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We all have “too much
to do”. As a professional speaker, I hear that all the time
from my audiences. And that says a lot of good things about you,
if you have “too much to do” because, obviously, a lot of
people have entrusted many things to your care and have
confidence in you.
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Every priority claims itself as the most urgent and crucial
thing in the world screaming for your immediate attention. The
problem is, we can only do one thing at a time. So, here are
four nifty ideas to help you to Manage Multiple Priorities.
1.
Keep the focus on personal balance first. Our
lives are made up of Seven Vital Areas: Health, Family,
Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional, and Spiritual. We
will not necessarily spend time every day in each area or equal
amounts of time in each area. But, if, in the long run, we spend
a sufficient quantity and quality of time in each area, our
lives will be in balance. But if we neglect any one area, never
mind two or three, we will eventually sabotage our success. Much
like a table, if one leg is longer than the rest, it will make
the entire table wobbly. If we don’t take time for health, our
family life and social life are hurt. If our financial area is
out of balance, we will not be able to focus adequately on our
professional goals, etc. As in the medical profession, it is
said that you cannot be sick and make other people well. In Time
Management, then, we have to keep ourselves healthy first, in
balance first, or it won’t matter how many or how important o!
ur priorities are, we will not be able to properly handle them.
2.
Schedule Daily Planning. I
set aside at least 30 minutes each night for Daily Planning, a
time to have a Board of Directors meeting in the most important
corporation in the world, Me, Inc. I make up a list of things
for the next day that includes not only all the items I “have
to” do, but, more importantly, the items I “want to” do.
Putting it all down in writing is vital because if you want to
manage it, you have to measure it. This will tend to overload
your next day, which is useful because it permits us to take
advantage of Parkinson’s Law, which says, in part, that a
project tends to take as long as the time allocated for it. If
you give yourself one thing to do, it will take all day to do
it. If you give yourself three things to do, you get them all
done. If you give yourself twelve things to do, you may not get
all twelve done, but may well accomplish nine. Having a lot to
do, being a bit overloaded, creates a healthy sense of pressure
on us to get through our list.
3.
Review each item and ask, “Is this the best use of my time?”
There is a lot of
difference between “I do it” and “It gets done”. Which
is more important? “It gets done”. Sure, it’s great to
accomplish things ourselves but we only have 168 hours per week
to accomplish results. (And if we take away 56 hours per week
for sleep, that only leaves 112 hours!) So, each night during
Daily Planning, I review each item on my list and ask, “Is
this the best use of my time?”. If it is, I will plan to work
on it and if it is not, I will try to find a way to delegate it
to someone so that it gets done.
4.
Prioritize the list. Typically,
our “To Do” lists will contain “crucial” and “not
crucial” items. Some items will be more important, some not so
important. Typically, the “not crucial” items are quicker
and often more fun than the “crucial” items, which tend to
take longer and are generally less fun. So what happens for many
is that without prioritizing our list, we have a tendency to do
the “not crucial” items first, substituting the quantity for
the quality. Identify the most important “crucial” item on
your list, the one you would want to tackle if you could only
work on one item tomorrow and then label that as “#1”. Next,
identify the second item you would work on, if time permits, and
label that as “#2”. Continue prioritizing the entire list in
that fashion and tomorrow start with #1.
These four steps will help you to more effectively Manage
Multiple Priorities and increase your daily results and that is
a good thing.
About the Author:
Don Wetmore is a
full-time Professional Speaker, specializing in the topic of
Time Management. He has prepared an additional article entitled,
“Top Five Best Time Management Practices”. It’s free.
Visit his site at http://www.balancetime.com or
sign up for his free "Timely management Tips" at http://www.topica.com/lists/timemanagement
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