I relate myself to business people and I’m the owner of a small web-studio on WordPress website development Seattleby. We have a lot of customers, a lot of projects and we often communicate with a big amount of people and we are always at work. And, like all businessmen, I wouldn’t mind extra 24 hours. Below I will share with you my time management rules, without which it would be impossible to do, at least, half of the things that I do. In the article you will find both familiar rules to you, the rules which are no need to be invented, they are known and a lot of people use them, and my personal tips, which I’m trying to follow. I hope they are going to be useful for you.
-
20% of efforts give 80% of results. This is, perhaps, the most important rule to remember. Among those tasks that you are performing, most of them will bring grains or will hardly bring anything. And you need to strive to gain results. In other words – you are to differentiate between the main and the secondary tasks and spend your time, first of all, on important things.
-
A five secondsrule tells us about the fact that as soon as a good idea comes into your mind, it shouldn’t be put aside for a long time, but it should be realized right at the moment. This especially concerns business which can be done quickly. Otherwise, the task, which can be performed at a 10-20 minutes time, will occupy all your thoughts and you will not be able to work effectively, and some of your ideas won’t be embodied. One of my mates liked such a thought: it is rather hard to force yourself to do something, but if you finally force yourself to do something for 20 minutes, the work most often becomes much easier and you become involved into it so much, that it is difficult to give it up and start doing something new.
-
The 25 minutesrule advices to divide all the work on 30 minutes stages, where 5 minutes are given to a rest. You can raise your productivity in such a way.
-
The delegation. A businessman, who can’t delegate will soon reach his maximum, which he will not be able to jump over. He will be absorbed by unimportant small things.
-
You shouldn’t carry on correspondence, if it promises to be long. You can always make a phone call and speed up the solution of a problem.
-
At the same timeit’s worth writing a message, if 1-2 messages remove the question. One more tip is to start using voice messages, it will save you a lot of time. I’m working in the sphere of IT and I like to make short videos for developers, in which I usually explain, what and how they should do, and videos for customers, in which I answer their questions and demonstrate something.
-
Instructions for those you are working with. This is a thing which you make only once and then you don’t waste your time on explanations for each customer or worker, you just give the necessary instruction to a person and in future you want this person to follow it.
-
Avoid conferences in which more than 3 people take part and which last more than 15 minutes. This is a complicated rule, but very effective. In a large team, where all the people have a right to vote and all the votes are equivalent, the problems are solved for quite a long time and are not solved at all in the end.
-
Be the leaders but not the followers. Everybody and everything influence us, but if you fall under this influence, you will simply turn into a ball, which everybody will kick. The process of solving problems should have an impulsive character, don’t let anyone to draw you in long battles if you know for sure, what you want to achieve through your actions. Let those think and ponder who are not sure of their actions. Give them some time for that, and do some other things. Ideally, problems should be solved much quicker than appear and you will always have time for self development and for generating new ideas.
-
Google Calendar.A very useful tool for managing time, meetings and events. And also those who work with people online will surely like the service Calendly.
-
Do’n’Drag this is a website developed by our company, which allows to keep business lists, to keep notes, to delegate tasks to your workers, control their fulfilment and many many more. In fact it’s a similar to Trello and Jira service, but with its own peculiarities. Here is a link to our tool: dondrag.com
Do not waste your time for nothing! People work about 8 hours a day. If during a year a person purposefully spends all this time on building a castle from matches, just imagine, what size the castle is going to be. Build your own castles! Good luck to everyone!