Time is a very precious and costly commodity that many of us take for granted. Few people will readily admit that large parts of our working day are wasted through countless interruptions, procrastination, and clutter. Maximize your life through minimizing what is in it by starting with these ten creative strategies for managing and organizing a more successful enterprise. 1. Create a time management system that suits your lifestyle, preferences, and values.
Throw away all
expensive time management systems that do not work for you. We all have preferences about how, when, and where to complete certain tasks and activities. By honoring those preferences, it will be much easier to accomplish more in less time.
2. Establish visiting hours.
By establishing and announcing visiting hours (one hour per day,) you can reduce unnecessary interruptions while offering people opportunity to communicate with you in a relaxed setting.
3. Create a brain dump.
Creative people need space and a place for recording sudden inspirations, ideas, and thoughts that are often distracting during task mode. Keep a notebook, tape recorder, or file on hand to record both complex and simple ideas. Be creative by recording music, sketching and drawing, or journaling through storytelling.
4. Assign a dollar value to total time wasted in one day.
How much time do you spend per day: Locating papers? Looking for misplaced items? Duplicating efforts? Being annoyed because you can't find things? Dealing with interruptions that are unnecessary? Total this time, set a dollar amount per hour, and estimate what your time is worth. Cut wasted time in half, and pay yourself a weekly salary based on time you saved. Reward yourself with something meaningful with money earned.
5. Adopt a worst in, first out policy or delegate undesirable tasks to someone else.
Procrastination is one of biggest enemies of a well-managed day. Often, we procrastinate because we do not like task, do not have right equipment, or we do not have enough information to make a decision. Handle worst problems first, get them done, and move on to fun stuff. If you continue to procrastinate, delegate task or hire someone to take task off your hands.
