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Time
Management Training: Organize Your Time With The Building Blocks
of Productivity
What lessons
you can learn from small children! One day I was watching two
youngsters, ages 3 and 5, playing with “bricks” constructed out
of heavy cardboard. The brick blocks came in three sizes: a
10” x 16” rectangle, a 10” square, and the standard 3” x 10”
brick size. Over time they spent hours creating structures. At
the beginning there was no understanding of larger pieces
providing a stronger foundation for the smaller pieces and so
things would come tumbling down without using all of the
bricks. With lots of trial and error the children discovered
that if they started with the biggest size, they were more
likely to be able to use all of the bricks.
An effective
daily schedule can also be constructed with three types of
blocks. How much you can pile on (your productivity) each day
depends on how well you organize your time.
Large Blocks –
Your Day’s Foundation
Make your day’s
foundation an uninterrupted block of time when you can focus on
difficult, involved projects. The ideal length is an hour and a
half, approximately twenty percent of an eight-hour day. If you
cannot possibly find that length of time, try for an hour. Even
with 45 minutes of uninterrupted time you can get a significant
amount of work completed because you are not requiring twenty
additional minutes after each interruption to get back into the
“flow.” As you develop this routine, aim for the hour and a half
each day.
During this
time, do not answer every phone call. Turn off your general
email alerts. If you want to ensure that a certain person or
message gets through immediately, set up your software rules to
notify you of that specific message. When you can block twenty
percent of your time, you will accomplish about eighty percent
of your work for the day.
You recognize
instinctively that having uninterrupted time is effective when
you arrive at work an hour early or stay for a couple of extra
hours at the end of a day, knowing you will get so much done in
that quiet time. Why not become more productive by including
that quiet time within your day instead of adding extra hours in
order to get the same amount of work done?
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Medium Blocks
(Grouping Blocks) -- Multi-Tasking Isn’t Always The Best Option
Group as many
like activities as possible since you are four times more
productive when you can focus on one type of task rather than
switching back and forth among assorted tasks. Constant
multi-tasking slows you down. Activities that can be grouped
include returning non-urgent telephone calls, processing your
email inbox, filing, and reading.
The length of
this session depends on the work. If you average about five
phone calls at a time, you may only need to block out ten to
fifteen minutes. With email, you might need to spend thirty
minutes at a time. Any of these can be repeated during the
day. For instance, you might quickly check your email first
thing in the morning for ten minutes to handle urgent issues,
then spend thirty minutes before lunch and thirty minutes again
later in the afternoon. Stick to the amount of time that you
have originally allotted rather than letting it trail on. That
will keep you focused on the task at hand and will increase your
productivity. Move what you do not complete to the next block of
time.
Small Blocks –
The New Items and Lower Priority Tasks To Be Handles
New items and
lower priority tasks can be worked on between the other blocks.
These might include requests for help from a colleague, quick
answers to questions, filling out forms, and other project
components that did not fit into your major blocks, but that you
still have time to work on.
Structuring
each day starts with locating a space for that large block,
followed by several medium blocks of grouped activities. Small
blocks are then added. If you do the reverse, which means
coming in to work and clearing out the small items before you
find a time for the most important work, you may wrap up the day
without handling your priorities.
Why spend extra
hours in the evenings on work that you could have fit into the
day with the right construction of your schedule?
Denise
Landers, productivity trainer, organizing specialist, author of
Destination:
Organization (http://www.keyorganization.com/destination.asp)
and owner of Key Organization Systems, Inc. has spent years
speaking, training, consulting, and coaching on the topics of
time management and effective workflow. To find easy ways to
prioritize, focus and improve your team productivity, subscribe
for free monthly articles on time management and organizing
topics at:
http://www.keyorganization.com/articles.aspx
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