Keep Track of Life: Time Management

Time management is an essential tool to becoming a successful freelancer or worker no matter what your specialty is. Good time management has a long list of benefits to those who use it well and some devastating pitfalls for those who ignore it.

Before you start on the road to successful time management, you need to analyse how you spend your time now. Keep track of what you already do and how long it takes you without making any changes to your working pattern. This will allow you to compare it with a more structured approach when using proper time management skills.

As well as scheduling your time across all your work, there are other benefits. Time management means you will be able to complete all your proposed tasks within the agreed deadlines, unless you have taken too much work on. The first thing you should start with is one or several action plans. An action plan is a list of actions that lead you to your proposed goal. Having an action plan means, you can track your progress towards your objective.

Once you have your action plan, you then to prioritise the tasks that appear in it. If you have to complete something before you can carry on with anything else, that should become your main priority. Never complete anything if there is something more important to do first, no matter how mundane or difficult that first task is.

Once you have your prioritised action plan, the next step to successful time management is to schedule these tasks. Work out how long each stage of the overall plan will take. Do this ideally before you agree to a deadline for the whole task although this is not always possible. Scheduling and sticking to your schedule will mean that you should have no difficulties in meeting your goals when you need to.

Always keep a record of your schedules and make a note of any part of your action plan that takes more or less time than you imagined. This will help you next time you come to draw up a scheduled plan. It may aid you shave vital minutes or hours off a job. When scheduling your tasks you should bear in mind important factors like energy levels. It is unlikely you will be able to work as effectively when you have already completed 6 hours of work. Even things like sugar levels can make a big difference to your performance and time spent completing a task.

If you abide to these time management rules, you should find yourself quickly and efficiently completing tasks to deadlines. Once a task is completed, assess your schedule and how you performed. Pay particular attention to any stages of the process where you over or under performed to your expectations and try to ascertain why. This will help you plan better next time. Studying the log and keeping a record of it will also help you cost your time that is vital when it comes to quoting for your next piece of work.