Put Things Away
When you are finished with something, put it away. Complete your transactions. Finish your jobs. Discipline yourself to stay at it until the job is 100% complete. Start with a clean workspace and end with a clean workspace.
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There is something deeply satisfying and psychologically rewarding about task completion. Your brain is structured in such a way that you get an
“endorphin rush” every time you complete a task of any kind, large or small.
The larger or more important the task is to you, the greater will be the feeling of happiness and exhilaration you experience when you complete it.
Each time you complete a task, you condition yourself to complete subsequent tasks. In no time at all, you find yourself internally driven and motivated to start and complete more and more important tasks and responsibilities.
Make a habit of finishing what you start. Teach and encourage others to finish their work and put it away, as well. Especially, teach your children to complete their tasks by setting a good example, and by rewarding them when they do finish something important. One of the hardest behaviors for people to learn is the habit of completing tasks and putting things away, but this is a habit that serves them all their lives.
Time Management Tools and Techniques
There are five time management tools and techniques that you should practice for maximum productivity and good personal organization. Each of them takes a little time to learn and master, but then pays you back in greater efficiency and effectiveness for the rest of your life.
As Goethe said, “Everything is hard before it is easy.” Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Once you have developed them, they become automatic and easy. They serve you for the rest of your career.
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1. Use a Time Planner
The first time management tool that you need is a time planning system that contains everything you need to plan and organize your life. The best time planners, whether written, computer based or Palm Pilot versions, enable you to plan for the year, the month, the week and for each day. A good time planner will contain a master list where you can capture every task, goal and required action as it comes up. This master list then becomes the core of your time planning system.
From this master list, you allocate individual tasks to various months, weeks and days.
The second part of the time planning system is a calendar that enables you to organize your time, and plan several months ahead. With the right system, you will be able to transfer individual items from your master list to the exact day when you intend to complete them.
The next part of your time planning system is a daily list. This daily list is perhaps the single most important planning tool you can have. Some people call it a “To-Do List.” Winston Churchill headed his daily list with the words, “Actions this Day.”
2. Always Work From a List
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Every effective executive works from a daily list. It is the most powerful tool ever discovered for maximum productivity.
Ineffective executives, those who felt overwhelmed with too many things to do and too little time, either do not use a list or did not refer to a list if they had one in the first place. They often resist the idea of writing everything down. As a result, they find themselves continually distracted by ringing phones, interruptions, unexpected emergencies, and email or newspapers.
When you create your daily list, you begin by writing down every single task that you intend to complete over the course of the day. The rule is that you will increase your efficiency by 25% the very first day that you start using a list. This means that you will get two extra hours of productive time in an eight hour day from the simple act of making a list of everything you have to do before you start work. You can bring order out of chaos faster with a list than with any other time management tool.
If ever you feel overwhelmed with too many tasks, you can immediately impose order on your list by writing down every single thing you have to do for the foreseeable future. The very act of making a list of 10, 20 or 30 items enables you to exert control over your time and your life. You immediately feel more relaxed and confident. You feel back in charge of your work.
Once you have written up your daily lists, and begun work, new tasks and responsibilities will come up. Telephone calls will have to be returned.
Correspondence will have to be dealt with. In every case, write it down on the list before you do it.
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Sometimes a task or demand on your time will seem urgent when it comes up. But something that might distract you from your other work regains its true importance when you write it down. An item that is written down on the list next to all your other tasks and responsibilities often doesn’t seem so important after all.
3. Organize Your List by Priority
Once you have a list for your day’s activities, the next step is for you to organize this list in order of priority. We will dedicate Chapter Four to the different ways that you can determine your top priorities.
Once your list is organized, it becomes a map to guide you from morning to evening in the most effective and efficient way. This guide tells you what you have to do, and what is more or less important. You will soon develop the habit of using your list as a blueprint for the day. Refuse to do anything until you have written it down on the list and organized it relative to its value in comparison to the other things you have to do.
4. Use Any Time Management System You Like
The various Palm Pilot and computer-based time management personal organization systems today are absolutely wonderful. No matter what you do, in whatever field, there are digital time management systems that you can tap into or load onto your personal computer and organize every part of your life. You can upload, download, transfer, merge, purge and share your 83
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files and information throughout the company and around the world. In addition, there are countless time management systems that provide you with an array of forms and which require that you write out your goals and plans by hand.
What I have discovered is that it doesn’t matter what time management system or planner you decide to use. They are all good. They have all been developed by experts and contain virtually everything you need to double and triple your productivity.
The most important part of any time planning system is that you use it regularly, over and over, until it becomes a habit, like breathing in and breathing out. It takes a certain amount of time to master a time planning system, but once you have learned it, you become more productive and efficient every time you use it.
5. Set Up a 45 File System
There is a simple method of organizing your time and your schedule for up to two years in advance. It is called the “45-file system.” This is a tickler file that enables you to plan and organize your activities and callbacks for the next 24 months. This is how it works.
First, you get a box of 45 files with 14 hanging files to put them it. The 45
files are divided this way. There are 31 files numbered 1 through 31 for the days of the month. There are 12 files for the months of the year, January 84
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through December. The last two files are for the next two years. This is a wonderful system that you can use with hanging files in your desk drawer.
When you have an appointment or responsibility for six months from now, you simply drop it into that monthly file. At the beginning of each month, you take out all of your responsibilities for that month and sort them into your daily files, numbered 1-31. Each day, you take out the file for that day and that becomes the starting point of your planning.
This system takes a few minutes to set up. It then assures that you never miss or forget to follow up on a distant call, task or appointment. It helps you to take control of your time and impose order on your future.
Six Tools for Personal Organization
Here are six more ideas that you can use to help to get yourself organized for maximum productivity. The more of these tools you learn to use, the more that you will get done each day.