Time Management For Dummies - How to Apply the 80/20 Rule
Using the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle will make you more effective in your time management. But what is the 80/20 rule?
In the early 1900’s, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto reported on his findings of the unequal distribution of wealth. That is, twenty percent of people owned eighty percent of the wealth! This phenomenon can be seen in other areas of work. Dr Joseph Juran called the principle the ‘vital few and trivial many’. By this he meant that twenty percent of something is always responsible for eighty percent of the results.
But what does that mean for you? How can you apply this 80/20 rule to time management ? What we do can appear as this ratio: twenty percent of work will take up eighty percent of our time. That seems like a lot of wasted energy doesn’t it? But it can work the other way too. Twenty percent of tasks can give you eighty percent of the results. And that’s how you need to apply to 80/20 principle. You need to focus on the twenty percent that really matters. The trick is to learn which twenty percent to concentrate on, to help make your time management effective.
To implement the 80/20 you need to prioritize. Once you’ve figured out which tasks are going to give you the best returns, concentrate on them. They are the tasks that you want to carry out first. To determine which tasks aren’t in that twenty percent, you may need to ask yourself a few questions.
Do you frequently work on urgent tasks?
Do you work on tasks for other people, but they don’t have any priority for you?
Are tasks taking longer than you expected?
Are you complaining all the time about your work?
Are you doing tasks you’re not good at and are they taking up a lot of your time?
If you answer yes to these questions you may be in the category of eighty percent of your tasks only giving 20 percent reward. If so, you need to reverse things!
What about these questions:
Are you working on tasks that you’ve always wanted to do?
Will your current activities keep you pointed towards your major goals?
Are you happy with what you are doing?
Have you delegated the tasks you don’t like or aren’t proficient in to other people?
If you are working on activities you don’t like, can you see how they relate to your long-term goals?
If you can answer yes to those questions you are making the 80/20 rule work for you.
To help make the 80/20 rule work, remember to prioritize. Projects that are valuable and will lead to your ultimate goal, or have approaching deadlines should be in the twenty percent you want to work on - especially if they make you smile! Tasks that do not lead to your overall goal, ones that you are not competent in, ones that make your grimace, especially if they don’t have a deadline, might be worth moving out of the twenty percent of tasks you want to be working on.
Remember - the twenty percent of tasks that give you the greatest gains for the effort you put in, are the ones to be working on!
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time Management For Dummies - How Do You Value Your Time?
Time is money. But how much money is your time worth? If you are self-employed or work in a business where you bill for your time, working out the value of your time is an imperative exercise to ensure you bring in enough money to cover your costs, and then some.
Once you know the value of your time, you can place more time on tasks that provide a high return, therefore being worthwhile to perform. Tasks that are low in value might not be worth doing, delegated or certainly be lower on your priority list.
So how do you work out the dollar value for each hour you work? Follow this procedure to give you a basic idea of the value of your time.
1. Your yearly salary; plus
2. Your benefits (car allowance, etc); plus
3. Payroll taxes; plus
4. Contribution for rent, equipment, electricity etc.; plus
5. Contribution for overhead (eg phones, mail, receptionists etc.; plus
6. Profit expected. This will depend on the area you work in. A guideline would be 50% of all the other costs should be your profit margin;
7. Add all these figures up; then
8. Calculate the number of working days in a year, taking into account vacations, public holidays, sick days and training days; now
9. Divide the dollar figure by the number of working days
10. Finally divide this figure by the number of hours you work a day. And that figure is how much you are worth per hour. That is the value of your time.
You may use this figure as a billing estimate if your company bills time out (eg lawyers, health professionals). If you want larger profits or aim to be a high achiever, you may want to increase this value for billing purposes.
But how does this work if you’re not bringing in money, such as a student or homemaker? Your time is valuable too, but putting a monetary figure on your hours might not be how you would value your time. Do you value your time sufficiently to think about making changes in regards to low value tasks? Working out how much it would cost in dollars and time saved if someone else were to do some of your tasks (such as the ironing) might be a worthwhile exercise. This way you can spend more of your valuable time on worthwhile tasks (such as studying or attending personal pursuits).
Valuing you time is a monetary and expressive experience. You are saying "I am worth X amount" and "My time is too valuable to waste on doing X". Value your time according to contributions. Value yourself and all that you accomplish.
