"The presentation last night was not good, I need to manage my time better.
It pissed the client off because the presentation didn’t show what I was talking about, and it had no visual appeal. Still, I could crack the deal because I explained everything and stood in front of the screen to keep the focus on me and not the screen.
I knew this strategy won’t work again. I’m also not mad at myself for not having time yesterday. That last project completely took my time. What could I have done? But I knew this wouldn’t always work."
My friend Rohan, who is a Certified Financial Planner, told me about his time-management issues the last time we met. He is pretty good at what he does, in fact he is the best I know. He clearly knows the tips and tricks of his trade, but he hasn’t been able to manage his time well. It’s a common story for most of us we know Time Management is important but miss it completely. We think things are going well, but only to realize in the end that we needed more time.
Let’s look at the following techniques that can help us manage our time better.
60-20-20 Rule
According to this principle, plan your day or week in such a way that you spend 60% of the time on the value-adding tasks that earn you direct money, 20% on networking, reflection, planning and the remaining 20% on impromptu or unplanned tasks.
It’s up to you whether you want to use this principle for a day or for a week.
You can follow these steps to apply the 60-20-20 rule:
1) Write all the tasks you do in your normal day.
2) Classify them into critical and non-critical tasks.
3) Reclassify these tasks according to the 60-20-20 rule. Prioritise the critical tasks under 60% pocket.
Pomodoro Technique
This technique comes in handy when you need to protect yourself from all the distractions that the internet offers. It gets really hard to focus when someone just posted a comment on your latest IG post. You lose your entire day when someone comments on your blog post. Or if someone follows you, and you have to check all their IG posts to see who that guy is.
If that’s not enough, you see that the gadget you were eyeing last night is only available for 1 hour at that unbeatable price. You drop everything else, go straight there and complete the purchase.
In such cases, the Pomodoro technique comes in handy as it allows you to focus on your work.
Francesco Cirillo developed it in the 1990s and emphasized timing your work, creating focused sessions of 25 minutes and taking regular breaks. He has written a book on this technique.
The technique defines each 25-minute session as a Pomodoro, as it also allows you to not leave anything really important for a long time.
You can also use these apps - Focus Keeper, Stay Focussed, Todoist, and Remember the milk to follow this technique or Time Management.
At the end, I want to stress again to classify your tasks under Critical and Non-Critical and follow these techniques. It will help you improve the productivity, and thus your business performance.
This post is a part of Blogchatter A-Z Challenge- #blogchatterA2Z. Check out my A-Z Challenge theme, and read previous posts.