The importance of planning every moment of your work day


Classifies managers into different personality types based on certain patterns of behavior that frustrate people's efforts at effective time management and recommends the following simple exercises aimed at helping managers discover them. Standard behavioral responses to events provide some cues for effective time management.

Fireman - For them every incident is a crisis. They are always busy putting out the fire. They rarely find time for anything else and don't think about time-management. While tasks pile up around them, they can be seen running from fire to fire all day long.

Over committers - They can't say no to anyone. They are obliging and try to please everyone. Anyone has only to ask and they will be chairing another committee, taking on another project or organizing another community event. As a result no work gets full attention and remains incomplete.

Aquarians - There is such a thing as being too relaxed. Especially when it starts to interfere with their ability to complete tasks or bother returning phone calls. Getting to them when it comes to them is not time management but rather simple task avoidance.

Born to socialize, they have amazing verbal communication skills and can't resist exercising them at every opportunity. Every interaction becomes a long conversation especially if there is an unpleasant activity that they want to stop.

For those who have accuracy as their watchword and feel that any rushed job cannot be a good job. Completing tasks to satisfaction is a problem. They need not just more time, but more time zones.

Cost of time inefficiency

What is the cost of ineffective time management to the organization? This is an important question that managers must ask and address immediately. Statistics show that the average person loses at least one hour of productivity every day due to disorganization and inefficiency. Calculated accordingly, the total economic value of the loss due to inefficient time management of all employees in the organization is:

1 hour × hourly salary of a person = ___

6 days in a week × ___ Rs. Lost Today = Rs. Lost this week

48 weeks × this week Rs. Lost + ___ Rs. Lost this year

Number of persons × __ Rs. Loss this year = Rs. (Total) ___

Tom Gegax is the founder of the Gegax Management System and best-selling author. In his book The No-Nonsense Business Management Guide, he writes, "Have you ever had a high-priority phone call, an urgent email, or a stressed-out colleague begging for your attention on the last day?

They say that pulling is in every leader's job description. That is why enlightened managers must have strategies to deal with day-to-day disruptions. Gegax bases its time-management principles on the Six D's. Don't do it, don't delay it, don't distract it, don't delegate it, do it imperfectly and do it.

Gegax says when something pops up instead of doing it robotically, I start with the first option, if that doesn't apply, I go to the second. I keep going down the list until I take the right action.

For example, many seemingly urgent tasks disappear if you don't do them or delay them, he says, leaving you with more time and energy to focus on important tasks, and while some emergencies require immediate attention, your involvement isn't always necessary.

Gegax advises - think carefully about whether to turn the situation over to another department or delegate it to subordinates. If you choose to tackle the problem yourself, Gegax automatically warns against going into perfectionist mode. He says that a large number of my projects cannot be described as perfect, but they have been successful.

An easy way to find out how effectively or ineffectively managing your time is to use a time inventory chart. At the end of each day they should write down the time spent on each of their tasks. The total time for all activities should equal the total number of hours they are awake.