Time Management: You’re Doing More Than You Think

I used to have a lot of stress at the end of a week when I would not have accomplished all the things I wanted to do. If some of those things carried on to another week, I would stress about them again. This wasn’t a strategy that was working for me and I wanted to know how to manage my time better so I could get more things done.

I thought about several ways to do that, and as I discounted them one by one, I realized I needed two things for a time management solution to work for me:

• It had to be easy to do
• It had to be something that I could do quickly

Easy means different things to different people. For you, it might mean a time management digital app where you can track the things you do in a day. For me, it was a one-page Word document. I wanted to see everything on one page.

Quickly is also a subjective term. I didn’t want to spend an hour on time management tracking, so I settled on 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes.

How Do I Manage My Time Effectively?

Here’s what my time management tracker looks like:

At the top of the page, I have the week from Monday to Sunday.

I have 6 headings on the sheet: speaking and outreach, book, social media, consulting, other, and carryovers. The first four are areas where I want to get things accomplished. The “other” section is for stuff that doesn’t fit in those prior categories but is something I want to cover. The “carryovers” section is for things that I am moving on to next week.

I then have bullet points for the things I did or results that match up to each category. For example, under the book category, I have Date: Pitched book to ABC College entrepreneurship program. I do this for all categories.

The best part about this format for me is that to do the next week, I just copy the previous week’s page, paste it onto a new page, change the date and then I have an instant reference to work off for this week’s entries which further helps with my time management! For example, I see that last week I emailed the ABC Chamber of Commerce about speaking at an upcoming event and didn’t get a response, so I know to make a note in my planner to follow up on that. This helps ensure the time I took to reach out isn’t wasted, and it helps out the event planner who might have forgotten to respond.

Here’s a screenshot of my actual time management tracker with a privacy check in place:

Time Management Exercise Results

There were several positive outcomes from this time management exercise for me:

• Follow Ups: It helped me note my follow-ups for the following week which was a huge benefit. I almost always received a response with a follow-up (and was often thanked for doing so) which resulted in business opportunities.
• Accomplishment: It is a tracker of what I am doing, and it made me appreciate how much I was accomplishing every week.
• What Really Matters: Many things on my carryovers section ended up coming off my task list entirely. They just weren’t important enough for me to commit time to doing them. It doesn’t mean they’ll never get done, it just means they aren’t a priority task.

Tips to Improve Your Time Management and Get Things Done

I may only have 90 days of wisdom with my personal time management tracking exercise, but I have 18 years of helping clients stay on track with their marketing. Here are my best tips on how to succeed in time management strategies:

Use What Works For You

In the speaking business, there are many digital platforms that people use to organize their days. They do 500 things for you – all of which are awesome to grow your business. That said, I use a paper planner for my week and a Word document for my weekly tracking exercise. If you’re going to be successful at seeing how you spend your time, pick something easy to use.

Choose a Quick and Easy Method

The quicker and easier it is, the more likely you will do it. My weekly update takes 5 minutes. It’s not going to win an award for the prettiest time management tracker, but its purpose is not to be pretty, it’s to be effective. For me.

Make it Simple to Get Back on Track

When something is easy to complete, and you miss a week doing it, it’s easy to get back on track. Sometimes it was Monday morning for the next week before I completed my time management tracker, and because it only took 5 minutes, it was easy to get back on track.

Enjoy Feeling Accomplished with Your Time Management Skills

Next to the follow-up benefits of this time management tracking exercise, the next biggest win for me is feeling more accomplished and relaxed about the work I am getting done. Sometimes when you’re embarking on a new project, it takes a while to notice results, and this tracker is an easy way to look back and see that you’re moving in the right direction.

Try tracking your time for the next quarter and see what you think.

Chapter 4 of my book – Forward Thinking for Your Business – is about making time for marketing. If marketing s getting caught up in your carryovers, you might need some help.

If you need to book consulting time with Jennifer, email her at jenn[email protected] or call 613-312-7824.