By Saurav Wadhwa on Monday, 29 September 2014
Category: Tax updates

Why and How Time Management Skills are Important for The Success of Your Business

Time management skills are like a good pair of pants – you need to try several pairs before you find the right one which suits you best.  Time management is not very difficult as a concept but it is hard to put into practice.

  

In this article we will introduce a time management tool called priority matrix. You can have try and see whether it is the right one for you.

 

Priority matrix defines all tasks into four categories depending on the importance and urgency of each task. It is shown as follows,

 

 

Urgent

Not urgent

Important

1.Do now

2.Plan to do

Do later after finish box1 tasks

Not

Important

3.Reject and explain

Do later if still necessary

4.Resist and cease

Do when finished box1-3 tasks

and need a rest

 

Activities in box 1 include all emergencies issues, demands from customers, planned tasks not due, etc. Box 2 includes planning, preparation, scheduling, research, investigation, reviews, networking relationship building, etc. Box 3 includes trivial requests from others, pointless routines, accumulated unresolved trivia, etc.  Box 4 includes all comfort activities like computer games, net surfing, excessive cigarette breaks, etc.

 

We have different priorities for tasks from different categories.  People with poor time management skills tend to spend more time on box 1 and box 4 because they tend to do easy comfort tasks and ignore non urgent important tasks so all important task become urgent. 

People who are good at time management spend more time on box 2, which is the most critical area for success, development and proactive self-determination.

The right way of handling four kinds of tasks is written in the matrix. Urgency or not is not a fixed status. You should review your task list regularly to make sure that nothing gets moved up just because it has become more urgent.

Other time-management tips:

·         Tidy up working environment.

·         Make a list before starting a pile of work.

·         Do not multi-tasking.

·         Learn to say no politely and constructively.

·         Never try to eat an elephant all in one go.

·         Pick at least three of the above tips and put them into practise. 

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