Time management: are you really so busy?

We can say that the importance of time management at least equivalent to strategy, innovation, leadership these seemingly more compelling management issues, and even more important.

"Time management" of the three key issues:

· What is a must to do?

· How to treat others?

· How to co-ordinate planning out the entire block of time?

"You're very busy?", I asked this question answers amazingly consistent — busy, often seem to answer. We live in a busy social exception, whether it is Manager, or the so-called knowledge workers or professionals, and everyone is very busy.

In fact, that there are three busy behind: one is busy, but have not yet learned to manage their time, these people often feel the timetable by madness crazy; one is busy, but have learned to deal with and a choice; the third is to pretend it's busy, because we almost have began to busy and successful, free and fail together.

"You're very busy?" is often used as greeting, but few people are aware of the need to pay attention to it behind the "time management". Very often, time management is considered a primary skill is to be subsumed under the category of the inspirational, that primarily spiritual factors at play. In the management field, inspirational fame has not been very good, is considered the same trick to witchcraft.

Now, we must give time management with due attention, we can say that the importance of time management at least equivalent to strategy, innovation, leadership these seemingly more compelling management issues, and even more important.

Whatever the strategy, innovation, operations are required to do by the people, in other words, invested their time and energy. For managers and professionals, the biggest constraint is the time, they only have so much time. Typically, we could not by hiring more people to gain more time. Management if too much, they may interfere with each other, and thus had to work a lot of time to deal with friction and conflict management layer too much will impede the flow of information.

For professionals, more people means more communication costs in more than a very small number, it becomes more harm than good. Factory can hire more workers to increase production, quantity can be thousands or even tens of thousands, but for software development teams, consulting, project teams, ten people has almost the limit of the team size (here refers to complete a specific mandate to work in a team).

In the past, in the Organization's vision, there is no time management, of course, thinking of nothing. Time management is considered a personal issue, individuals should go to time management, time management to develop their own skills. In addition to task now, "" goals, allowing knowledge workers to decide about the work of all "this trend even allows organizations to give up their time management responsibilities. Organizations to more in the task assignment will consider each individual's time, this has nothing to do with strategy, not only or even considered the minimum level. For technical knowledge, management skills, organizational never holding this view. In this regard, they use internal training, counselling system (coach), distribution of staff participate in external courses, and other ways to help employees improve their skills.

Bottleneck management theory believes that the best way to improve performance is improving every link, every step of the way, but to improve the "bottleneck" (the biggest constraint factor), because the system's overall performance depends on the bottleneck. Time it managers and professionals in the greatest constraint factor and, more importantly, too busy managers and professionals could be plunged into the exhausted State, it may be too busy thinking, may lose work and life balance … These may eventually lead to serious problems — lose their, leave or become "incompetent".

How to time management

Given the importance of time management has been solved by half. Next, we discuss specific tools and detail, but rather concerned about time management is an important prerequisite for preparation and three key issues. In fact, because of time management is a daily activities, complex tool will allow people to give up after a brief use. Bottleneck management of Gao LVL for all complex solutions have doubts: "complex solutions are not feasible. "Only through the core problem, which is focused on key issues, in order to be effective time management.

Time management is an important preparation tasks is to "know your time is spent away." Why do not need to explain, but it may be considered to be a very simple task, think simple recall. It should be stressed that it is for this reason, for this issue, our "imagination" and "realistic" often have very different or even completely different.

Management guru Peter. Drucker once described what he did: he asked the managers themselves how to use the time of writing, and have the record of these managers is how to use time. A company is determined to tell researchers, according to his feeling, he period divided into three parts, used in the company's senior management, key customers, regional social activities. Lasted six weeks actually record as a result, he spends most of his time in the schedule of work, to be kept informed of his understanding of the customer's order, as they call the factory orders. He began to believe that these records, but many times seen similar record, he believes that "the use of on-time, reliable records than memory. ”

Record your time spent away, is the beginning of time management, but it is not a one-time tasks, in the whole time management process, we may need to keep records, in order to learn about the latest time usage, such as one month singles day to record the time of day. According to some time management tools, some people can every day to 15 minutes for the interval recording time usage, which has its benefits

, However, doing so may take a long time in "mo", and too often records schedules also will make you feel tremendous pressure to have a negative impact.

What is a must do? this is the first time management. Time management mistake practices are basically boil down to, spend time that does not have to be done. On the Organization, the most important thing is to let employees know what is important, you must do a task, that is, what is used to measure their performance standards. On a personal level, this question can be interpreted as "I can make any contribution to the Organization?"

Identify the most important thing, then you have to do it. There is a very close to the popularization of the argument is that "important prior to do" (First Thing First). In July this year's Harvard Business Review, Drucker in the latest article in his 1996 rich experience is sure to say: "I haven't come across any other managers can simultaneously handle two or more tasks, and still maintain high performance. ”

Always do the important thing is that it allows us to avoid falling into the "l. rush addiction" trap. We thing can be classified as urgent and non-urgent, important and less important to the "light-weight" and "slow-urgent" to distinguish between the two dimensions, we put things into four categories, can we face the thing into four quadrants: important and not urgent emergencies; important; not important emergency; not important not urgent.

Most of the time, under pressure, we often urgent matters in the first place, although we know that "important but not urgent" things have far-reaching effects, those important and urgent matter often precisely because we are not emergency does not do. In the beginning, we still know the emphasis on the importance of the matter, to do those "urgent and important", but gradually got used to this kind of emergency, we often can't help but love the "fire fighting" feel everywhere, to do those "urgent but not important things".

How to treat others? time management of the second key issue is the "person". A lot of time management techniques to teach managers learn to empower, let others share your things. In fact, time management, many people tend to put others as her own efficiency more work resources – or disorder, disturbance. It is, we tend to control others, let them do things according to our requirements, or that they do not prevent us from doing things, but unfortunately, someone is out of control, this approach does not really work. We should be more concerned about working together with others of other things, for instance, new knowledge, relationships, and so on. In the time management, we must always ask ourselves, how we perceive others?

How to co-ordinate planning out a large block of time for managers and professionals, they often need to block the entire block of time to complete important tasks, such as on important decisions or write a report. These tasks usually is mentioned in the "contribution to the organization." In the process of making these tasks cannot be interrupted in the Middle, because each was interrupted, requires a very long time to re-enter the depth of thinking and fully working.

How busy schedules and manpower planning out the entire block of time to complete these tasks is time management of the third key issue. It is said, Bill. Gates each year several weeks in the fully closed state, completely detached from the daily routine of annoyance, thoughts on some of the company, the technology is very important. As long as the conscious of the need, we have arranged a variety of services means allocating large blocks of time in order to fulfil these most important mandates. The last method that is, one day the Office door, pull the phone, push the other things aside, this may cause some little trouble, but with the contribution to complete a task than negligible.

As we work every day feel in, effective time management is one of the things missing, why not missing it is because of the lack of time management tools, but we did not really pay attention to it. We need to do is to pay attention to time management, records the use of our time, and then on the three key issues: what is a must do? how to treat others how to co-ordinate planning out? the whole block of time?