I am not good at time management. There, I said it.
You’ll often find me delivering material right up against the deadline – just ask ‘The Listing’ editorial team!
That in itself isn’t a bad thing (as long as I hit that deadline), but if you find yourself overwhelmed by your jobs-to-do list, missing deadlines and suffering from stress, you may find the next 250 words helpful.
First, clear that clutter.
Look at that jobs-to-do list and establish which tasks are urgent or not, and which are important or not. It’s up to you to decide on the definitions of ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ for your particular tasks (my definitions were that ‘urgent’ meant needing to be completed in the next 2 weeks, and ‘important’ meant it could only be done by me).
Now divide your tasks into four groups based on their classification and deal with them accordingly:
• Not urgent and not important: Dump – forget them and move on.
• Not urgent but is important: Diarise – put a time in your future diary (next month?) to tackle those
• Urgent, but not important: Delegate – is there really no-one else who could do this?
• Urgent and important: Do them – these are the ones YOU need to get on with, right away.
For each urgent and important task, block out a realistic amount of time to complete it – and then discipline yourself to stick to it! Shut your door, switch off Outlook and finish that task!
Finish one before starting the next, and allow yourself some downtime between the tasks to rest and reflect. As one of my hospital’s directors said recently, the way to be more efficient is to start less, but finish more!
Let me know how you get on – if you have time!
julian@julianberry.co.uk
