All business is governed by time. Managers and team members typically have an eight hour stretch of time to get the job done for a particular day. A routine schedule of progressing through the day likely devotes particular times to morning meetings, start-up procedures, amping up for the “busy” period, allocating breaks and lunches, and performing tasks associated with shift closing. If you find your business is stagnating with this traditional way of time management, explore the following novel ways of looking at the old subject so you and your team can make more of the “average” day.
Forget the basic hour to hour schedule you are accustomed to following. Instead of thinking in terms of sixty minutes, start looking at larger chunks of time. These chunks can vary in length but must allow for the important “deep work” that takes significant time to accomplish. This means your workers dive into periods in which they can concentrate on ONE important priority during the day. Of course, you must still accomplish the routine tasks everyone has, but you manage these by “short bursts” in which you take care of things such as emails, brief meetings, inventory concerns, and cleaning.
Rid yourself of the “time destroyers” and encourage staff to do the same. Make specific periods for handling emails and phone alerts so you can ignore these during the times that you need to spend interrupted on other more important matters. While you need to always be available for your employees and clients, do not allow yourself to give into inconsequential chatting, needless repetition or, worst of all, gossip. Set this key example for your workers.
Make technology work for you and not the other way around. Use only software programs and apps that really work for you. Take time monthly to look at what is useful and what is just clutter. Uninstall what applications you can and clear out folders that are taking up space in your computer and in your head.
Set timers to help you deal with tasks. This gives you an allocated period to work on something and helps prevent you from “running over” when you need to switch gears to another tasks. Use timers for both long and short intervals of work as well as for break times. It is helpful to set timers at regular intervals to remind you to get up and move when you are working for long periods at a desk
Create deadlines with incremental dates when you tackle large projects. For example, if you aim to create a portfolio of examples of your work, you need to set an overall deadline. Then you can break up these weeks to allocate time for each task involved in the project. This might include selection, ordering, editing, formatting and final assembly. The more you create increments the better you will become at figuring out the “real time” needed for specific actions. If a particular action requires an extensive amount of time, break the step up into subsets.
Time is notably of “the essence”. We manage or do not manage our work hours. Obviously, effective management depends greatly on effective time management. Implement new strategies to handle your hours on the job.
