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Time management tips to boost your productivity
On these pages, you'll get practical know-how on time management, whether you are a top-flight corporate executive, a homemaker, an entrepreneur or anything else. Along the way, you will get tips targeted at specific groups...for instance, freelancers who work from home. Here's a quick technique for coming to grips with that 'unmanageable' to-do list. This can be used by practically anyone. First things first...deal with your mindset. Most of us like to think that everything on our to-do list is 'super-urgent' and the sky will fall if this is not done 'as of yesterday'. This is usually not true. The truth is that we love drama and we love to feel terribly important. That's why we kid ourselves that everything is urgent. So cut that out before you go further. Next, make a list of everything you must do, or think you must do. You may have done this already. Grab hold of four highlighters of different colors - red, yellow, green and blue. If you can't stand any of those colors, simply go with any four colors you like! Next step - set your priorities. Use color codes for this purpose...something like this:
Be realistic when you do this exercise. If you have 43 items on your to-do list and 38 of them are marked in red...that's a sign you haven't set your priorities well. Maybe you're still grappling with that mindset issue mentioned above. As a rule of thumb, no more than 5% or so of the things on your big list should be reds. That means, out of your list of 43 items, keep the reds to 2 or 3. Similarly, keep the yellows to 5 or 7. If you think carefully through your list, you may discover - surprise, surprise - that you have no reds at all!! What a liberating feeling! Now, start off on the first red task. Never mind if it scares you to death. Or bores you to tears. There is no magic pill to getting things done. Toss out all complex planning. Just think through what really must be done and do it. Then repeat the cycle. Once the reds are done, go on to the yellows. Forget about doing the greens and the blues till you are through with the reds and yellows. What do you do if new tasks land up at your desk? Just allot them colors and add them to your list. Each morning, make a fresh list. Reallocate the colors. For instance, some greens may have become yellows, or some yellows may have dropped out altogether. At the end of week one, set aside a few minutes to go through all the green items, those that need to get done in a month's time. Strike off everything that resolved itself. And get rid of those that you can now see were not important anyway. You can often cross off an amazingly large number of greens! Some greens may move up to become yellows or reds. Of those that remain, see if there are any that can be delegated to others. Or maybe you can use some sort of technology to deal with them, instead of spending your time on them. Underline such items on your greens list. At the end of week two, take another look at the green items and cull the list like above, with one difference. If you have green items that have not either been crossed off or moved up to yellows or reds, either remove them or move them to the blue category. If a task has not been moved somewhere in that timeframe, then it probably won't get done in the next month either, so don't retain it as a green. Chunk your time into 15 minute blocks. Determine that you will finish a task either completely or partly in that time. And schedule a 15 minute break every two hours. These two actions will do wonders for your productivity. If you use them. Keep working at this deceptively simple system for one month. You will be astonished at how much you managed to get done and how clear your head is! If you do these things, you will have learned the real secret of time management and personal productivity. And you'll have the results to show for it. Go for it!
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