Late for Time Management
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’Tis the Season to Feel Inadequate, Holidays, Special Occasions and Other Times Our Celebrations Get Out of Hand by Dorothy Rosby now available at Mitzi’s Books in downtown Rapid City and on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
I don’t know what this says about me, but I was late for a time management seminar. And I could have used every minute of it too. Theoretically, we all have the same 168 hours in our weeks, but I consistently come up short by around 35 hours. There’s clearly some leakage somewhere. Or some time mismanagement. What follows are tips I picked up at that part of the seminar I did make it to.
1) Focus! Let me demonstrate what a time waster lack of focus can be. I type the paragraph above at 6 a.m. Then it occurs to me that I could probably find some good time management tips online, including the ones I missed during the first ten minutes of the seminar. I go to the internet and up pops the headline “What diet experts order at Burger King.” That could be interesting. I check it out and now I’m hungry. I make and eat breakfast, load the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, and finally return to my computer at 7:10. I check my email, glance at Facebook and read the paragraph I’ve just written. Then it occurs to me, I could probably find some good time management tips online.
2) Plan. The seminar leader suggested that each week, we make a plan for the upcoming one. Then, at the end of every day, we jot down our list of what needs to be accomplished the next day in order to stay on track for the week. This sounds like an old-fashioned to-do list to me, and that’s something I am particularly good at. My to-do lists are so effective that I’m often able to use the same one three or four days in a row.
3) Handle email efficiently. The presenter at the time management seminar suggested we set aside time for dealing with emails, say first thing in the morning, just after lunch, and at the end of the day. He also said he clears his inbox every single day by doing one of five things with each message: reply, forward, schedule, file or delete with an emphasis on delete. This sounds clever to me since I check my email every time I hear that little ding and I still never get below 150 emails in my inbox. Now I finally understand why: I’ve been neglecting the reply, forward, schedule, file, or delete part. Especially the delete part.
4) Handle paper only once. Pay it, file it or toss it immediately with tossing being the preferred choice. I’ve been known to handle the same piece of junk mail 20 or 30 times. Junk mail arrives at my home by the truckload daily. Sometimes we open it; quite often we do not. Either way, it winds up next to our toaster though we have no intention of toasting it. At any rate, it takes at least one touch to get it from the mailbox to the toaster, a couple more to rifle through to see if there is anything important, at least one to stack it on top of yesterday’s mail when I realize there is not, and a few more to shove it all aside when I butter my toast.
5) Eat your frog the first thing in the morning. The frog, of course, is a metaphor for those tasks so unpleasant that you simply cannot bring yourself to do them. It’s important you summon your courage and swallow them first thing in the morning because frogs left uneaten have a way stinking up the whole house while you’re shuffling through yesterday’s junk mail or checking online for time management tips.
Dorothy Rosby is the author of ’Tis the Season to Feel Inadequate; Holidays, Special Occasions and Other Times Our Celebrations Get Out of Hand and other books.
