Hard Truths About Time Management and What You Can Do To Prosper

Time management — something you need to master if you want to achieve your goals, right? Maybe not! And it’s a common misunderstanding in the workplace. 

Truth be told, there may be several elements of time management that you don’t realize. Let’s unpack some hard truths about time management so you can start doing today what it takes for you and your business to prosper. 

What’s Time Management?

What is time management exactly? To put it simply, it’s your method and ability to manage your time, all with the goal of completing tasks by a deadline. 

With every business objective you start with a vision. That vision needs a plan with a timeline to help you achieve those goals. And in a perfect world, (you’re right, that doesn’t actually exist) the idea is, if you manage your time wisely you should be able to get everything done. But if truth be told, things don’t always work out that way.

Hard Truths You Need To Know

Running your business sometimes means dealing with unexpected events and mundane tasks. And let’s face it — that also means that even with time well-managed, there are days when you won’t get everything done. Below are a few reasons why this occurs:

Flawed Time Estimation 

According to research 17 percent of people estimate the correct time required to complete planned tasks. For the rest, time management can be challenging. 

Most people underestimate the time it takes to check off low-return tasks. For example, the meeting you have planned; how many meetings run over? Other common examples, how about catching up on work emails or the several social media channels that consistently take up more time than you expect. 

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day. Without the necessary discipline these flawed time estimations become task overruns and time killers. 

The good news is, we also tend to underestimate what we can do in a year. Finding the sweet spot between those over/under estimations is the key to effective planning.

Inaccurate Budget

As an entrepreneur or business owner, you know time is money. Yet, many business owners don’t put as much planning into their time, energy and priorities as they do their finances. This is problematic since they are very much one in the same. 

The time spent on menial tasks and low-priority activities drastically affects profits. Trying to balance your time while checking off every item on your to-do-list is not the most effective approach. All tasks are not equal in importance.  Best practice is to reprioritize frequently and delegate as much as possible. Think 85 percent strategy and 15 percent tactics.

Decision Fatigue   

There’s no doubt you are constantly bombarded with new information, ideas, and the need to make decisions for your business. Always thinking about how each task will affect your business’s future can also have a big impact on you. 

Constantly running predictions and calculations on each task that needs to get done can lead to decision fatigue. We’ve all felt it at times. It’s that weary feeling you get when faced with too many decisions. And when you’re using up all your mental energy to make decisions, the effectiveness of decision making diminishes and it becomes increasingly difficult to make smart business choices. 

Taking strategic breaks can boost productivity. This requires a certain level of mindfulness and the ability to recognize when you’re in a great flow state versus a fidgety, exhausted state.

What You Need To Prosper 

Time management is a phrase you hear often in the workplace. The only issue is, it doesn’t really work effectively. 

You have the same 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days in a year just like anyone else. Trying to tackle every job that needs finishing is like trying to stay on a balance board — balancing lasts a short amount of time before you fall off and have to reset. It’s just not sustainable. 

Instead, consider building systems that empower you to work smart, not hard. Working on priority management will help you, your team and your company prosper. It’s not only semantics. Priority management is completely different from time management. It focuses on ranking, evaluating, and performing your tasks based on the importance of the task and expected return of outcomes.

Priority management is much more effective then time management. It’s freeing to have harmonized priorities. It’s also sustainable Priority management helps you better manage your expectations and also achieve your most important goals. 

Setting your business on a path to success is all about priority management. 

To learn more about priority management, get in touch with us today and join us in the next article for more about how to effectively allocate your resources, identify potential bottlenecks and ultimately achieve more and prosper.