Do you feel like you need to improve your time management skills, yesterday? If so, you’re not alone. Many of us feel like we are way behind in that area. If you’re wondering how you can boost your time-management skills and get in extra practice, here are a few strategic areas and skills you can develop and enhance in other parts of your life.
Here are 5 essential time management skills you should be practising:
Skill #1 – Organization & Prioritization
An important time management skill that productive people have is the ability to organize and prioritize the actions they need to take in order to get the specific results they want. For some people this trait comes naturally. For others – like me – it’s something that needs to be practiced day in and day out.
Skill #2 – Setting Goals and Creating Plans
Most plans come from goal setting, so they go hand in hand. When you learn the right way to set goals, you’ll be very effective in making plans to achieve the goal.
For me this is another area that needs a lot of work… It’s more in my nature to set the big outrageous goals and not have a clue how to get there. And when someone says “Did you break it down into smaller tasks and plans so you know how to get there?” I just want to run and hide. That just seems like way too much work for me, and planning out the details makes me just want to forget the whole project. Definitely an area that needs work for me!
Skill #3 – Communicating with Others
Your life, and your business don’t happen in a vacuum. You’re probably part of a team, a community, or a family, or all of the above. That means sometimes you must wait on others. Being a poor communicator can cause time-wasting in terms of arguments, stress, and misunderstandings. The main thing to know regarding communication is that the person sending the message to others is responsible for also ensuring the person receiving the message understands it.
Skill #4 – Learning to Delegate and Outsource
People that seem as if they are super-productive are most likely the people who have developed the time management skill of delegating and outsourcing. If you want to do more of this, it’s important to learn all that you can about the process. You’ll also need to brush up on the other skills I’ve mentioned because you’ll need them all when you’re getting others to do work for you.
Skill #5 – Stress Relief
Practicing stress relief is definitely a skill that’s needed for good time management. Some people who are stressed have a hard time transitioning between tasks, remembering what they’re supposed to do next, and staying organized. Other people – again speaking from personal experience – tend to withdraw, shut down and procrastinate on the simplest of tasks. Having good stress relief practices in place will definitely help you make the best use of your time.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, developing time management skills is about more than just watching the clock and seeing how long it takes to get something done. Everything from how you deal with the people around you and your stress levels can affect how you manage your time and how productive you are.
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