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Balancing_PLay_and_wORK_19_Ways_to_Leverage_Your_TimeBalancing_PLay_and_wORK_19_Ways_to_Leverage_Your_Time
| Balancing PLay and wORK: 19 Ways to Leverage Your TimeBalancing PLay and wORK: 19 Ways to Leverage Your Time
One basic concept of effective time management is to create ways
to leverage your time. By leverage we mean, for example, you put
in 1 hour and gain a return, or output, equivalent to 5, or 10,
or 20 hours...
In this article we'll explore 19 ways you can gain leverage on
your time. This is actually a real-time case study in using our
time well - since this article is too long and has too many
ideas to action all at once. How will you act to get leverage
from these ideas?
Time is such a strange, strange thing. We talk about "managing
time". But we cannot manage time. It just goes on tick-tock,
tick-tock, regardless of what we do, or say, or think.
Time's the wrong subject of the sentence. It is you, and others,
and activities and events, you and I really manage - in relation
to time. Not time itself.
And time is not something you can save or lose. It is not a
thing you have, or ever had. Time is what you live in. And
breathe in. Like the air.
So to "leverage" time we really manage yourself, and your tasks,
and your behavior, and your situations differently - better,
smarter, easier, more playfully yes - but differently.
Here, then, are 19 Ways Your Can Leverage Your Time
1. Start at the end, not the beginning. For maximum time
leverage, set yourself big goals. Big goals commit you, and give
you clear choices. With these Big Ends in mind, you will know
what's important to you, and your job, and your customers. And
you can start to define clear decision-making rules: "This is
very important. This is less important. This is trivial and
unimportant..."
2. With your Big Goals as your base, decide what's really
important and what's trivial. And, you can start to say "No!"
whenever possible, to meaningless, trivial, mundane, unimportant
time-wasting, time-absorbing tasks, activities, projects, jobs,
careers, relationships, clients, hobbies, e-mails, voice-mails,
paper...
3. Assign the pieces of tasks you're not especially good at to
anyone you legitimately can.
4. Cut them down - in volume, in time taken, in the "perfection"
with which you do them.
5. Cut them out altogether. Yes, that's right, just stop doing
them.
6. Take time daily to decide, and re-decide as priorities
change, what truly are your big "boulders". And keep these
actively in my focus - whenever, and wherever, you can. List
them and keep them in front of you. Make a big colorful poster
of them. Draw them, so your creative, "everything is possible",
visualizing, right brain can work on them.
7. Always choose to do "boulders" [big, valuable tasks, goals,
projects] over "sand" [small, trivial, non-valuable tasks,
goals, projects].
8. Create and define important, valuable, whole, regular,
systematic jobs - with a beginning and ending. And, if someone
else can do them, and someone else is available, delegate these
jobs permanently and completely to others.
9. If you have to, employ someone new, part-time or full-time,
to do it instead of you. Delegation is best for jobs that need
to be done regularly, and done 100% well. Almost any "complete"
job can be delegated.
10. Focus on, volunteer for, emphasize, choose, what you like,
what you're good at, what you find FUN!
11. What you don't find fun, make fun. Lack of fun de- leverages
tasks, and time. Fun leverages it. So build in fun, consciously.
Create fun. BE fun.
12. Learn, and practice the skill and art of saying "No!"
(nicely) - especially to chronic time wasters.
13. Aim to do far more, far less perfectly.
14. Do no more than 7 things really well, or excellently.
"Excellence" is not "perfect", but rather "fit for its purpose".
15. When faced with large daunting tasks or projects, break them
down into smaller tasks - and build in rewards for achieving
some of the smaller steps.
16. Be more effective: Stop doing the wrong things well.
17. And if the right things push your skill frontiers, learn to
do the right things poorly, first. Then to do them well, over
time, second.
18. Train your customers to do more. Give them the tools; teach
them how to use the tools.
19. Use technology to reduce the time you take to do tasks.
About the author:
Best Regards, Robert Brents, "The 80/20 Guy"
http://www.RobertBrents.com For your free four-lesson e-seminar,
How To Write, Publish, Market & Promote Profitable How-To
Manuals, email mailto:freehowtoeseminar@sendfree.com Copyright
2001 Robert Brents and Blue Gecko Press.
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