Time management is a highly desirable job skill.
It matters for your work. It matters for your daily life.
You need to make it to the movies on time. You need to pay bills on time. You need to deliver that report to your boss by Friday. You need to have dinner on the table in one hour. The ability to manage your time is incredibly important no matter what kind of person you are, or what you’re trying to accomplish.
The hardest part of time management, though, may not be in how you use your time…
it's about how you plan your time.
Someone has to plan your time before you can manage it
It is not all that difficult to follow a time management plan that is handed to you – to follow instructions, to meet a deadline set by your boss, and to prioritize tasks that must get done because someone else is expecting you to do them.
What requires effort to master, but will pay off tenfold in your work and lifestyle, is the ability to plan how you will use your time and how you will manage distractions and roadblocks. Poor time planning and the problem of distractions lead to some surprising ways you can sabotage your own success.
Time management can't happen by willpower alone
Those who have mastered time management have mastered knowledge of themselves. Good time management requires more than simply the willpower to be more productive – you must know what tasks you can do by yourself, what tasks need a team, and how much time and effort different tasks will take you, personally, to complete at the quality required.
To manage your time effectively, you also need to know at what points you’ll need feedback or approval before moving forward. Understanding the quality you can deliver and how long it will take you to achieve that quality enables you to estimate your own deadlines and promise reasonable deliverables.
Time management is dependent on your productivity flow
The most productive people also know themselves well enough to read their productivity flow. They know what times of day they will be the most productive and they recognize the signs in their mind and body that tell them they need to take a break to recharge.
yes — rest is a vital part of your work.
For that reason, people who are absolute time management legends are not 100% productive all day – they plan blocks of productive time based on their personal flow. They are intentional with their downtime and breaks; they don’t waste them stressing out about the things they ‘could be getting done’. If you’re the boss or team leader then you also need to be ready to help the rest of your team get really great at understanding their individual and collective productivity flow.
Better time management, time planning, and self-awareness of your productivity flow can make you more successful at work. These skills pay off double, too, because they can also make you more productive in less time – opening up more time for the lifestyle your hard work has earned you.
I’m a big proponent of work-life balance and, yes, I do believe you can be an absolute rock star at work and have the lifestyle you really, really want. That’s why I believe in using brilliance hacks to increase your impact at work and create work-life balance.
Most folks are not great at planning and managing their time, so those who can become absolutely brilliant at this can also quickly become the most productive and successful at work.
to keep reading:
» Not Planning Your Time: Surprising Ways to Self-Sabotage
» Brilliance Hacks: I Finally Accepted I Was Planning It All Wrong