You have defined your goals, assessed where your time is currently being spent and identified your time-eating habits.

Harvest Time

You now have all the information you need to use your time more effectively.

Review your activity log.

• Look for time-eating habits.
• Look for tasks you could delegate.
• Look for tasks that don't contribute to your goals. If they take up more than 5% of your time, rewrite your goals or get rid of those tasks.
• Look for duplicated work. If several people handle the same emails or attend the same meetings, consider if this is an effective use of time.
• Look for individual tasks that you are spending a lot of time on. Are you completing them to an unnecessarily high standard? Are you spending too much time on them to avoid another task?
• Look at how much time you spend reading emails. Minimize it with good email practices.
• Look for time spent in ineffective meetings. Ineffective meetings should generally be dropped.
• Look for time spent travelling. Could you use an efficient alternative such as audio or desktop conferencing?

You may find you simply have too much work to do or too many goals. If so, you may need to drop some goals, reschedule them or find imaginative ways to delegate more of your current work.

Re-assess regularly by re-reviewing your activity logs, and checking your progress.

Following these processes can generate hours of extra time every week.

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