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Time Management For Dummies Break Goals Into Smaller Steps
Goals can seem daunting, especially if they are big ones. Perhaps one of your goals is to have a book published. That’s a mighty big goal and one that may or may not be attainable. Is there any way to make this goal seem more realistic? Can you make the ‘hugeness’ of this dream more manageable? The good news is, yes you can.
If you think about your goal in more detail, you will soon realize that it is made up of smaller goals. These smaller goals can be broken down into manageable stages. Breaking your goals into these smaller stages will make them seem more easily attainable.
Compare these two statements: "My goal is to have a book published" and "My goal is to take creative writing classes and join writer networks so as I can improve my writing and find out how to submit a manuscript to a publishing house."
The second statement is more structured, outlining the steps you will take towards achieving your goal. The first statement is indeterminate. So you want to publish a book - but how are you going to go about it? Breaking your goal down in to these smaller, manageable steps will show you how you are going to achieve your goal. Your roadmap to the future becomes very clear when doing this.
Having big goals is a good thing, but you have to believe you can reach them. Think about how you are going to get there. How many specific steps can you break your big goal in to, to make the journey seem less daunting? Believe it or not, setting smaller stages, will make your brain think the large goal is more easily within reach. How do you think you would react to this statement? "I want to buy a house." Seems reasonable enough - a dream of many people. But how are you going to reach that dream? You could start by noting down the steps to getting the house.
1. Save a deposit
2. Find a house
3. Buy the house
Let’s now look at the first step, save a deposit. How are you going to do that? How much money do you need? You will need to break down this smaller goal into a smaller goal again. Your goal might now be, "I’m going to save $10,000 so I can put a deposit on a house." That’s a good start, but it’s still not enough. How are you going to save the $10,000? Break it down again to something like this, "Each week I’m going to put aside $50 and do this every week for four years. At the end of the four years I will have the $10,000 deposit for a house." Seems much more realistic, doesn’t it?
List your goals then break them down in to small attainable steps. The task should seem easier. It’s almost like writing the recipe to achieving your dreams. Pretty soon you’ll be cooking up a storm, in a well-managed time frame.
Time Management For Dummies - Making an Effective To-Do List
Writing a to-do list every day is not that hard to do. But how do you turn it into an effective tool? Some lists may seem overwhelming with many, many tasks on them. Looking at the list and thinking "How am I going to get through ALL this today?" can be very daunting, so you may find yourself only putting the big, important tasks on the list, trusting your memory to remember the smaller jobs. This is not a good idea. Your mind will become cluttered trying to remember all the other things not on your list. This can make you unfocused for the tasks at hand. The purpose of committing tasks to a list is to takeaway the strain of remembering them from your brain.
Your to-do list must be linked in some way to your personal goals. Remember that goals can be broken down into stages. Using this knowledge will help in building an effective list. Your to-do list also must include the every day tasks such as taking the kids to the dentist and doing the shopping. What it can’t be is only mundane tasks or only goal-related tasks. The list must include everything. There are many techniques you can use when drafting your to-do list, but the simpler the better.
First, decide where you are going to write your to-do list. There’s no point writing it down and then forgetting where you put it or not being able to access it. Using computer programs is becoming more popular to deal with all the multi-tasking expected each day.
Secondly categorize your to-do list in terms of Goals and Tasks. This will make it easier to keep track of what you have to do and what are the most important things to accomplish each day. Goal stages have actions to carry them out. It is those actions that will become part of your to-do list. Tasks include your mundane items.
Next prioritize your actions and tasks for the day. This is an important component of any to-do list. Those that have time constraints must be at the top of the list. Some to-do lists will include time slots for when certain actions/tasks will be carried out. Some could be set out as a grid with a more flexible time pattern. For example Monday 10am-12 noon, meet with caterer, phone Bill, arrange dental appointment. Any of these three items could be carried out first, but all of them need to be completed in the two hour time slot - barring urgent interruptions of course.
Again flexibility needs to be considered. You may need to take the dog to the vet after work, but if your car breaks down that won’t happen. Your to-do list is a reminder of what you want to accomplish. If you can’t get it all done on that day, move it to tomorrow. Unless there are deadlines for certain projects, be prepared to be adaptable in your approach to creating an effective to-do list.
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Time Management For Dummies - How To Organize Your Workspace for Efficient Time Management
A cluttered workspace can indicate a cluttered mind. Right? Maybe.
