Time Management

Goal setting can be used in every area of your life. Setting goals puts you ahead of the pack! Some people blame everything that goes wrong in their life on something or someone else.

Successful people dedicate themselves to taking responsibility for their lives, no matter what the unforeseen or uncontrollable events.

POSITIVE: Who could get fired up about a goal such as "Find a career that's not boring"? Goals should be phrased positively, so they help you feel good about yourself and what you're trying to accomplish. A better alternative might be this: "Enrol in pre-law classes so I can help people with legal problems someday."

PERSONAL: Goals must be personal. They must reflect your own dreams and values, not those of friends, family, or the media. When crafting your goal statement, always use the word “I” in the sentence to brand it as your own. When your goals are personal, you'll be more motivated to succeed and take greater pride in your accomplishments.

POSSIBLE: When setting goals, be sure to consider what's possible and within your control. Getting into an Ivy League university may be possible if you are earning good grades but unrealistic if you're struggling. In the latter case, a more reasonable goal might be to attend a university or trade school that offers courses related to your chosen career. You might also pursue volunteer work that would strengthen your college applications.

The SMART Way

• Specific: Success coach Jack Canfield states in his book The Success Principles that, “Vague goals produce vague results.” In order for you to achieve a goal, you must be very clear about what exactly you want. Often creating a list of benefits that the accomplishment of your goal will bring to your life, will you give your mind a compelling reason to pursue that goal.

• Measurable: It’s crucial for goal achievement that you are able to track your progress towards your goal. That’s why all goals need some form of objective measuring system so that you can stay on track and become motivated when you enjoy the sweet taste of quantifiable progress.

• Achievable: Setting big goals is great, but setting unrealistic goals will just de-motivate you. A good goal is one that challenges but is not so unrealistic that you have virtually no chance of accomplishing it.

• Relevant: Before you even set goals, it’s a good idea to sit down and define your core values and your life purpose because it’s these tools that ultimately decide how and what goals you choose for your life. Goals, in and of themselves, do not provide any happiness. Goals that are in harmony with our life purpose do have the power to make us happy.

• Timed: Without setting deadlines for your goals, you have no real compelling reason or motivation to start working on them. By setting a deadline, your subconscious mind begins to work on that goal, night and day, to bring you closer to achievement.

Time management is about more than just managing our time; it is about managing ourselves in relation to time. It means being willing to experiment with different methods and ideas to enable you to find the best way to make maximum use of time.

This technique teaches you to focus on what's really important in your life and your life's work. Simply put, the 80/20 rule states that the relationship between input and output is rarely, if ever, balanced. When applied to work, it means that approximately 20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results. Learning to recognize and then focus on that 20 percent is the key to making the most effective use of your time. Here are two quick tips to develop 80/20 thinking.

Take a good look at the people around you. Twenty percent of your colleagues, staff and patients probably give you 80 percent of the support and satisfaction you need. They are your true advocates. Take good care of them. Likewise, you can probably name several friends and family members who would be there for you under any circumstances. Try not to put them on the back burner.

Examine your work. Ask yourself, “What do I really want to do with my life and my time? What 20 percent of my work should I be focusing on?”

Urgent/Important Matrix (Task-Priority)

This matrix is driven by clear and effective concepts:

- If everything is urgent, then everything loses its urgency.

- If everything is important then nothing I more important

Urgency and Importance are the coordinates of the space. There is no regular separation of the axes by continuous values, just binary separation: “yes” or “no”, “Urgent” and “Not Urgent”, “Important” and “Not Important”.

The Right top field corresponds to “Urgent & Important” tasks.

Tasks that are Urgent and Important at the same time will fall into this category. For example, addressing safety or quality issues. These tasks receive the highest priority: “Do First”.

The left top field corresponds to “Important & Not Urgent” tasks.

For example, projects aiming to improve production yield, reduce cost or improve the reliability of the product. According to UIM, all tasks that fall into this category are getting priority: “Do Later”.

The right bottom field corresponds to “Urgent & Not Important” tasks.

For example, participate in a meeting where you are not a decision-maker. It is urgent because the meeting is scheduled to start in 30 minutes, but the importance is zero since you cannot impact the decision-making process. UIM recommends delegating such tasks – “Delegate”.

The left bottom field corresponds to “Not Urgent & Not Important” tasks.

For example, some tasks that are not impacting your current status or the status of your activity at work. Such as analyzing the daylight-saving impact on some production parameters. Simply drop such tasks, eliminate the tasks or the projects that fall into this category –

Procrastination is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. The word has originated from the Latin word procrastinatus, which itself evolved from the prefix pro-, meaning "forward," and crastinus, meaning "of tomorrow."Oftentimes, it is a habitual human behavior. It is a common human experience involving delay in everyday chores or even putting off salient tasks such as attending an appointment, submitting a job report or academic assignment, or broaching a stressful issue with a partner. Although typically perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one's productivity often associated with depression, low self-esteem, guilt, and inadequacy, it can also be considered a wise response to certain demands that could present risky or negative outcomes or require waiting for new information to arrive.

