Organize IT

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Good time management involves being both effective and efficient. You have to be able to pick out the right tasks and then do them in the most economical way. In the first part of this series I looked at effectiveness. As I discussed then, that is certainly the most important stage. However it also needs to be tied with efficient work practices to really save you time. It’s no good deciding you’re going to write that life changing book you’ve always wanted to do if you are going to procrastinate all the time. Likewise, focusing on preparations for a big work conference is all well and good but if you’re not breaking the workload down into manageable chunks you’re going to be wasting time.

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When it comes to good time management you need to learn to be two things – effective and efficient. In basic terms that means you have to be able to pick out the right tasks and then do them in the most economical way. In this two part series I want to look at both approaches and discuss my own experiences of how I achieve them. Firstly I will look at how to be effective. It’s important to understand how significant this stage is. It’s pointless working on something efficiently if you don’t need to do it in the first place.

Now we finally come to the top of the needs prioritizing mountain. As I mentioned previously, prioritizing by needs is where tasks are prioritized by whether you need, should, or just want to do them. In basic terms a task becomes a “need” when putting it off any longer would result in drastic consequences. If you don’t pay your bill you will get your electricity cut off. If you don’t hand in your college work before the deadline you will fail the course. If you don’t prepare meeting notes for your boss he will discipline you.

Welcome to the second part of my guide covering prioritizing by needs, where tasks are prioritized by whether you need, should, or just want to do them. I’ve already introduced the concept and last week I discussed tasks you want to do. Today I am going to look at the next stage in the system, things you should do.

This is a guest post by Chris Bowler.

I recently returned to work after four months of parental leave. Four months does not seem like a long time, but it was long enough that I forgot about some of the aspects of working on a larger team in the same physical location. Specifically, I had forgotten just how many interruptions there are at the office. In comparison, even three kids at home were no match for the number of interlopers appearing at my office door. How does a person remain productive in the face of these distractions? What I’m going to say here is common sense, but I needed to remind myself of these ideas and thought other folks could use them as well.