9 Simple Steps To Better Time Management Skills

Time Management - Sep 28,2013 - No Comment

How To Effectively Manage Your Time To Create Your Most Productive Self

Everyone needs these powerful time management skills to make the most out of time available. Implementing the time management strategies that high achievers use daily can help you make more money, spend more time relaxing, and achieve deeper happiness in your life.

The reason to develop your time management skills is to make every day count. No matter whether you work for yourself or for a boss, your goal should be to accomplish as much of value as possible in a typical day. Setting deadlines for things to do, and then meeting them, is a personal challenge each of us faces. Working more intelligently, beating the clock and accomplishing your tasks within time can set you ahead of the crowd.

These 9 time management skills can help you make better use of your time. You’ll no longer struggle to fit a to-do list that’s too long into a 24 hour day that seems to shrink by the minute!

1. Set Clear Goals

Unless you know what you’re setting out to do, how will you know when it’s done? Spell out your objectives before you begin a task. At the same time, ask yourself if it really needs to be done, and if it does, should you be the person doing it (or can you delegate it to others?)

2. Make Your List

Writing down things to do frees you from the bother of having to remember them – and risk forgetting something important. You don’t need fancy time management tools. A simple ruled notebook and a pen or pencil will do. Make sure your list is manageable, and only includes important tasks.

3. Delegate What You Can

When you’ve drawn up your list of things to do, see which of the items can be handed over to someone else on your team. Do only the things that you have to do, and assign the rest to others.

4. Take Advantage of Down Time

While walking, jogging, driving, or waiting to meet someone, make use of the ‘dead’ time to plan and catch up with tasks. Carry along material that can help you make use of the time. Listen to tapes or CDs, dictate notes, and prepare for meetings during these periods.

5. One Thing At A Time

Multi-tasking is the biggest energy drain and time waster invented. Human beings are not hard wired to multi-task. Yet we fool ourselves thinking we are capable of handling multiple tasks simultaneously. The lack of focus means you’ll take longer to do each task than if you focused on it exclusively.

6. Stop Procrastinating

The greatest delays in any project happens during the time before you start working on it. Procrastination kills productivity. So stop procrastinating. Hit the ground running. Once you start work, you’ll soon pick up steam and hit your stride.

7. Exercise

Physical fitness improves your focus and concentration, and keeps you energized and enthusiastic about your work. Working out every day can boost your productivity like nothing else, and that’s why it is included in this list of time management skills to work on.

8. Set Yourself Deadlines

Normally, deadlines increase stress and anxiety. But when you set your own personal deadlines – and make them earlier than when the project is due – you actually alleviate the last minute stress and strain, while enhancing your productivity. You’ll enjoy the buffer time you’ll get by finishing tasks ahead of time.

9. Slow Down

Deep breathing helps relieve stress, slow down your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and increase oxygen content in your circulation. All of this can boost productivity and reduce anxiety, so that your focus will be sharper and you’ll get things done quickly.

All these time management skills are easily learned and practiced. The Ming Vase Time Management guides go deeper into the specific skills you’ll need the most to improve your effectiveness.

You can also sign up to the free “Time Taozine” for updates about time management skills. Just submit the registration form below.

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Time Management Techniques

Time Management - Sep 20,2013 - No Comment

How To Effectively Manage Your Time In a Warp-Speed, Multi-Tasking, Lightning-Fast World

Time management techniques are easy to find, but difficult to learn. Picking the most effective time management methods and implementing them in a disciplined manner can transform your success, at work and in personal life. This list of 10 proven tips and techniques can become a good starting point.

How we wish we were taught good time management techniques at school? Most of what we learn about managing time more effectively comes from hard knocks as we grow up and grow wiser. In a world that’s speeding along and getting faster by the minute, you must be able to organize the deluge of information that’s coming, and put it to use efficiently. If procrastination or lack of proper goals holds you back, you’ll pay a heavy price.

