Access: In some cases, a person may be painfully aware of his/her poor time management. Other people may be wasting time right and left without any knowledge that they could manage their time differently. While evaluating time management is not an exact science, reflecting on some of these questions can help you examine your time management skills:
Do you feel and appear frazzled? If you consistently feel that you are playing catch-up, you could use some time management work. If you are always rushing from one responsibility to the next, you likely need some help in slowing down and managing your time. In addition, ask your family and co-workers if they think you are especially frazzled; they may recognize it long before you do.
How does your schedule/day-timer look? It's not bad to have a full day, but if you have three meetings planned for the same time or if you can't see a spot on your calendar because of everything written on it, you likely want to restructure your time management.
How do you handle long-term projects? If you seem to be consistently surprised by deadlines that you had forgotten about, the problem may not be your memory but rather your time management over the previous weeks and months.
Are your meetings and conferences productive? If you leave a meeting without a plan of action, you will likely have to meet again in the near future. If your conferences spend far more time on gossip than on the issue at hand, you are wasting valuable time.
Do you tend to over promise? Promising beyond what you can deliver is one of the main causes of stress and busyness. You may be promising that you can do something in which you have no experience or that you can complete a task sooner than is truly reasonable. Regardless, you end up in a lose/lose time management situation: you're most likely not going to succeed but you're going to overwhelm yourself trying.
Improve: You're not doomed to perpetually feeling behind. You may be simply a few time management adjustments away from reduced stress and improved productivity.
Take some time to analyze yourself and then set up a schedule that fits you. Do you work better in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Do you work better from home or the office? Try to discover when and how you work best.
Then, use a calendar, a palm pilot, a simple list, or some other kind of organizational tool that helps you keep track of your responsibilities. Jot down deadlines and meetings, as well as miscellaneous items (e.g. "Have the oil changed in the car") that will be avoided indefinitely (or simply forgotten) unless you assign them to a specific time. Make these responsibility lists doable; don't overload yourself, but rather, give yourself more time than you think you need, so that you will have time left over later.
As you are organizing your responsibilities, keep your priorities in mind. In your workplace, think as a team what jobs have the highest payoff and/or the most imminent deadline. Focus yourself on these responsibilities. You will not get everything done at once, so decide what needs to be done first.
Once you begin your work, consider ways to maximize your effectiveness. For example, take a break from time to time so that you can return to work re-energized. Even though this is time away from work, your increased productivity over time will outweigh the brief absence of productivity. In addition, look for opportunities to fit in small jobs where you can. Take something to read with you to the mechanic's shop or dentist's office. Filling in all these small gaps will eliminate your wasted time.
Rather than trying to do a little bit of everything, focus on a few responsibilities and tasks and do them extremely well. Eliminate some responsibilities if you have to, so that you can do a better job on the things you continue doing.
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