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Isle of Wight Business Women’s Lunch
OCTOBER 2014
THE GARLIC FARM
Time Management Techniques, Tips & Hints
ISLE OF WIGHT BUSINESS WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER
Use Modern Technology to your advantage
Online Calendar and tasks lists
Examples include: Outlook, Google Calendar
Cloud based tools
Evernote
Google Apps
Skype
Xero
Dropbox
Hoot suite
Have a good Diary System, Prioritise & Plan your day
Take the first 30 minutes of your day to plan your day before you start
Understand what you want to achieve
Highlight your diary
Colour code blocks of time for different activities, such as family time, work time etc.
Prioritise these tasks which have to be done, and try to eliminate the rest
Create Simple Systems
Would it be easy for someone else to see what you do?
Set up work flows for your business
Two benefits to this:
1) Easier to delegate
2) Easier to extract yourself from the business
Think about what you are doing
Do you know what you want to achieve?
Do you have a business plan and /or strategy?
Or are you chasing the next shiny object?
Ask yourself is this task or meeting going to help me to get to where I want to be?
Always ask the purpose of a meeting before accepting
Remember that 20% of activities produce 80% of the results
Lists
Daily lists of the 6 most important things to be done & stick to it!
Write your thoughts down under different headings & keep in one place – iPad, Evernote etc.
Alternative to Lists is to put your ‘to-do list’ into appointments. Schedule appointments with yourself & create blocks of time to complete. Keep the appointments!
Any activity or conversation that is important to your success should have a time assigned to it
Delegation
Do YOU need to be doing that task?
Delegate so you can focus on the BIG tasks
Can be business or personal; for example home delivery shopping, saves your time
Get over your inner ‘control freak’
Calculate the value of your time, the length of time it takes & then look at the cost of delegating that task
Block our distractions
You have control as to how much time you spend on them
Use ‘do not disturb’
Don’t be afraid not to answer the phone or email immediately.
Set clear expectations of your service levels to your customers, staff
Do not be a slave to your email!
Turn off notifications
Turn off your mobile phone!
Other techniques
Learn to say no
Unless what you are being asked to do is part of your strategy
Or will produce 80% of the results you are looking for say no
Mindfulness
Self-care
Do things that make you happy
Focus
does multi-tasking actually get you any further
There will always be 101 things to do
You won’t always get everything done
Be nice to yourself