Most common time management principles

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• Effective time management is not doing things faster or better but doing the right things. The first step should therefore be to identify your key goals.
• The second step is prioritization – putting those goals into order of importance.
• Important does not mean the same thing as urgent. If you plan properly, you should be able to avoid things unexpectedly becoming urgent and consequently distracting you from those goals which are truly important.
• Priorities will, naturally, change but ideally only when something is important as well as urgent.
• Having identified the most important thing to do at any one point in time, concentrate on it 100 percent, to the total exclusion of all else.
• Once you have started a task, always try to finish it. Stress, tiredness, anxiety and loss of motivation are often brought about by the thought of things you have left outstanding or unfinished.
• Do not put off tasks you find unpleasant or difficult. They too will sap your energy – and putting them off will not make them any easier.
• Be aware of when you are at your best. Do the more creative and demanding jobs at these times, and leave tasks which call for less concentration for other times of the day.
• Make large amounts of work manageable by chopping them up into bite-sized pieces.
• The best way to save a lot of time is to spend a little. Always thing before you act. Them, once you are clear both about your objective and the best way to achieve it, get straight on with it.
• Save money as well as time when you use the telephone by preparing for each call before making it. Keep your objectives clearly in mind, and have all the paperwork you will need on the desk in front of you.
• Keep yourself well organized with only one job on your desk at a time and the rest sorted into appropriate piles.
• Set deadlines for everything you have to do – and keep to them.
• Keep interruptions and distractions to a minimum. If this areal gives you problems, analyze why interruptions occur, then you will be able to take appropriate action to prevent them.
• Make time to relax and unwind.
• Make sure you know exactly how you are using your time.
• Keep a log for a week or two. Most people find the results enlightening, if frequently embarrassing (but you do not have to show them to anyone else).

One might be pardoned for thinking that time management when you are working from home ought to be so much easier than working in a busy office with endless interruptions from staff, numbers of priorities all at the same time. Whether it is easier or not depends not only on your application of time management principles but also your abilities in a couple of other areas of management.