Five time management mistakes you’re probably making every day!
Mistake Number 1. Trying to do too many things at one time.
It’s bad time management to try to do too many things at one time and end up skipping around without a clear sense of focus. In the words of basketball great Mo Schaffer, “You can’t catch one hog when you’re chasing two.”
Mistake Number 2. Confusing activity with accomplishment.
Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re getting worthwhile things done.
Lots of activity on the wrong things might give you the illusion that you’re getting important things done, but are the things getting done even worth doing? Activity is not the same thing as accomplishment.
A common time-management mistake is to get sidetracked stomping on ants when you should be hunting elephants. Learn to take care of the big, important stuff and not bog down with trivia.
Mistake Number 3. Keeping your to-do list in your head.
Keeping track of what you need to do is best done using some kind of planning system.
Trying to remember everything you need to do takes mental energy and increases the chance that you might forget something.
Free up your brain power and improve your time management by using a planning system to keep track of things you need to get done.
If you’re an Outlook user already, take advantage of the “Task list” and “Calendar” functions to manage your multiple to-do’s and deadlines. Some currently popular, easy-to-use to-do list apps that are free or low cost are Wonderlist, Any.do, ToDoIst.
Mistake Number 4. Not allowing enough time to get things done.
Bad time managers aren’t good at figuring out how long it takes to do something. They don’t consider all the unexpected things that may slow things down. Things taking longer than expected result in missing deadlines and having to work under pressure.
Good time managers reduce their stress by allowing enough time to make sure they’ll meet their important deadlines. They expect the unexpected and build a time cushion into their schedule.
Mistake Number 5. Ignoring important things because they’re not urgent.
Bad time managers often confuse urgency with importance. They are not the same thing. For example, often trivial email gets answered while more important work is pushed to the side.
Improve your time management by paying attention to important things that may not be urgent but are still worth doing. For example, improve your technical skills, exercise regularly, keep your “I love you’s” up to date.
Time management tips from an interview with Peter Turla, founder of the National Management Institute.
Peter Turla, time management expert
Question: Peter Turla, you’re a time management expert who advises us to set priorities on the things we want to get done, but don’t most of us already routinely set priorities on our activities?
Answer: Most people set priorities, but they do it the wrong way. They too often give high priority to stuff that’s quick or easy instead of the things that may be slow or difficult but have a much higher payoff. Don’t spend all your time stomping on ants when you’ve got elephants to hunt.
It would take a lot of ants to equal the weight of just one elephant. I suggest you go for tonnage instead body count. It’s not how many things you do that count, it the importance of what you’re getting done that really matters.
Make sure you don’t neglect the significant things that make a huge impact on your life. Even though they’re important, they may not be urgent unless you make them urgent. Figure out what they are and make them urgent so that you’ll be sure to work on them.
Question: So what’s the right way to set priorities?
Answer: The key is to ask, “How does this activity fit in with my long-term objectives and where I want to go with a particular project or with my career or my life?”
Often we lose track of the overall direction we should take and we just ask, “What is something fast and easy that I can get done so I can cross it off my To-do List?” or “What is the most urgent, the next most urgent, and what can wait?”
The items we think can wait are often the things that would have a significant payoff for us, perhaps not immediately, but in the future.
Unfortunately, those are the things that get put on the back burner. Important things are not always urgent and urgent things are not always important.
Question: What is the most common mistake people make when they set priorities?
Answer: They delay long-range planning in place of solving immediate, but insignificant problems.
People who do this find that their entire day is cluttered with a lot of small projects and small decisions. The things that sometimes don’t get done are major items, such as long-range planning and important backburner projects.
Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment.
Many people concentrate on what I call “ant stomping” when they should concentrate on “elephant hunting.” When you focus on stomping ants you confuse activity with accomplishment.
You’re going for the small insignificant tasks that are easy to do. They can be done quickly, so you give yourself the illusion that you’re really accomplishing a lot, when in actuality you’re getting further and further behind because you’re overlooking the elephant hunting.
Question: Can you be more specific about what you mean by elephant hunting?