Knowing and using effective time management techniques can be the skill that differentiates you from everyone else at work. When you handle even large workloads with efficiency and style, your career will take off. But when you learn how to balance this skill with other elements that keep you in harmony with all facets of your life, you will become truly enlightened.

Here are 10 techniques that will help you manage time better.

1. Strive For An Empty Email Inbox

Email is both a boon and a curse. We all spend a lot of time dealing with email. Only few of us do it efficiently and well. Keeping your email inbox as close to empty as possible is a learned skill, one that’s critical to your time management expertise.

Touch email only once. Read it, decide upon it, and act. If it needs a reply, answer. If you need it for later reference, file it. If it needs further thinking over, move it to a folder. One touch – and only one – will save you hours every month in wasteful effort.

2. Focus On One Thing Only

We’ve all been fed the KoolAid of ‘multi-tasking’. But the reality is that juggling multiple tasks at once is wasteful and lowers your productivity. Stop doing it. Be aware of whatever you are doing, and concentrate fully on it – until the task is done.

Then, move on to the next item on your list and deal with it in the same way, until that too is done. Rinse and repeat. You’ll breeze through your list quicker than when you try and do many things at the same time.

3. Prioritize Your To Do List

Tempting as it may be, hurrying to finish the most urgent or pressing tasks is a losing strategy. You’ll spend the most productive part of your day fighting fires, only to discover, after much time has flown, that your most important things remain undone.

So, get the most important things done first. Prioritize your list of things to do, and start with the one that has the biggest impact on your overall goals. Try and focus an hour or two on this task at the beginning of your work day, and leave the less important stuff for later. This is among the most effective time management techniques you’ll adopt.

4. Avoid Distractions

Do you keep checking email every 15 minutes? Or firing up Twitter to catch up on tweets? Or drop by Facebook to share some gossip with friends? It’s costing you – dearly.

Although we live in a 24/7 culture online, there is absolutely no necessity to remain ‘hooked to the grid’ all day long. While others may expect an immediate response to their posts, tweets or emails, you are not obligated to cater to these whims. Be consistent in how soon you respond, but don’t strive for immediacy at the cost of postponing your important work.

The Ming Vase Time Management guide on “How To Focus” digs deeper into systems to improve concentration and focus so that you get things done more effectively.

5. Get Organized

Using ‘dashboards’ or quick reference lists can shave precious minutes off your daily routine. Having a set of frequently used Web links, passwords, and other data jotted down in an easy-to-reach place can work better than post-it notes scattered all around. Time saved on searching is time that can be devoted to being more productive.

6. Listen To Your Body

All of us have biological rhythms and unique work habits. You may be most productive early in the morning. Or you may discover you are most creative in the afternoon. Maybe you’re a ‘night owl’ who works best when the world is asleep.

No matter what your unique routine is, you will benefit from time management techniques that schedule major projects for your period of highest productivity.

7. Streamline and Simplify

Do you handle many repetitive tasks? On a computer, do you run similar routines several times a day? If you do, learning simple scripting to execute macros or hotkeys can save precious seconds each time – and this adds up to significant time savings over the course of months or years.

Simplifying a task that takes multiple steps, and cutting them down by even 10%, can have a similar effect over time.

8. Beat Procrastination

It’s hardest to begin work. Once you get going, the momentum will carry you along. So break down a bigger project into smaller pieces – and get started on one. As it gets done, you’ll gather steam and be more energized to begin working on the next.

9. Claim Your Freedom

Yes, being efficient is good. But getting stressed out about delays is bad. You have control. Take advantage of this power. Don’t obsess over delays or falling behind schedule. Don’t let someone else’s priorities interfere with your completion of important work.

Poor time managers respond to every external stimulus and distraction. Good ones know that they must call the shots if their dreams are to come true.

These time management techniques may sound simple and obvious. But they are powerful and effective. Try them out and watch as they transform your work and your life, bringing greater harmony and peace into it.

