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