Time Management

Can anyone give me some suggestions regarding an efficient time management, particularly, when you have a rigorous and regular outdoor work requiring you to halt outstation for almost 20-25 days in a month and requiring you to do all the household work single-handedly? After all these, I hardly find any time and energy to concentrate in anything else other than some occasional binge and movies. But I am feverishly falling short of accomplishing any hobby like reading good books or cultivating newspaper stories and articles. This is giving me a depressing headache all the time.

The 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques: How to Get More Done Without Driving Yourself Crazy (Paperback)

This should help you and reduce your headaches!

RC

Relationship Coach,

I know there are lots of books on time managenet. But go through my post again--

But I am feverishly falling short of accomplishing any hobby like reading good books

Hence pls give me an advice right here. If I plan to read the book, the plan may even not materialize.

I read your post, I just figured you could make time to resolve your problem. Reading 15 minutes a day is possible for anyone. Here is a cheat sheet for you.

Time Management Tips

Problem You arrive at work to find three days of unopened mail and dozens of phone messages. Opening your reimbursement check, you think wistfully, "Wouldn't it be great if I could process claims faster?" The phone rings: It's a client facility calling to ask why you missed your nine o'clock meeting. Where's that calendar, anyway? Solution This chaotic scenario calls for an immediate dose of proper time-management techniques.

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Ringing phones, looming deadlines, and piles of charts and bills are part and parcel of modern pharmacy practice, and I often hear fellow pharmacists complain of overwhelming workloads, overstuffed schedules, and overall stress. Just about everyone, even the most seasoned veteran pharmacist, can benefit from a review of some basic principles of effective time management and a redoubled commitment to enhanced discipline. First Steps

The first step toward improved time management is a comprehensive task review to identify exactly what you need to accomplish, and when. Many people have a general idea of what they'd like to achieve but never take the time to analyze the steps that need to be taken to complete the tasks at hand; others have settled into comfortable routines without taking the time to periodically review and reorganize. If it's been awhile since you reviewed your duties and priorities, make time to do so. Simply analyzing your work and setting broad goals can, in itself, boost your efficiency.

Next, make a list of all the tasks you perform and how often they need to be done. This doesn't have to be done all in one sitting; taking notes as you work and compiling the list over a period of a few weeks will help ensure that your list is comprehensive. Another approach is to keep a diary of tasks performed and associated time values. Just as some dieters keep diaries to monitor and limit their food intake, you can use a diary to put your schedule on a diet and monitor progress toward your goals.

Now you're ready to categorize tasks according to priority and urgency (this morning, today, this month, this year). This is the time to identify and weed out tasks that are no longer necessary or can be delegated to a technician, clerk, or junior pharmacist. Time-Management Tools

Planning grids are one of the best tools for organizing your workload and making sure routine tasks are performed, and performed on time.

I use a 12-month planning grid to monitor completion of my various responsibilities as a member of my facility's P&T committee. Similar grids that break down the overall workload into weekly or monthly increments can help target specific problem areas and fine-tune workload scheduling.

Depending on the nature of your work, you may want to employ other time-saving tools and mnemonic devices: preformatted data entry forms, spreadsheet software, self-addressed e-mail messages, an alarm clock or watch to remind you of a meeting or deadline, for example.

Keep in mind, however, that even the best tools can become time drains if not used correctly. For example, making a list and maintaining it daily can be helpful, but those who compile several lists each day may soon find their lists, and their efforts, scattered. A better approach is to keep one perpetual list and make daily adjustments. Index cards and e-mail are excellent tools for maintaining a perpetual list. Cultivating Good Work Habits

Once you've set goals, priorities, and a plan for achieving tasks, it's important to take a critical look at how you perform those tasks. Ask a coworker to observe your work habits for one week and provide some constructive feedback; you might be surprised at what you learn.

Without steps to cultivate and maintain good work habits, your time-management efforts will be defeated. The following tips can help you stay on track:

• Conquer the clutter. Schedule 10 to 15 minutes each week to clear your work area of junk mail, old papers, and other accumulated clutter. Change habits that lead to messes. Keep cleaning supplies handy so you can take advantage of the odd free moment to police your work space.
  
• Defuse distractions. Little distractions can add up to a major drain on productivity. If you're spending too much time on the phone, keep an egg timer at your desk and hold calls to a reasonable limit. Learn how to terminate calls politely. If co-workers often drop in to chat, close your door. If you're constantly walking around obstacles, consider a change of floor plan. Take steps to reduce distracting noise.
  
• Know thyself. Rivers can't be forced to flow uphill; nor should you try to work against your inner nature. Schedule the toughest work for your circadian period of peak productivity. Minimize the impact of suboptimal climate control with a fan or small heater. Perhaps better or different lighting would boost your efficiency.
  
• Eliminate redundancy. Analyze every process you use to determine if any steps can be eliminated. Common problems include multiple signatures for approval, extra steps designed to circumvent systems or correct problems that could be addressed more directly, and generating multiple copies that are no longer required.
  
