Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Time Management

This is the best time management perspective I have seen! Even the most busy small business owner should take "time" to watch this one.



Summary of points: (but watch the video)


Time must be explicitly managed, like money:
If you find money being important, you have to start viewing time as being more important than money. He did tell his students and urge them not to invest time on irrelevant details, it does not matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.

I believe many of us understand this, just that not many people are doing it.

You can always change your plan, but only if you have one:
He is a big big believer in to-do lists. So am I. I wasn’t one and I started on it only recently. My favourite phrase now is “What’s the plan?”. Randy stated that a to-do list is to help us break life into small steps. He also mentioned that a to-do list is only useful when you break tasks into smaller steps. You would not want to write tidying up my room in your to-do list and most likely you would not tidy it up. Most of us just have it for the sake of writing.

The trick here is to be really specific. Break it down into like. Tidy the bed, vacuum the floor,…etc. You get what I mean.

Ask yourself, are you spending time on the right things?:
You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursing? He talked about a news showing a photo of a pregnant woman who lodged a against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But in the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she really cared about her unborn child, she would have spent the time putting out that cigarette.

Develop a good filing system:
Simple as it is, it helps you to save time when you search for the documents you want. A little time spent on filing them, helps you long in the future.

Rethink the telephone:
Like to mention some techniques he shared and they are very interesting. To keep unnecessary calls short. It is better to stand when you’re on the phone. You are more apt to speed things along. Also have something in view on the desk that you want to do (to-do list), so You have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.

Other phone tips like quickly dispatching telemarketers is mentioned too. “I like this!” Here is the trick. It is to hang up while you are doing the talking and they are listening. They will assume your connection went bad and they will move on to their next call.

Want to have a short phone call with someone? Call them at 11:55a.m., right before lunch. They will talk fast. You can’t be more interesting than their lunch.

Delegate:
You can’t do everything by yourself and to make things to be done more efficiently, it is to delegate. People will be more satisfied if you delegate the task to him/her. Because at the same time, they are learning too. As Randy is a professor, he trust his students with the key to his kingdom, and “most of the time, they were responsible and impressive”, he said.

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