Answer: Elephant hunting means to pursue significant projects that have long-term payoffs for you. If you’re busy stomping ants all day long, you might not even be aware that you’re totally ignoring some of your elephants. Don’t be stomping on ants when you have elephants to deal with. Focus on dealing with your big important To-do’s and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked on trivia.
Question: What kind of activities do you define as “stomping on ants”?
Answer: Ant stomping might be doing things that are very low payoff like being too perfectionistic on things that hardly matter or immediately reacting to every email that comes in even if it’s unimportant.
Question: But some of us seem to constantly have urgent matters come up that take all our time. Doesn’t devoting time to taking the long-range view distract from such day-to-day demands?
Answer: Dealing with urgent things is important but if you spend all your time doing it you’ll be in a trapped into constantly working in a reactionary mode. Instead of problem solving, learn to focus on problem preventing. Solving problems can be like fire fighting. If you’re constantly putting out fires, you might be better off focusing on fire preventing. Preventing fires puts you ahead of the game – and saves you time. Focus on problem prevention so that you can get out of the trap of always having to solve problems. Many problems will simply never occur because you planned ahead and prevented them from happening. Often our big problems started as a small problem that could have been dealt with while they were still small.
If you’re thinking, “I’m so busy, I don’t have time to plan,” I suggest that planning doesn’t take time — It makes time. Planning allows you to prevent problems and ultimately save time. If you don’t have time to plan, do you have time to waste?
Remember the 5 P’s: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.
Question: What if it’s hard to plan your day because lots of unexpected things always come up?
Answer: If unexpected things are always coming up, learn to expect the unexpected. Plan for them by allowing extra time when you’re scheduling your day. Also, look at the patterns of unexpected things that are coming up to see if there are things you can do to minimize how often they happen.
If you have lots of interruptions interfering with your work flow, get creative with analyzing how to prevent the problem. Ask yourself if you might actually be one the reasons why you’re getting so many interruptions. What are you doing that’s attracting or allowing or encouraging interruptions? Look at ways to prevent some of the interruptions. Perhaps you need to be more proactive, or communicate better, or better educate others, or develop better systems for dealing with things.
Question: What techniques do you recommend for carrying out your advice?
Answer: Make sure you use a To-do List where you set priorities on each item based on the significance of completing each item. Many people prioritize items based on what’s most urgent and what’s next most urgent. Instead, I suggest you focus on payoff. Figure out what things you should be doing that help you in terms of your long-term objectives. Give those items your top priorities.
Put off, delegate, or ignore your low-payoff items. Then devote the time you save to working on the big important stuff–the elephants on your list. Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment. Work on the things that really matter.
Question: What tips do you have on how to develop the discipline to focus on the long-term, high payoff stuff you want to accomplish.
Answer: The difference between a wish and a goal is a deadline. Make sure you write down what you want to accomplish and by when. Things that are written down have more of a reality to them. If they’re not written down, it easy to fall into the trap, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Then break your projects into sub-tasks and devote time each week to work on some of them. If you break the big jobs down into simple pieces, you won’t feel as overwhelmed. By the inch, it’s a cinch, but by the yard, it’s hard.
Question: Is it better to focus on efficiency or effectiveness?
Answer: Being efficient is saving time by getting something done fast, while being effective is getting the right thing done. I suggest that you’ll do better if you focus on being effective rather than simply being more efficient. It’s usually better to get the right thing done slowly than to get the wrong thing done quickly.
Imagine you’re walking down the street, for example, and you had a hundred $1 bills and one $100 bill in your hands and a whirlwind came along and blew them out of your grasp. What would be your strategy to get the money back?
If you pick up the bills closest to you and work your way toward the rest, you’d save steps–you’d be efficient grabbing the bills closest to you, but you might not get to the $100 dollar bill. To be effective, try putting your top priority on finding the hundred first. There can be a 100 to 1 leverage doing that versus simply grabbing a $1 dollar bill.
Every day, look over your To-do list and find the things you can do that have the highest payoff.