From a cultural and a social perspective, students from both Western and non-Western cultures are found to exhibit academic procrastination, but for different reasons. Students from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or from failing to learn as much as they should have, whereas students from non-Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid looking incompetent or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability in front of their peers. It is also important to consider how different cultural perspectives of time management can impact procrastination. For example, in cultures that have a multi-active view of time, people tend to place a higher value on making sure a job is done accurately before finishing. In cultures with a linear view of time, people tend to designate a certain amount of time on a task and stop once the allotted time has expired.

A study of behavioral patterns of pigeons through delayed gratification suggests that procrastination is not unique to humans, but can also be observed in some other animals. There are experiments finding clear evidence for "procrastination" among pigeons, which show that pigeons tend to choose a complex but delayed task rather than an easy but hurry-up one.

Crisis management is the application of strategies designed to help an organization deal with a sudden and significant negative event.

A crisis can occur as a result of an unpredictable event or an unforeseeable consequence of some event that had been considered as a potential risk. In either case, crises almost invariably require that decisions be made quickly to limit damage to the organization.

The nature of the potential damage varies based on the nature of the crisis. In most cases though, a crisis can affect health or safety, the organization's finances, the organization's reputation, or some combination of these. A devastating fire could be a crisis that puts the organization's finances in jeopardy. However, if the fire occurs during business hours, then the fire might also jeopardize health and safety since employees may find themselves in harm's way.

Crisis management goals

Crisis management seeks to minimize the damage a crisis causes. However, this does not mean crisis management is the same thing as crisis response. Instead, crisis management is a comprehensive process that is put into practice before a crisis even happens. Crisis management practices are engaged before, during, and after a crisis.

Tips for effective emails management

1. Prioritize 20% emails; Defer 80%

Not all emails are the same. I love the 80/20 rule because it applies to every single area of our lives. Including emails. The 80/20 rule is the idea that 20% of inputs are responsible for 80% of the outputs in any situation. Hence, to be effective, we should focus on 20% of inputs that lead to 80% of outputs. Likewise, we should focus on 20% high-value emails that lead to maximum output.

For the 20% emails, I give them a significant priority. I usually reply to them immediately (especially if they meet the 1-minute rule in #9); if not I’ll get to them in 1-3 days’ time. For 80% of mail, I take a longer time to reply, sometimes not even replying to (see point #4).

2. Have a “Reply by XX Day” folder

File the mail that needs your reply in a “Reply by XX Day” folder, where XX is the day of the week. I set aside 3 days every week to reply to emails – Tues, Thu, and Sat. This way I’m not pressured to reply immediately whenever I get the mail. I read it, mentally acknowledge it, and think over it until it’s time to reply (an average of 3-8 days from receipt of the mail).

Realize you don’t need to reply to every mail

Despite what you think, you don’t need to reply to every mail. Sometimes, no reply after a certain time period can be considered a reply in itself too.

3. Create template replies if you often send similar replies

If you look through your sent folder, you’ll probably find a trend in things you reply to. As you reply, you would customize them accordingly to fit the needs of the original mail. This will save you huge amounts of time, compared to in the past when you would type emails from scratch.

4. Read only the emails that are relevant

I subscribe to several newsletters – such as on fitness, self-help, blogging, and business, but I don’t read all the emails they send. I don’t delete them either, because I know they have valuable information. Instead, I set Gmail to automatically archive them to different labels (folders). Blog mails get archived into the blogging folder, fitness emails get archived into the health & fitness folder, and so on. As of now, I have about 30 folders. I only read them when I want to get more information on the topic.

5. Structure your mails into categories

Folders (or labels, if you use Gmail) are there to help you organize your mails.

Firstly, use a relevant naming system for what you’re doing. If your biggest priorities now are, say, (1) writing a book and (2) losing weight, then name your folders like that.

Secondly, use a hierarchy structure. first level folders are for the big categories, and second-level folders are for sub-categories, and so on. For example, I have “Admin” as a first-level folder, and “Back-Up”, “Accounting”, “Accounts”, etc as second-level folders. If need be, I have third-level folders to further segment them. Gmail has an add-on that lets you use different tier labels (Settings > Labs > Nested Labels)

6. Use filters

Filters are tools that help you sort out the mail automatically when it gets into your mail. There are 2 basic things that are required for a filter – (1) The term to look out for (2) Action to apply if the term is matched. As of now, my Gmail has about 20 different filters set up for different email addresses, subject titles, body text, and whatnot. Depending on what filter it is, the mail will be automatically sorted into a respective folder / archived. This minimizes the amount; of administrative actions, I need to do.

7. Use the 1 Minute rule when replying

If it takes within 1 minute to reply, reply to it immediately and archive it. Don’t let it sit in your mailbox for ages. It’s going to take even more effort letting it hover around your mind and being constantly reminded that you need to reply. Just make sure you keep to the 1-minute time frame when replying so it does not take more time than needed. This helps me to clear a big batch of mail in a short amount of time.

8. Set a limit to the time you spend in the inbox

Beyond the 1-minute rule, limit the overall time you spend in your inbox. The next time you check your mail, time yourself. See how long it take to process, read, reply, and sort through your mail. Then ask yourself how much of that time is well-spent. Chances are, most of that served absolutely no purpose.

9. (Ruthlessly) Unsubscribe from things you don’t read

In your cruising around the web, you probably sign up for a fair share of newsletters and feeds on impulse which you lose interest in afterward. If you find yourself repeatedly deleting the mail from your subscriptions, it’s a cue that you should just unsubscribe immediately.