General principles of Time Management

Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves a juggling act of various demands upon a person relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests and commitments with the finiteness of time. Using time effectively gives the person “choice” on spending/managing activities at their own time and expediency. Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects, and goals complying with a due date. Initially, time management referred to just business or work activities, but eventually the term broadened to include personal activities as well. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods. Time management is usually a necessity in any project development as it determines the project completion time and scope. It is also important to understand that both technical and structural differences in time management exist due to variations in cultural concepts of time.

The major themes arising from the literature on time management include the following:

• Creating an environment conducive to effectiveness
• Setting of priorities
• The related process of reduction of time spent on non-priorities
• Implementation of goals

Time management is related to different concepts such as:

• Project management: Time management can be considered to be a project management subset and is more commonly known as project planning and project scheduling. Time management has also been identified as one of the core functions identified in project management.
• Attention management relates to the management of cognitive resources, and in particular the time that humans allocate their mind (and organize the minds of their employees) to conduct some activities.

Organizational time management is the science of identifying, valuing and reducing time cost wastage within organizations. It identifies, reports and financially values sustainable time, wasted time and effective time within an organization and develops the business case to convert wasted time into productive time through the funding of products, services, projects or initiatives at a positive return on investment.

Analysis

ABCD analysis

A technique that has been used in business management for a long time is the categorization of large data into groups. These groups are often marked A, B, and C—hence the name. Activities are ranked by these general criteria:

A – Tasks that are perceived as being urgent and important,

B – Tasks that are important but not urgent,

C – Tasks that are unimportant but urgent,

D – Tasks that are unimportant and not urgent.

Each group is then rank-ordered by priority. To further refine the prioritization, some individuals choose to then force-rank all “B” items as either “A” or “C”. ABC analysis can incorporate more than three groups.

ABC analysis is frequently combined with Pareto analysis.

Pareto analysis

The Pareto Principle is the idea that 80% of tasks can be completed in 20% of the given time, and the remaining 20% of tasks will take up 80% of the time. This principle is used to sort tasks into two parts. According to this form of Pareto analysis it is recommended that tasks that fall into the first category be assigned a higher priority

The 80-20-rule can also be applied to increase productivity: it is assumed that 80% of the productivity can be achieved by doing 20% of the tasks. Similarly, 80% of results can be attributed to 20% of activity. If productivity is the aim of time management, then these tasks should be prioritized higher.

The 7 Principles of Time Management

1. Have a clear vision

• Ask yourself “What am I actually trying to achieve?”

• The clearer you are about your vision, the more likely you are to achieve it.

• It’s as much about what you’re not going to to do as it is about what you are, you are establishing limits. For example, “I will process my emails for no more than 20 minutes.”

2. Do one thing at a time

• Successful people don’t take on too much. They concentrate on doing and finishing one thing at a time as far as possible.

• Little and often: The human mind works best when we apply this principle.

3. Define your limits

• The best way to be creative is not to try to think without limits, but to carefully define what those limits should be. Limitations actually encourage creativity.

• If you feel you can’t get going or you’re getting nowhere, it’s probably due to poorly defined limits. For instance, if you have a limited amount of time you will be able to concentrate your efforts better than if you have unlimited time.

• In the early stages of high resistance tasks, try short limited time bursts for overcoming procrastination.

4. Use closed lists

• Any list that has a line drawn at the end of it can’t be added to. This enables you to deal with all the items on it without the distraction of new work being added. 

• Once defined, it can only stay the same or get smaller. 

• It doesn’t matter which order you do things, provided you are going to clear the whole list.  

• If you have a backlog of work to deal with, use the closed list principle.

5. Isolate your backlog don’t add to it

• Get the system for new stuff right. You need to be able to process a day’s work.

• Get rid of the backlog if you’ve got steps 1 and 2 right you can chip away at the backlog. It will only get smaller, until it disappears altogether.

6. Reduced random factors

• These are things that stop us from completing our planned actions and can never be eliminated. Your day starts to run you rather than you running it.

• We tend to react to random elements; that is, we use the reactive part of our brain to react to who, or whatever, makes the most ‘noise’. 
• We tend to prioritize by this noise.

7. Commitment v Interest

• Compare ‘I’m interested in writing’ to ‘I’m committed to getting a regular column into the local newspaper’. Nothing is likely to come of it unless interest is turned into commitment.

• What are you prepared to commit to? Commitments are limited. Knowing your commitments is an essential part of making decisions and therefore one of the key principles of time management that can be called effective. They are what make the real difference in your life and work.

• Often, our rational and reactive minds pull in opposite directions. For example, “I want to be slim, but I also want some cake”. The question to ask is “How will you feel when you’ve done it?” This is where commitment counts.
• If you’re considering a commitment, ask yourself three questions: (1) What would I need to start doing in order to commit myself fully to this? (2) What would I need to stop doing in order to commit myself fully to this? (3) Would I be prepared to pay the price for full commitment to this?