• Group and separate. tedious or redundant tasks can be grouped for increased efficiency: file all at once, bill all at once, order all at once. Large, multifaceted tasks, on the other hand, may be best tackled in small pieces. For example, sort that large stack of paperwork on Monday, process some on Tuesday, some on Wednesday, and so forth until it's done. Using this approach, even the most daunting tasks become manageable.
  
• Share the burden. As any quilter knows, many hands make light work, especially when tackling tedious or large tasks. Performance of dreaded chores like the annual inventory can take on a party atmosphere when many are involved and frequent breaks are scheduled.
  
• Seize the moment. We all have a tendency to put off minor, less important tasks, and we also spend significant chunks of time holding on the phone or waiting in line. Can you see an opportunity here? Make a list of tasks that take five, 10, or 20 minutes, and keep the materials you need to do these tasks handy. That way, when you're put on hold or stuck in line, you can pull out that small job and finish it up.
  
• Emulate others. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. If someone else always seems to be ahead of the game, watch and learn. If someone else has a speedier way of doing something, copy it. If you're having trouble getting specific jobs done, ask others how they organize and execute the task; perhaps you've overlooked some short cuts.
  
• Make work fun. Introducing a bit of fun into your work will make the day easier for you and your customers. Challenge yourself to process one hundred pieces of paper every day for five days. Have a friendly contest with a co-worker to see who can process the most billing statements in an hour with no mistakes. If possible, flip your morning and afternoon schedules for a change of pace.

By incorporating these simple time management strategies into your work day, you'll be more efficient, more organized-and much less likely to let tasks build up to a crisis level or slip through the cracks. Jeamette Wick, RPh, MBA

Chief Pharmacist

District of Columbia Commission on Mental Health Services

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Time Management, Tips For A Successful Life

The application of time management skills has tended, in the past, to be thought of as something that is for business life only. In reality, though, time management is something from which we can all benefit in our personal lives as well, and in the art of marrying our working lives with our home and social lives.

Those benefits show in a number of ways, including health, well being and satisfaction with our lives overall. Manage your time well, and you can feel in control of your life, rather than letting events control you. There is no single "method" of time management, either in business or personal life. However, there are various time management tips and techniques, practices and theories, which it is worth knowing about.

Acquiring time management skills is something we can set about doing in a methodical way. Really, we all practice time management whether we know it or not. It is more a matter of whether we do it well or badly. The following tips are for improving time management skills, building on those that you will naturally have. Even primitive man used time management, it was just a lot simpler in those days. Time had to be allocated for hunting, and that time had to be used to the fullest effect possible to survive.

Here are just a few time management tips:

1. Before learning any techniques to help you manage your time, have a clear idea of what you are setting out to achieve. Give yourself the opportunity to get your life in some sort of order so that you can both enjoy it to the full and succeed to the full. If you just apply time management to areas of your life that do not really matter to you, then you will not be progressing at a personal level.
   
2. Get your priorities clear in your mind, so that they are a natural part of you. This will need to become a habit to be very effective, and you will need to apply prioritizing over a number of time spans. Your long term success will probably depend on your being able to prioritize what you need to do to achieve that success. However, to use your time well on a particular day, you need to start the day with a clear idea of your priorities. that also applies to the week, the month and the year. Your priorities for the shorter period must always feed positively into the priorities in the next longer period, and so on, so that each time period is mapped out with priorities that lead to your ultimate success.
   
3. When assessing priorities, be ruthless with parts of your life that are not contributing to your longer term goals. Removing the areas of your life where you are wasting time, will free up more time for you to apply to reaching your goals.
   
4. Always be sure to build your health and enjoyment into any plans. Time for relaxation and exercise are critical to your long term achievements; always make time for proper meals, and keep to a healthy but enjoyable diet. Time management is not an exercise in being macho with your business life; it is an opportunity to build a balanced life for yourself and your family.
   
5. Once you have set your priorities for any period, write them down and refer to them from time to time, updating them if necessary. Should you appear to be failing, examine why, and reset and reinforce your goals and priorities. It is too easy to slip back into bad habits that inhibit your progress.
   
6. Be sure to keep a diary and use it to plan out each day, week, month. There are all sorts of electronic gizmos, online planners, software etc to act as aids to your time management. Personally, I think a good old fashioned diary is just as good, if not better. About 18 months ago I reverted to using a traditional diary to plan my working time. That forces me to get away from the computer, even for a few minutes, and think what my priorities are, and what I need to be reminded about.

If you can become better at time management, you will find your life more satisfying and less stressful, as well as being able to achieve greater things. For millions of people, life just sweeps them along in a torrent of activity, or inactivity, over which they have little or no control. That can be very stressful, unhealthy, inefficient, and demoralising over the long term. There is nothing quite like controlling your own destiny to reduce stress and aid success.