An effective time management skill that is a crucial first step in getting a handle on managing your time is simply - knowing how you spend your time.

Here are the top three areas that most folks struggle with:

1. They have no idea where they truly spend their time.
2. They are totally unaware of exactly how much time they waste.
3. They underestimate the amount of time it will take to get a task done.

These are fairly common pitfalls that will have you feeling overworked, overwhelmed and ready to pull your hair out in no time at all.

In order to get past these hurdles, it's necessary to dig deep and take a look at how and where you spend your time. This will assist you in identifying those areas that need to be improved. The knowledge that you gain from assessing where your time goes will be the starting point for you to learn how to create new and improved time management skills.

Auditing how you spend your time is something you need to do over a period of at least a week. Use a notepad and a pen, a spreadsheet or if you prefer a PDA, to note down everything that you spend time on each day.

You must have instant access to whichever method you choose to record your notes with because very few of us can remember with complete accuracy what happened hours before. And we often are not completely honest with ourselves about how we may waste our time.

Note down when you start and finish each task. Particularly pay attention to those things that you repeat regularly.

An example of this would be to note down if you start your day by checking email. Write down exactly how much time it takes you. Keeping track of this over a period of a week will get you a good average of the amount of time you allot to this task every morning.

After you've gathered a week of data, you then need to look at how exactly you are utilizing your time.

Gather your notes together and identify the tasks that take up the greatest amount of your time. Realizing how much actual time you spend checking email, watching television or talking on the phone, may be a shock to you. Remember though, right now you are just finding out the facts. You can brainstorm solutions for your time management problems later.

Okay, the next step is to look for activities that are taking more time than you would have guessed. Even if they don't represent a big portion of your time overall, if they are taking you double the time you think they should, then these are areas you need to attend to.

Last thing, choose the happenings that interrupted your day. These activities are more often than not big time wasters. For example, an unplanned meeting, playing the phone tag game with your boss/husband/kids. Being aware of how much added stress these unplanned activities pile on top you, will cause you to stop them from happening in the future.

A kind of bonus insight this effective time management skill gives you is you will get an accurate picture of how you divide your time between your personal life and your work life. Many people realize, after having completed this exercise, that a very small percentage of their time is spent with loved ones. This can be a really big wake up call for some folks.

By making the effort to use this effective time management skill, you will discover which areas you need to manage during your day. And isn't knowing half the battle?

 

Go From Effective Time Management Skill to Goal Setting and Time Management