It's About Time!

Time is the one commodity that we cannot find or buy more of; yet it always seems like a good option to put things off till tomorrow. While this mantra might work well for your low value tasks, it’s often the high priority things that are getting left on your list.

In Foulkes’s popular keynote talk “Making Every Second Count” she highlights the value of prioritising according to revenue. The simple process of tackling the most important tasks first thing in the day before diving into low productive tasks like email and meetings, while focus and energy levels are high, goes a long way to getting the top 20% marked off your list. She shares more golden time nuggets to help maximise your time and increase efficiency:

Time is a choice.Stop placing blame on your environment, situation, family, finances etc and take ownership of your time instead of allowing it to own you.

Crunch the container. You would have heard of the saying “if you want something done, give it to a busy person”. If you see time as an always empty bucket there is always opportunity to put off what you could be doing now for later. Telephone calls and emails that could be completed in seconds are now consuming minutes or hours. When you make the bucket smaller (ie: condense time through awareness) you tend to get more done in less time.

Make time for the dashes. We spend a lot of our time focused on the quick, fast and reactive tasks that present themselves to us during the day, I call these the ‘dots’. Reserve  the first hour of your day to focusing on strategic, long term, high focus or big picture tasks (the ‘dashes’) to facilitate growth and development instead of stagnation.

Multitasking is a myth. Studies have proven that multitasking is an unproductive productivity tool. Rather block off portions of time during your day and week for specific tasks and focus on those tasks during that time. That means if you are in the middle of a 1 hour appointment with your email, allow the phone to switch to voicemail and respond to that call later in the day when you are focused on telephone tasks. It can take as much as 20 minutes to get back to your same peak concentration level that you had before you dropped what you were doing and hopped to something else.

Visit www.getorganised.coto download a complimentary copy of the Get Organised Individual & Business Productivity E-Book, purchase See-Saw business turnaround DVD or to contact a Get Organised consultant for a free needs analysis assessment. Get in touch with Tracey Foulkes tracey@getorganised.co, 084 507 6891, www.traceyfoulkes.coto find out how you and your team can become fully accountable, drive revenue and thrive.

Tracey Foulkes speaks nationally and internationally on overcoming procrastination, maximising your time, organising your space for greater efficiency and taking responsibility for yourself and ownership of your actions. Her talks are focused, fun, content rich and action orientated. Tracey founded Get Organised (South Africa & Ireland) in 2002 and works with her team of 12 licensees.