#1. Focus on your top 3 priorities! Your priorities will demand your attention, enable you to take action and produce results. What are your top 3? If you don’t know, perhaps that is why your calender looks the way it does and you feel the way you do. Figure out your top three priorities and put them in writing. Share them with your stakeholders and revisit and revise them frequently.
#2. Track how your spending your time on your top 3 priorities! That’s right, track your time. Use your journal or some other source to track your activities each hour of your working day. I highly recommend you do this exercise for two weeks and assess how much time you are spending on your top 3 priorities. If your not spending 75% of your time on these 3 issues then you will need to evaluate what, where, and how you are spending your time.
I recall when I was promoted to lead a financial turnaround for my former company. The first four months, I was involved in everything. I was not controlling how and what I spent my time on, everything was a priority. Fortunately, my mentor suggested I focus on a few important priorities and track what and how I was spending time. It was a real eye opener for me and it helped me change the way I managed my time, how I showed up and led the turnaround.
#3. Delegate. Spend time on only things that you can do. Delegate everything else. Delegating is a great way to develop your team, assess their capabilities and allow them to feel they are contributing.
#4. Learn to say no. Set boundaries. Say no to the meeting or conference call that you really don’t need to attend. Make your team responsible. Distinguish between what is urgent and what is important.
Last week, I met with a newly promoted leader who is working on his time management skills. He said no to attending a monthly client update meeting. He communicated to his deputy that he was now responsible to lead these meetings and report back. He felt great!
#5. Communicate to your team what you need. Tell your team what your priorities are, how best to communicate with you, what your expectations are, when to CC you on correspondence. Be specific and clear. Customize your communication to your audience.
#6. Read your emails during certain periods of the day. Read them once and do something with each message. Respond, forward with instructions, file or delete.
Your time is a precious commodity. Stop giving it away. Use your time efficiently and effectively by implementing these 6 steps. By doing so, you will begin to manage your time instead of time managing you!