Time Management

“Concentrate on results, not on being busy”

Time management is the management of time in order to make the most out of it.

Time management includes tools or techniques for planning and scheduling time, usually with the aim to increase the effectiveness and/or efficiency of personal and corporate time use. These are embodied in a number of books, seminars and courses, which may offer conflicting advice. The common denominators of these strategies are a to-do-list, setting priorities and goal management. Some of the best known examples of time management strategies are tied to specific lines of time management products.

Time management for personal use is a type of self-management. In a corporate setting, time management software can satisfy the need to control employees, make it easier to coordinate work and increases accountability of individual employees.

Planning time and writing to-do-lists also consumes time and needs to be scheduled. This is one of the major criticisms of time management

Overview

Time management strategies are usually associated with the recommendation to set goals. These goals are written down and broken down into a project, an action plan or a simple To do list. Deadlines are set and priorities are assigned to the individual items on the to-do-list. This process results in a daily plan with a to-do-list. Some authors recommend a weekly instead of a daily perspective.

Task list

A task list (also to-do list) is a list of tasks to be completed, such as chores or steps toward completing a project. It is an inventory tool that serves as an alternative to memory.

Task lists are used in self-management, grocery lists, business management, project management, and software development. It may involve more than one list.

When you accomplish one of the items on a task list, you check it off or cross it off. The traditional method is to write these on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil, usually on a note pad or clip-board. Numerous software equivalents are now available, and many popular e-mail clients include task list applications, as do most PDAs. There are also several web-based task list applications, many of which are free.

Task list organization

Task lists are often tiered. The simplest tiered system includes a general to-do list (or task-holding file) to record all the tasks the person needs to accomplish, and a daily to-do list which is created each day by transferring tasks from the general to-do list.

Task lists are often prioritized:

An early advocate of "ABC" prioritization was Alan Lakein (See Books below.). In his system "A" items were the most important ("A-1" the most important within that group), "B" next most important, "C" least important.

A particular method of applying the ABC method[2] assigns "A" to tasks to be done within a day, "B" a week, and "C" a month.

To prioritize a daily task list, one either records the tasks in the order of highest priority, or assigns them a number after they are listed ("1" for highest priority, "2" for second highest priority, etc.) which indicates in which order to execute the tasks. The latter method is generally faster, allowing the tasks to be recorded more quickly.

Software applications

Modern task list applications may have built-in task hierarchy (tasks are composed of subtasks which again may contain subtasks), may support multiple methods of filtering and ordering the list of tasks, and may allow to associate arbitrarily long notes for each task.

Task list applications may be thought as lightweight personal information manager or project management software.

Task list is also a synonym for process list i.e. the list of program instances (processes) the computer is currently executing.

Resistors

Fear of change: Change can be daunting and one may be afraid to change what's proven to work in the past.

Uncertainty: Even with the change being inevitable, one may be hesitant as being not sure where to start. Uncertainty about when or how to begin making a change can be significant.

Lack of time: To save time, one has to invest time, and this time investment may be a cause of concern. Fearing that changing may involve more work at the start is a common resistor.

Lack of will power: Why change if one really not need to? The greatest problem is a lack of will.

Drivers

Increased effectiveness: One may feel the need to make more time so as to be more effective in performing the job and carrying out responsibilities.

Performance improvement: Time management is an issue that often arises during performance appraisals or review meetings.

Personal development: One may view changing the approach to time management as a personal development issue and reap the benefit of handling time differently at work and at home.

Increased responsibilities: A change in time-management approach may become necessary as a result of a promotion or additional responsibilities. Since there is more work to do, and still the same amount of time to do it in, the approach must change.

Caveats