The techniques are rooted in the 3 Time Management Tao principles:

You’ll learn more about them in other sections of the site (check them out now), and can receive updates about time management techniques by email when you sign up to our free “Time Taozine” by submitting the form below.

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How Time Management Courses Steer You Away From Critical Mistakes

Time Management - Sep 12,2013 - No Comment

6 Ways To Save Time By Not Going Down The Wrong Path – And Maximizing Your Resources

How good are time management courses at helping you manage your time? If like most people you aren’t completely delighted at your ability to maximize your efficiency, then time management courses can be of great value in keeping you away from mistakes and turbocharging your productivity.

For over one hundred years we have exclusively focused on the technology of time management, trying harder and harder to squeeze greater productivity into our 24-hour days. That this has been a fruitless effort is proven by how stressed, anxious and unfulfilled most of us are today.

The revolution in managing time – one that is spearheaded by time management courses that are looking forward to the future – is that the focus is on ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’. By orienting our time managing efforts to lead us to where we eventually desire to reach, everything that was stressful and frustrating about our earlier attempts now becomes joyous and fun.

Time management courses teach a diverse range of elements, all of which are geared to making us more effective. But only the very best programs place the emphasis on the important components – and teach you how to avoid critical mistakes that can lead to you slipping down the rungs of your ladder to personal success.

Mistake #1 – Not Maintaining The Right Lists

If you’ve been relying on your memory to guide you to getting things done in your day to day working routine, then it’s time you started the practice of keeping to-do lists.

But don’t make the same mistake most time managers do. Prioritize items that go on your list, and keep the lower priority stuff off your list. Delegate it to someone else, or avoid having to do it at all. As long as you know what your goals are, and which activities will take you closer to them, you can safely ignore the rest while secure in the knowledge that it won’t affect your progress.

Mistake #2 – Not Correctly Defining Goals

To effectively prioritize your list of things to do, you must first know what matters most to you. Good time management courses like the Ming Vase Time Management series of guides will focus on this critical element and show you how to think about your big goals and targets.

Too many inefficient workers and individuals struggle to manage time because they let other people’s priorities be imposed upon them. Smart time managers will not allow this, because they have already set personal goals that are of highest importance to themselves.

Mistake #3 – Trying To Do Everything

The day isn’t long enough for even the most efficient among us to handle all the diverse tasks that fall into our laps. We need to refine and prune down our list to keep only the most important activities on our priority list.

Learning how to prioritize is a skill that can be learned by practice. Not every urgent and pressing need is really important. By matching each demand on your time against your list of important goals, it is easy to see this distinction and take suitable action to prevent yourself getting bogged down in ‘busy work’ that doesn’t matter in the bigger scheme of things.

Mistake #4 – Losing Concentration

Whenever you pause from the work you’re engaged upon, or get distracted by something, it takes an inordinate amount of effort to get back on track. In fact, one study showed that nearly 65% of people never return to the task they were doing before the interruption.

By learning to tune out distractions completely while working on a project, you can get a lot more done and execute your projects flawlessly and fast. “How To Focus” is a guide that delves deep into tips and techniques to help you keep your mind on what you’re doing, and tune out everything else.

Mistake #5 – Stop Procrastinating

It is hard to fight inertia and get started on a new project or task. And we often keep looking for excuses to delay work, engaging instead on trivia and irrelevant matters and postponing important chores. This leads to a build up of pressure as deadlines draw closer, leading to stress and anxiety.

There are specialized time management courses that show you how to beat procrastination and begin your important tasks without delay or dithering. Amazing enough, once you launch the project, it is infinitely easier to sustain the momentum. Starter’s block is the big enemy. Time management courses can help you overcome it.

Mistake #6 – Not Delegating Work

When you accept everything that is thrown your way, and try to do it all by yourself, you are creating a recipe for disaster. There are two components to fighting this mistake. The first is to learn how to say “No” when irrelevant work is thrust upon you. This may be difficult to do, but you must learn it nonetheless, because if you don’t do it quickly, you’ll be swamped doing other people’s work forever.

