Time Management Guide
These pages are a guide to improving
your time management. They cover:
Setting Goals
Goals are the foundation of time management. They help you decide what to do, then
keep you focused on doing it.
Good goals are SMART:
- Specific and written down.
- Measurable, so you can judge your progress.
- Achievable.
- Relevant and important to you, your team and your company.
- Time-limited with dates and milestones
Your goals should cover everything you do including day-to-day chores. For example,
"I'm never more than 2 weeks behind on my paperwork" is a goal.
Always define measurable outcomes, so you can check your progress. A goal of
"return calls promptly" is hard to measure.
If your goal is "return all customer calls within 2 days" you can measure your progress
much more easily.
As part of measuring your
progress, you need to set achievable dates for your goals. For ongoing goals, you can
set regular dates like "at the end of every month".
Example goals
These are Peter Shaw's goals. Peter is a salesman at Office A1, an office equipment company in London.
Office A1 is about to launch a new product called FileIT.
Peter's goals
- I've met my sales targets for this quarter. By 31st March
- I've personally visited my top 25 customers. By 30th April
- All my customer invoices for last quarter are paid. By 28th February
- My Sales Manager is up-to-date on all my accounts. By 1st of every month
- I'm trained and ready to sell FileIT when it launches. By 15th April
- I've promoted FileIT to my existing customers. By 15th May
- I've put together a FileIT mailshot campaign. By 15th June
- I've got a faster laptop. By 31st March
- I'm less than 2 weeks behind on my invoicing and paperwork. By 1st of every month
- I've improved the graphics in my product presentation. By 28th February
- I've written a press release promoting FileIT. By 15th April
Peter's goals are great. He has written them down and they are very specific. They
are important to him, he can measure his progress and they are achievable.
Classifying Your Goals
Now you need to classify your goals. Goals fall into three categories:
- Critical: these must be achieved. Meeting customer commitments or sales targets, for example.
- Supportive: you can live without these, but they would help you meet critical goals in the future
- Wish: these would make life better, but aren't really necessary.
In the real world, you won't always be able to achieve every goal. Knowing which
are critical, supportive or wish will help you prioritize.
An example of classifying goals
Peter classifies all his goals into critical, supportive and wish.
Critical goals
- I've met my sales targets for this quarter. By 31st March
- All my customer invoices for last quarter are paid. By 28th February
- I'm trained and ready to sell FileIT when it launches. By 15th April
- I've promoted FileIT to my existing customers. By 15th May
- I've written a press release promoting FileIT. By 15th April
- I've put together a FileIT mailshot campaign. By 15th June
Supportive goals
- I've personally visited my top 25 customers. By 30th April
- My Sales Manager is up-to-date on all my accounts. By 1st of every month
- I'm less than 2 weeks behind on my invoicing and paperwork. By 1st of every month
- I've improved the graphics in my product presentation. By 28th February
Wish goals
- I've got a faster laptop. By 31st March
Allocating Your Time
Your aim is to spend on average:
- 70% of your time on critical tasks
- 20% of your time on supportive tasks
- less than 10% of your time on your combined: wish tasks, personal
tasks and other tasks.
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