Page 27 - Planning And Prioritizing Time Management Manual

The 7 Laws of Time Management

Good time management skills can make a world of difference in your personal and
professional lives. In most cases, we begin to pick up our time management habits in
primary school, but really hone those skills later in life – when our parents aren’t around to
watch our every move. Later on, we’ll translate the life lessons learned in education into the
time management principles that allow us to balance both personal activities and

professional responsibilities.

At work, time management is one of the most important skills you have. Certainly, it’s as
important as job-specific knowledge, since it doesn’t matter how good you are at your work
if you can’t get it done on time!

A good worker gets things done with time left over – and bosses take notice of workers who
are able to achieve this. If you want to be noticed more at work, get better at time
management using the seven laws listed below and things will start to improve immediately.

Law #1 – Write lists

You may think that you can keep all of your daily “to do” tasks organized in your brain. But

unfortunately, you’re wrong. Research shows that writing things down not only helps you by
providing a handy list of tasks to reference, but even the process of writing priorities down
makes it more likely that you’ll remember everything that needs to be done.

Writing lists should be one of your top time management tools. Lists only take a few

seconds to write and provide important structure to your entire workday.

Law #2 – Set priorities

Now that you’ve got your list finished, go through it again in order to determine which tasks
should take precedence. Then, you can rewrite your list with your priorities at the top,
underline them or highlight them with a marker – whatever you need to do to tell your
brain that these items need to be done first.

In general, you should be able to instinctively feel which tasks come with a sense of urgency
attached. Is there a task your boss really needs finished? Or are there items on your list that
will be important to the whole business – not just you or your one department? Items that
fall into either of these categories should be considered priorities from a project
management perspective.

Law #3 – Make sure you have what you need before you start

While you’re making your “to do” list, create a separate list of all the supplies you’ll need to
accomplish your work tasks. It’s easier to gather your supplies – whether that includes

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