Efficiency & Effectiveness: Time Management

One topic I always wanted to learn about was how to be more efficient and effective in all that I do.  I am characteristically someone that puts too much onto my plate, until it over flows.  In order to further my understanding I thought that "Time Management Magic" by Lee Cockerell was a good fit.  This was a pretty quick read and I recommend it for anyone that wants to capture their life back after being sucked too far into their career.  Realistically, we can't add more time to our day, so how are we going to make the most of the time that we do have?  Below I share some of my simple yet BIG findings to reclaim my life back and be more effective in all that I do.  I learned that it's all about creating systems to manage your time.

The first realization that I had was that I wasn't scheduling my personal time into my schedule. This includes scheduling dinners, workouts at the gym, walks, time with family etc.  This is a must if you are to find time for yourself.

To do lists need to be more than just lengthy lists.  You must prioritize things in your to do list with how quickly you need to get them done.  The three levels are:  urgent, vital, important.  Where I went entirely wrong is that too many tasks end up in urgent status before they get completed because I continued to over schedule myself.  I had too many urgencies without a system.  This was something I was comfortable with for a while, but brings on too much anxiety now.

You must create a plan for the day the night before.  The only way to be efficient and effective and to get all that you need done, is a plan.  It's important that you lay out your daily schedule, personal schedule, and to do list items that need to be completed.   This might even mean taking care of small tasks in between meetings, activities, or lunch, even if it is as small as a phone call.  Cockerell says "Failing to plan, is planning to Fail."  He added that "Saving a minute here and there is...part of what time management is about."

Instead of keeping lengthy to do lists, it's important to schedule the task on the day on the day you are planning to tackle it and complete it.  I was unrealistic about how much I really could get done during a day.  Often I would over schedule myself and then be disappointed in all that I didn't get done.  This is something I need to be more realistic about when creating my daily plan and inserting those events from my to do list.

The only one that has control is ME and I plan to put more systems in place for the 2015-2016 school year.  Google Calendar has been tremendously helpful, and my plan is to do a better job of scheduling personal time into my schedule.  I have learned how to say no, and now it's time for me to reclaim life back.  If you are looking for a book to implement small changes to create a large impact, I highly recommend this book.

Here is the link to our storify of our #scitlap chat on efficiency and effectiveness from 7/1/15.