In a Nutshell
What a hectic time of the
year! Our calendars fill up with holiday celebrations ... and then
there's the extra shopping or cooking that goes along with them ... not
to mention the travel. Taking a few vacation days might help, unless
it means you start to fall behind at the office! We really need effective
time management to keep us sane in December.
Effective time management
doesn't mean doing more things or doing them more quickly. Effective
time management means getting more of the important
work done in a day. In fact, effective time management is even more
important than efficient use of our time. Of course, the best time
managers are both effective and efficient..
In This Issue
Know What's Important
To manage our time effectively,
each of us has to have a clear picture of our personal principles and core
values. We need to invest the precious resource of our time in the
things that are important to us. That may sound self-centered, but
it's only self-centered if all of our core values are self-centered.
Personally, one of my core values is being helpful to others. Furthermore,
I work for an organization that I really believe provides a valuable service
to the community, so doing my job well serves more than just myself.
I'm sure many of you have similar core values. Being helpful and
being a "team player" are fantastic, but we want to avoid completely letting
other people's demands schedule our time.
One of the fundamental challenges
in effective time management is remembering the difference between "urgent"
and "important." Urgency alone cannot make
a task important. It is the connection to our personal
principles and business priorities that determines the importance of a
task.
Schedule What's Important
With a clear personal mission
and objectives, time can be scheduled with a definite purpose in mind.
On a daily or weekly basis, making a "to do" list and scheduling time helps
ensure that the important tasks will be completed.
Know and Exploit
Your Work Patterns
Not every hour of our workday
is equivalent in terms of our personal work patterns and the environments
we work in. There are times of the day when we are most productive,
when we are most creative, and when we can be relatively free from the
distractions of the world around us. We should identify those times
and schedule accordingly.
About the Photo
A clock repairer from Cumbria
Clock Company works on one of the faces of the Manchester City hall clock
as part of its annual service, November 22, 2002. The minute hand on the
clock face had to be removed to carry out the work. (REUTERS/Ian Hodgson:
e-mailed to me from Yahoo! News, www.news.yahoo.com.)
Sources
Covey, S. R., Merrill, A.
R., & Merrill, R. R. (1994). First things first.
New York: Simon & Schuster.
Whetten, D. A., & Cameron,
K. S. (2002). Developing management skills, (5th ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
About the Newsletter
and Subscriptions
LeaderLetter is written
by Dr. Scott Williams, Department of Management, Raj
Soin College of Business, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.
It is a supplement to my MBA 751 - Managing People in Organizations class.
It is intended to reinforce the course concepts and maintain communication
among my former MBA 751 students, but anyone is welcome to subscribe.
In addition, subscribers are welcome to forward this newsletter to anyone
who they believe would have an interest in it. To subscribe,
simply send an e-mail message to me requesting subscription. Of course,
subscriptions to the newsletter are free. To unsubscribe,
e-mail a reply indicating that you would like to unsubscribe.
E-mail Your Comments
Whether you are one of my
former students or not, I invite you to share any insights or concerns
you have regarding the topic of this newsletter or any other topic relating
to management skills. Please e-mail
them to me. Our interactions have been invaluable. Every
week, I learn something new from LeaderLetter subscribers!
Let's keep the conversation going.
If they had been Three Wise Women instead of Three Wise Men, they would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and brought practical gifts.