7 Time Management Skills Practiced by Successful People
Start your day early.
Ask successful people what time they get up in the morning and you’ll quickly see a theme: these folks are up at the crack of dawn to take full advantage of the day. Business finance company Fleximize polled some of today’s most prominent figures about their morning habits. Here’s what it found. Apple CEO Tim Cook gets up at 5 a.m. Vogue editor Anna Wintour rises at 5:45 a.m. to play tennis before going into the office. And Oprah wakes up at 6 a.m. to meditate and run on the treadmill before heading to the studio. Notice another helpful theme here: Exercise is a big part of successful people’s lives.
Set priorities and goals when planning your day.
A daily work plan enables people to determine the course of their day and then make incremental progress toward their goals. Successful businesspeople recognize that there are both urgent and important matters every day. They approach the day knowing how to balance the two and save more menial tasks for later. Rob Rawson, CEO of TimeManagement.com, works on his highest-priority items first thing in the morning before getting derailed by email and other trivial tasks. Breaking down goals into chunks makes it easier to actually progress toward achieving them. Some career coaches suggest splitting your time into “focus” days and “buffer” days. The former is for big-picture things like business development and employee management. Buffer days, on the other hand, are for the nitty-gritty things like paperwork and accounting.
Focus on one task at a time.
It’s very common to think that multitasking is the most efficient use of time. But it turns out that tackling multiple things at once can actually waste more time. Neuroscientist Earl Miller says that, for the most part, we simply can't focus on more than one thing at a time. "People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," he says. True efficiency means focusing on one thing at a time and finishing it before moving on to the next task.
Learn to delegate.
You may wear many hats, but you can’t be in all places at all times. Take time to screen and hire the best employees so you can trust in your team. Then, instead of trying to do it all yourself, you can relinquish some control and assign tasks to those who are working for you.
Apply the 80/20 rule.
According to the Pareto Principle (i.e., the 80/20 rule), 20 percent of actions drive 80 percent of results. And the other 80 percent accounts for only 20 percent of results. Translated, this means that successful people know that the top priorities (or the top 20 percent) are going to drive the most important results. They delegate the rest.
Pencil in some time for distractions and interruptions.
If you plan every day down to the second, you’ll never have time for unexpected challenges. Try to leave at least one hour each day for the unplanned. Also, it’s a good idea to schedule open office hours or make time available for colleagues and collaboration. If you overschedule yourself, you’re almost always going to fall behind.
Say no more often and master the art of short meetings.
NewBrand Analytics CEO Kristin Muhlner reigns supreme when it comes to saying no, which she believes is one of the keys to not overextending yourself both in your professional and personal lives. This goes hand in hand with saying yes to too many meetings, of which many companies are guilty. Successful people recognize which meetings are critical to attend and then either say no to others or hold them to a very short timeframe (social communication platform Skejul recommends 7 to 11 minutes as a benchmark).
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