New material comes in every day, usually things you haven’t scheduled to deal with so it goes in your in box. These items may bury important stuff you are working on or the new papers may have information you need but it may disappear amongst the clutter. This can result in you spending too much time on urgent things rather than the tasks you have prioritized. A lot of people will tell you they work better in a cluttered workspace. Others will have nothing on their desk except their phone, a pad and a pen. Which is better? It would have to be the clear desk. Right? Wrong.
Whatever works for you is best. Whatever will make you more effective in your workspace is the better option. Most people can afford to get rid of some of the mess on their desks and no one works well with a completely clear desk. Creating an efficient workspace is exactly the same as goal setting. Break it down into small steps so the task doesn’t seem overwhelming.
There are five things you should do each day that will keep your workspace, whether it is at home or in the office, efficient.
1. Remove catalogs, journals, brochures, manuals etc from your desktop
2. File as you go
3. All memos, ’stick-it notes’, reminders, etc to be transferred to your diary or planner (more about points 1, 2 and 3 in a minute)
4. Run your virus scan for emails or when downloading
5. Defrag your computer at the end of every day.
The first three points usually create all the clutter. If you haven’t dealt with them for a while your desk will be a complete mess and you need to sort it out - now! Start by clearing your desk and creating three piles. From now on, you will deal with all paperwork, journals etc as they come into your workspace and separate them into these three piles.
Pile 1 is for anything that needs to be dealt with immediately. Pile 2 is for things that need to be filed. This is paper that isn’t urgent but needs to be put with the other projects you are working on, or put with the goals that you will working on at a later date. Pile 3 is for paper that can be tossed or recycled. We use so much paper in this technologically advanced world. Recycle as much as you can.
That system seems rather simple. But it needs a little more, especially for Pile 2 to work. Most people have clutter on their desks because of the information kept in Pile 2. If they didn’t have Pile 2, the Keep It pile, you would find different piles all over the desk with each pile representing a project to be worked on, referred to or to remind you of what needs to be done. It becomes too much information for your brain to remain clear for the task at hand.
For Pile 2 you need to invest in a series of folders that can be filed away, so at the end of the day, you can quickly re-file all the paper in Pile 2, into the required folders. Label each file for your projects, such as ‘Tasks’, ‘Mining Report’, ‘Budgets’ and so on. The folders can then be filed away and only brought out when you have scheduled to work on that project. Now you will be in control of the clutter on your desk. You will be able to find each item, as you need it. It is at hand in your filing cabinet, just a short step away from your desk. If you are concerned you won’t remember where you put it away, make note of it in your diary or planner.
As you sit down at the end of the day to make your to-do list for tomorrow you can enjoy the feeling of a clear desk to start the following day’s work. It’s a load off your mind.
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Time Management For Dummies - Identifying The Ten Biggest Time Wasters
The time thief is everywhere. Without even realizing it, time wasting is happening to us all. How many hours a week do you watch the television? How many times do you log into your inbox each day? How many minutes are wasted on phone calls that are not important? Too many, I bet. These examples are obvious time wasters, but some can be subtle, so hidden in amongst our daily life that we don’t even know they are there, causing us to waste more of that valuable resource - time.
A time waster is any activity that doesn’t make a worthwhile contribution to the work at hand or to the goal you are trying to achieve. Often you will drift into a time wasting activity without even realizing it. Some of the time, you’ll find yourself doing an activity knowingly but really not wanting to be doing it at all!
Identifying your biggest time wasters can seem like a time wasting activity in itself. Do you want to spend all day, all week recording your activities? Do you really want to know what you’ve been up to? Probably not, but the first step to effective time management is to identify the ten biggest time wasters in your day.
There will be some time wasters that appear on everyone’s list. Poor planning, procrastination and interruptions are troublesome to everyone. If you can identify those that waste the most time, you can then work toward eliminating them. Identifying the biggest time wasters will depend on what you do. If you are in the corporate world, meetings may be at the top of your ‘ten biggest time wasters’ list. Students might say chat rooms come in first whereas homemakers might regard phone calls or unannounced visitors as terrible time wasters. Below is a list of common time wasters. Do any (or all) of them relate to you?
Poor planning
Meetings
Procrastination
Interruptions - telephone
Interruptions - personal visitors
Tasks you should have delegated
Sporadic dealing with correspondence
Staff management
Poor communication
Unclear objectives and priorities
Stress
Inability to say "No"
Disorganization
Cluttered desk
Often stopping and asking yourself if you really want to be doing a certain task, will be a good way of identifying it as a time waster or not. Is there something else you could be doing instead of that activity? Something that is more productive or more enjoyable? If there is, then that activity is wasting your time. It is not helping you focus on the task at hand.
