Time Management Essential Skills

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Time Management Essential Skills

Time management training is essential because you don't have enough time to do everything for everyone; you only have time to do some of it.

Time management is about learning to do the most important things first, delegate the minor things, and ignore the trivial things.

Time management training, therefore, boils down to three essential skills.

• Prioritising - deciding which items on your list are the most important.
• Delegation - entrusting tasks to other people; the job still gets done, but someone else does it.
• Saying 'No' - avoiding jobs that do NOT lead to the achievement of your goals.

Prioritising

You need to prioritise your tasks and put them into order. There are two things to consider when prioritising:

1. The value of the task. Is the task high value or not? High-value tasks should be done before low-value tasks.
2. The urgency of the task. Is the task near its deadline or is there plenty of time? Urgent tasks need to be done before non-urgent tasks.

Prioritisation is one the most important skills you can learn.

There is a fantastic app available for your mobile device, that will help you to prioritise your tasks correctly: Prioritisation app.

Delegating

Delegating is when you entrust a task to another person. When you delegate a task, you need to ensure the following:

• They have a definite description of the task.
• They need the skills and information to do it.
• They need the resources necessary to do it.
• They need the time to do it.

If you want help to properly delegate tasks, then we have a terrific web-based tool which will help you to set goals and delegate tasks to others: Delegation tool.

Saying No

If you are doing only the priority tasks, then that means you need to say NO to those people who would take you off track.

Certain people want to fill your day with trivial, irrelevant, or distracting conversations. This represents a problem. The countermeasure to this problem is to:

• Say No to the trivial,
• Say No to the irrelevant,
• Say NO to the distractions.

Here is a formula of words you can use on these occasions.

"I know you have a lot you want to tell me. But right now, I need to focus more on this, because it is important I finish it today. So, would you please; leave me to focus on this?"

Summary

Time management training boils down to three essential skills:

• Prioritising. Link to our prioritisation app.
• Delegating. Link to our delegation tool.
• Saying No. Link to our one-day time management course.

Time Management Training

Time Management Training

Most people feel they need help with time management. How can you get more done in the same amount of time? How can you stop other people wasting your time? If you want to know how, then click here to find out more about our time management training course.

About the Author: Chris Farmer

Chris Farmer is the founder of the Corporate Coach Group and has many years’ experience in training leaders and managers, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve their organisational goals, especially during tough economic times. He is also well aware of the disciplines and problems associated with running a business.

Over the years, Chris has designed and delivered thousands of training programmes and has coached and motivated many management teams, groups and individuals. His training programmes are both structured and clear, designed to help delegates organise their thinking and, wherever necessary, to improve their techniques and skills.

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Further Reading in Time Management

• How can I better organise my work?
  How can I better organise my work? Many people are not as organised as they, could be. Many people are not as organised as they, should be. As a result of being in a state of relative disorganisation, many people are not as efficient as they otherwise would be; and therefore...
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• How Can I Improve my Time Management Skills?
  Do you find you don't have enough time to do everything you need to? Become a more efficient individual by improving your time management skills. Here are nine suggestions to get you on track to be more effective and better able to manage your time.
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• Time management and personal effectiveness
  Time management training I recently received the following note from a business leader. "We need to look at doing some time management training because many of our people are employed based on their technical knowledge and skills: They are technical experts and on the technical level, our people are very good...
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• Five Time Management Mistakes
  Stop doing things that don't contribute directly to the achievement of your goals. Here are five common time management mistakes and how to fix them.
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• The 80/20 Rule - Pareto Principle - Explained
  The 80/20 Pareto rule originally stated that 80% (or more), of the wealth in any economy is owned by 20% (or less) of the population. Find out how to use this formula at work.
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