballpark will do. \u00a0Third, prioritize. \u00a0It&#8217;s fine to pick one or two small tasks to cherry-pick and get done, but if you&#8217;re breaking your own prioritization regularly, you need to dig into why you&#8217;re avoiding the bigger tasks. \u00a0I always re-visit my to-do list first thing in the morning (often a good time to scrap the old version and re-write a cleaner one) and last thing at night, with periodic updates as needed throughout the day. \u00a0This helps tremendously with focus, as well as providing a sense of accomplishment for abstract work; it always feels good to look at a list of crossed-off items at the end of a day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Attack e-mail strategically.\u00a0<\/strong>It&#8217;s easy to get constantly interrupted by e-mail, just like it&#8217;s easy to let meetings take over your life, particularly if you are intersecting with multiple teams and leading a project. \u00a0A lot of times, being responsive to issues raised in e-mail is a key part of leadership. \u00a0However, this does not mean you are doomed. \u00a0I do a thorough clean-up of my e-mail first thing in the morning and last thing at night (funny that), and in between, I do a lot of sorting. \u00a0Items that need a response stay in the inbox; everything else gets deleted or filed into an appropriate folder. \u00a0This means that anything in my inbox needs attention; when I have a few free minutes between other tasks, I try to knock a few of these off. \u00a0Staying diligent about this process can be challenging, but over time, it becomes a habit, and that&#8217;s powerful.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Work your calendar<\/strong>. \u00a0This is a life-saver, particularly when you&#8217;re constantly overbooked. \u00a0Every meeting goes into my calendar, no matter how short. \u00a0If I can see it coming, I document it. \u00a0Every event in the calendar also has an appropriate reminder warning; usually, this is 15 minutes for meetings, but it can be 12 hours or more for events I need to prepare for the day before. \u00a0Again, you need to do this for a while until it becomes a habit; once you hit that point, all of those mental cycles you spent reminding yourself that something is coming up or that you need to prepare for something can be reclaimed. \u00a0Your brain is free to work on other things. \u00a0<strong>Pro-tip:<\/strong> when you&#8217;ve got something you really need uninterrupted time to work on, book time for it in your calendar. \u00a0If you&#8217;ve trained your team to look for conflicts when scheduling, this is very effective. \u00a0You can also put reminders into your calendar (set as not busy) to follow up on various issues or commitments from the team. \u00a0If you are diligent about working your calendar, you can see at a glance in the morning how much time you&#8217;re going to have to devote to that to-do list.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clean your desk at the end of the day.\u00a0<\/strong>It doesn&#8217;t have to be spotless; nor do you need the perfect organizing system. \u00a0Just clear some space. \u00a0Make sure the things that need attention are somewhere you can put hand to them easily, trash and recycle the things you don&#8217;t need anymore. \u00a0Not only does this help prevent things from going missing, it also has a psychological benefit. \u00a0Clutter builds up over time, and when you approach a cluttered environment, it can feel overwhelming. \u00a0If you clean\/straighten your desk at the end of every day, it&#8217;s going to be that much easier to engage the next morning.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Take regular breaks.<\/strong> \u00a0If you&#8217;ve been working on something for two hours or more, you need to take a break. \u00a0You don&#8217;t need to go far; you don&#8217;t need to start doing something else. \u00a0You do need to stand up, walk around a little bit, get the blood flowing, and allow your unconscious mind to take over the problem-solving for a little while. \u00a0Some people like quick naps (doesn&#8217;t work for me), others do a lap around the building. \u00a0Do whatever works for you.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Disconnect when you need to.<\/strong> Nowadays, we&#8217;ve got IM, Twitter, and Facebook to deal with in addition to e-mail. \u00a0It&#8217;s okay to log out. \u00a0Really, it is. \u00a0When you really need to focus, clear all the potential distractions out of the way. \u00a0It can even help to have a separate workspace you can go to where people are less likely to interrupt and you don&#8217;t have all of your communication channels open.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Personally, I like to be slightly over-booked at all times. \u00a0This keeps the right amount of tension in my day such that I am constantly pushing to do more, so a lot of these tips are biased towards dealing with being over-booked. \u00a0What works for me may not work for you. \u00a0The important thing is to make yourself consciously aware of what is affecting your time use and productivity. \u00a0Track and measure your own successes and failures, and you can customize your workflow to get the most out of every day.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best way to get the most out of your day is to take your time seriously. \u00a0I&#8217;ve already talked about the importance of tracking your time and reducing the time-thievery of meetings, but here are some additional things that I have found help me to maximize the time in a day. Keep a to-do &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=418\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Time Management Tips<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}