Once you’ve identified the time wasters, you can rank them in order, from one to ten, in reference to how much time they take away from what you want to achieve. And then you can go about the task of eliminating them.
So are you ready to identify your ten biggest time wasters? If so it’s time to track your daily activities and discover where all that precious time is going.
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Time Management For Dummies - Making Use Of Wasted Time
Time spent waiting around for someone or traveling to work does not have to be a waste of time. Those few minutes waiting in line or hours spent on a plane can become very useful to you in your time management plan.
If you commute to and from work on the bus or train, or if you spend a lot of time flying, consider how you could more effectively use that time. Reading is the most obvious choice for these circumstances. You could use this time to read the latest journals or research papers, go over your report before the presentation or start editing your draft term paper. If you have a notebook or laptop you may be able to work on your current project. Some people can’t read while traveling. If you are one of those people, how can you combat this? How about listening to your Greek language tape? …or making phone calls (if it’s not too noisy). Consider using a small voice recorder for recording your thoughts on your next project. There are plenty of small tasks you could be working on while commuting.
Other things to consider when commuting by plane or train are whether or not it is worth upgrading. Traveling in better circumstances will give you a better working environment. The extra cost for a business class seat could be negated by the extra work you achieve while traveling in comfort.
What about if you drive to work? You obviously can’t read in the car but if you have a car phone you will be able to make calls while driving. Consider also if it is worthwhile to hire a driver. You could be working in the back seat and not have to worry about the stress of the traffic, therefore arriving at work in good condition, well planned for the day ahead.
Waiting in line provides similar challenges to you in your time management scheduling. Reading, calling or listening (as above) can all be utilized. How many times have you sat in the doctor’s office waiting for your appointment? Always have something to read with you. Magazines in the waiting room rarely provide reading on work-related issues! If you are a writer always have a pen and pad with you. Ideas are everywhere for your next book/article and often come when you are waiting around. Don’t leave it to your memory. Jot it down.
Do you find some people keep you waiting for work-related appointments on a regular basis? Are they playing a ‘power-game’? If that is happening and they are wasting your time with needless waiting, here are a few tips to think about before your next meeting.
1. Call and confirm your appointment time the day before.
2. Don’t arrive more than five minutes early - you don’t want to give the impression that you have time to waste
3. While you are waiting, keep busy - read, take notes, make calls. Use this time effectively.
4. If you have been kept waiting for a significant time, tell the receptionist that you have to leave. You don’t want to be caught up in power games. Hopefully this will spur them on to start the meeting or explain the delay. If your contact doesn’t provide you with this courtesy, leave.
Waiting around doesn’t have to be an inefficient use of time. If you are prepared and account for this time, you will be able to use it effectively in your time management plan.
Time Management For Dummies - Learn how To Delegate
Okay, so no one can possibly do your job as well as you can. Or that’s what you think! Some parts of your job may be better performed or more timely carried out by someone else. Drowning in work and responsibility? Then it’s time to delegate!
Some tasks only you can do, but surely there are others that you don’t need to be doing or someone is better skilled to do them. First, look at your activity log and see what areas are taking up a large amount of your time but are low priority or low productive tasks. Can you delegate these jobs?
Jobs you should delegate include:
1. Ones that another person is more skilled at. Your co-worker has more experience in marketing than you. Let him prepare the marketing plan.
2. Ones that someone else is willing (and capable) to carry out. For example, your teenage child is keen to learn to cook. He/she can be taught to prepare at least one evening meal a week.
3. Complete jobs. Don’t let a junior have only part of a job to complete. If they are preparing a report for the first time, let them do the whole thing, rather than just collate the figures. This will give them experience and satisfaction in completing a new task.
4. Ones that aren’t cost effective for you to carry out. Don’t clean the office; hire someone else to do it. Spend your valuable time on tendering for a new project.
Jobs you shouldn’t delegate might include:
1. Ultimate control of the project, especially if you are responsible for the outcome; and
2. Ones that you are the most skilled to carry out, especially if the outcome of the job depends on that particular expertise.
Some people don’t like to delegate for a number of reasons. They don’t want to relinquish control, don’t want to find out if other workers can do things better than them or they are perfectionists - no one can do the job as well as them. For others, delegation is difficult because they don’t have the time to delegate!