Secondly, for each task on your own list, ask yourself if someone else can handle it instead of you. If there is a team member or employee or co-worker who can do it, then delegate the job and use the time saved to do your own work better.

Time management courses can help you overcome all these mistakes – and more. That’s how the good programs for managing time are able to transform lives. Time Management Tao is a course that is rooted in timeless principles of efficiency without stress. It teaches you how to:

You can also get more time management courses by email when you sign up to our free weekly “Time Taozine” newsletter. It’s easy – just fill in the registration form below.

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3 Important Time Management Tips

Time Management - Sep 05,2013 - No Comment

Habits To Help You Manage Time Better,
Avoid Stress & Boost Your Efficiency

Time management tips don’t have to be complex or complicated. Three of the most effective techniques to manage your time better are very simple – 1. make daily goals, 2. plan your day’s activity, and 3. maintain good health through exercise and nutrition. There’s nothing difficult or confusing about them, yet these powerful time management ideas can transform your work day.

Time management tips can revolutionize your working style and dramatically impact your results. By practicing productive habits on a regular basis, anyone can learn to manage time better and transcend to a higher plane of productivity. And surprisingly, these tips to manage time do not have to be esoteric or exotic. Indeed, the most effective ones are really quite simple.

1. Set Daily Goals

As a part of the overall Time Management Tao approach to getting more out of your day, setting the right goals and targets is an integral part of your time managing process. Worthy goals are the foundation for any meaningful accomplishment.

But those are higher level, long-term goals. Breaking them down into daily sub-goals can be a very productive time management exercise. Every morning it helps if you write down a list of 6 to 10 of your important goals. This helps your mind focus on these targets throughout your day, and easily filter out activities and distractions that are not directly relevant to them.

Write down your goals on a sheet of paper. There is a subliminal effect from actually writing them on paper with a pen or pencil, rather than reviewing them mentally, or even typing them on a computer screen.

When you jot them down, do it in the active present tense, as if you are carrying them out or seeing them come true “as we speak”. Doing this sends a message to your subconscious mind that these goals are achievable, are in the process of being reached, and that you are serious about attaining them. The synergy generated will actually make you more aware of opportunities and developments that can carry you to them faster.

2. Plan Your Daily Routine

Management is about setting priorities on the various tasks that you set yourself for the day. Time management tips are useful in prioritizing these tasks correctly, staying in alignment with your bigger goals.

At night before you go to bed, plan out the next day’s activities. This way you’ll give your brain a chance to mull over the tasks and figure out the optimal way to go about them in the morning.

When you begin work next day, get right to the most important task, and stay focused until it is completed. One of the Ming Vase Time Management guides, “How To Focus” can be of great help in showing you how to retain laser focus on the job at hand.

Setting limits on how much time you can devote to each task is a way to ensure that you get it done quickly, and avoids eating into precious time budgeted for other high priority tasks.

3. Get Exercise & Proper Nutrition

At first blush it might seem strange that exercise and nutrition would be listed among time management tips. But because everything else stems from maintaining good health, you’ll be able to get more done in less time if you are healthy and energetic.

Time management is a lifestyle. And health is an important component of that. By disciplining yourself to eat nutritious food and workout on a regular basis, you will generate more from your efforts, in lesser time.

These are just 3 time management tips that can transform your level of success and take you from being mediocre to reaching stellar heights in your work and career. There are many more tips and skills that will help you along the way. You can explore other sections of the Time Management Tao website to learn about them, and the three-pronged approach rooted in these principles:

These are powerful time management tips which, when combined with a philosophy of aligning your biggest goals to your available time, can prove beyond any doubt that there is unlimited time at your disposal to achieve your greatest dreams.

For more information, updates and time management tips, subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter, the “Time Taozine”, by filling in the registration form below.

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