3 Questions to Enhance Time Management Skills

American author Tom Peters offers a sound perspective on evaluating time management in his book The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last:

• Your planner defines your life.
• Your planner is a reliable tool.
• How you spend your time represents your priorities.
• How one spends time shapes their life strategy.
• How we spend our time reveals our interests.
• How we spend our time reveals our personalities.

The majority of our planners are empty; otherwise, meeting dates are noted on them. Most people live their lives automatically without any prior planning. You see them going with the flow without giving any thought to planning their actions. However, we constantly lament the lack of time.

A thoughtful planner expresses your commitment to the things and people that matter most in your life, whether you're an entrepreneur, a friend, a family member, or whatever. Peters provides some ideas for making our schedules more efficient by starting with the three most time-consuming, practical activities on our weekly planners. He also inspires us by asking thoughtful questions.

3 Questions to enhance your time management skills:

1. Meetings:

You should ask yourself the following question: “Am I getting the most out of communication as a participant or organizer of the meeting?”

Meetings are frequently criticized. On the one hand, it is impossible to stop conducting them, and on the other, people are constantly looking for ways to make them more effective. Peters rephrased the meeting's concept. This does not mean raising the level of meetings; rather, he views them as a "major platform for leadership excellence" and compares them to artistic theaters.

A meeting is considered a failure when it does not arouse curiosity and creativity in the attendants and when it does not enhance correlation, cooperation, participation, sense of value, enthusiasm, and motivation for actual work. Most individuals consider meetings merely necessary procedures and do not feel the minimum level of enthusiasm for them. The solution lies in pursuing institutional excellence. If this concept does not exist in the organizational culture, a realistic procedure can be implemented that entails meeting with coworkers about whom we know little about their job details in order to inquire about their jobs, the challenges they face, and the accomplishments they have made.

In short, you should arrange meetings that stimulate creativity, enthusiasm, and cooperation, especially with employees with whom you communicate regularly. It is preferable to hold meetings with employees whose work details you do not know much about.

2. Working effectively:

You should ask yourself, "Does my planner structure allow me to work effectively?" If you would like to have some time to do meaningful and effective activities during the week, we advise you to continue reading the article.

If your planner is full of meetings, you should cancel some of them and allocate more time to work. Assuming there are 1-4 meetings per week, it is preferable to discuss your productivity at work and how you can make the most of the remaining time. Allocating a specific time to work effectively can demonstrate your respect and appreciation for time. Otherwise, you will get distracted or resort to multitasking.

You should conduct a weekly review of your planner to allocate sufficient time for purposeful and effective work. Before you can choose the best times to work effectively, you may need to experiment for a few weeks.

3. Lunch:

You have to ask yourself, "Who will you have lunch with?" In the first chapter of his book, We Are Who We Hang Out With, Peters emphasizes the value of scheduling routine lunch dates with people we don't feel obligated to communicate with.

If you do not like the idea of ​​holding meetings with people whose roles you do not know much about in the organization, you should try to arrange a lunch appointment with them. You can invite a friend from a different industry or profession if you don't want to invite coworkers. These appointments aim to bring you together with individuals who are different from you to foster creativity, productivity, and growth. Friends are important and are a blessing in a person’s life, but the modern world system requires us to arrange 50–75% of our lunch dates thoughtfully, focusing on learning, building a network of relationships, and gaining opportunities for improving circumstances.

There are over 200 working days a year that you can use to have lunch with someone new and different from you.

In Conclusion:

The time management skills will be critical for businesses to survive in the coming decades when sophisticated algorithms, vast amounts of data, and artificial intelligence dominate various aspects of life. Therefore, we recommend you start working on mastering it right away.