Good time management will give you the time to delegate those tasks that others could be doing as well as you, while you devote your time to high priority projects. Let go and give the others a chance. Delegation will ultimately give you more time to focus on the important areas of your work and life.
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Learn How Personal Rhythms Can Help You Get More Done
You can get through your day more effectively and productively if you know more about how your body rhythms work. Each of us has a cycle of energy productivity, making some time of the day higher in energy than others. Learning how to use your own personal rhythms in your time management can help you get more done.
To determine what times of the day are more productive for you, keep a journal over the next few days and observe how you feel and think at different times of the day. Can you determine when your energy levels are at their highest. What about thinking time? When are you at your intellectual best? Record all this down and put it to work.
Are you most ‘alert’ first thing in the morning? If so, don’t dedicate this time to responding to emails or booking appointments. This time should be used for high energy activities, where your mind needs to be at it’s sharpest. If you find your energy levels and mind are working at full levels after lunch, then use this time for your challenging tasks. Reserve your energies for the tasks that need high performance.
Don’t make yourself tackle complex tasks when your energy levels are low. The result will be less than satisfying. Save these times for the jobs that require little concentration and effort, such as reading the mail and sending memos.
So what happens in emergencies - when urgent things appear on your desk at the time of day when your energy levels are at their lowest? Do you attempt to do the task and risk doing a poor job? Sometimes an ‘urgent’ job can set our adrenaline system going and this will help focus on the urgent activity, but not always. If you are too tired, have no focus or have another impending deadline taking up all your energies, you need to stop and figure out a plan of action. Is it possible to put off this new project until tomorrow, when you will be feeling re-charged? Is it possible to say no? If neither of these are a possibility then do the task, with these conditions: Don’t over-extend yourself, otherwise you will become frustrated, making the task even more difficult to attend to.
Take frequent breaks. Walk, stretch, have a drink of water or a high-energy snack otherwise you will reach saturation point way before you have completed the job. We lose concentration if we don’t take regular breaks.
If you are getting impatient and growling at everyone, you’ve used up all your energy. Listen to your body. If you feel lousy then you are working too hard and not acknowledging that your energy levels have dropped. Stop. Come back to the project when your feel recharged. More than likely you’ll do a much better job!
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Time Management For Dummies - Know What You Can Control and What You Can’t
You can’t control time, you can only manage your use of it. But what other factors are within your control and which ones aren’t when it comes to time management?
Goals that are dependent on the actions of other people may make it difficult to reach that goal. You have no control over other people’s actions. If you delegate an action as part of a step in reaching a goal, you wcould lose control over the outcome. For instance if you are putting together a presentation on coal mining and you get a colleague to research the facts, you may not have the relevant facts in time for the presentation. Did you ask your kids to bring the washing off the line when they got home from school? Did they? Did it rain before they did it? The weather is certainly one thing you can’t control! It’s important to delegate tasks where you can, for effective time management, just remember it will take away some of your control over the outcome.
If your goal is reliant on outcomes that involve chance such as "I want to be a millionaire so I will buy a lottery ticket"; again you will have no control over the outcome. Although you may have an influence in a goal that involves some chance component, such as winning a talent contest, there are factors involved that you will have no control over, such as not knowing that the judge doesn’t have any knowledge of the talent you’ve chosen to display.
Don’t have all your set goals involving chance. Ensure some are ones that you have complete control over. Losing weight, giving up smoking, saving money are all good examples of goals you can have complete control over.
You don’t have any control over how many emails or phone calls you will get in a day, but you do have control over how you will deal with them. Put your answering machine on and set aside a specific time in your schedule for dealing with phone calls. Do the same with responding to emails.
You also have control over your priorities. Remember your activity log. Plan your priorities for that part of the day you have the most amount of energy. Deal with your high priorities first! That way if you have uncontrolled interruptions, you will still have time to complete the highest priorities on your list.
You have no control over technical faults. But if you have your activity log with you and your computer breaks down, scan your list, see what else you can do while the computer is being fixed. Can you move a meeting time? Can you vacuum while you wait? What happens if your car breaks down? Can you make some phone calls while you are waiting for the repairman. Can you eat your lunch?
Controlling your day completely is impossible as many interruptions, be they welcome or not, will occur. If you are organized with your time and priorities, you will be able to deal with many factors that are not within your control. You can’t control the weather, but you can be flexible in your time management!
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