Articles
Time Management Exercises
© 2003 Patricia Katz, Optimus Consulting
These time management exercises will give you a productivity workout on your road to becoming a high performance time manager.
Time management exercises are to life management what weight training sessions are to an athlete, or scale practices are to a musician.
The more adept you become at applying individual time skills, the greater the harmony between your expectations and your real life experience.
Practising these time management exercises will help you build your productivity and performance every day.
Time Management Exercise #1 - Become A Better Estimator
Choose three tasks that you will be working on this week. Write down your estimate of how long each task will take to complete.
As you work, on these tasks, track the real time spent on each. At the end of the week, compare your estimates to actual.
If you were within 20% of your estimate, congratulations. If you were beyond or below the 20% mark, look for reasons why you might have over or underestimated the time required. Use your insights to adjust your estimates on next week's projects.
Repeat weekly for one month to improve your ability to estimate required task times.
Time Management Exercise #2 - An Exercise In Focus
Take 15 minutes at the beginning of the next week and note down your top priorities for the following seven days. List several items for each of life's most common arenas: work, family, community and personal life.
Post this list in a prominent spot where you will see it every day. Pause for a moment to read the full list each morning.
At the end of the week, review the list and calculate the number of tasks you were able to complete or move forward. See if you can maintain or improve that number each week.
Time Management Exercise #3 - Prime Time Log
Identify your prime time - that period of the day when you find it easiest to be productive and focused. Some people are early or mid morning people. Others are more alert in the afternoon or evening.
Pick a two hour slot during your prime time. For one full week, keep a log of the tasks that you worked on during this time slot. Every 15 minutes during that prime time period, jot down what you were doing in the last quarter hour.
At the end of the week, analyze the log. Calculate how much of your prime time you actually devoted to high priority tasks. See if you can improve on that proportion next week.
Patricia Katz, MCE CHRP, works with the overloaded and overwhelmed to accomplish what matters most and find more peace of mind in the process. Based in Western Canada, this speaker and author of three books specializes in productivity and perspective. To bring Patricia’s expertise to your organization, call toll free (877-728-5289).
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