“Harvard ManageMentor Time Management” Notes 时间管理 笔记
Categories: Uncategorized; Tagged with: Time Management • 时间管理 • 读书笔记; @ April 6th, 2014 22:43Why Manage Your Time?
Time management is the discipline of organizing, allocating, and controlling time you use for activities in such a way that you achieve your desired results. Time management forces you to be explicit about what you value and helps you assign your efforts accordingly.
Identifying and prioritizing Goals
Types of goals:
Critical: “must be accomplished in order for your department or unit to continue running successfully”
Enabling: “create a more desirable business condition in the long run or take advantage of a business opportunity”
Nice-to-have: “enhance your business—by making activities faster, easier, or more appealing—but don’t revolutionize your business”
Prioritize your goals
Distinguish between urgent and crucial tasks:
”Urgent tasks demand immediate attention. But every urgent matter does not necessarily support a critical goal.”
Breaking Goals into Tasks
Identify required tasks; Prioritize tasks; Sequence tasks; Estimate required time;
Analyzing How You Spend Your Time
Understand how you’re currently spending time;
Assign a priority to each activity: Critical/Enabling/Nice-to-have
Identify ways to improve your use of time
Common ‘Time-Wasters’
Procrastination
Unpleasant or uninteresting task / Fear of failure / Unclear starting point
Unpleasant or uninteresting task
- Delegate the task—it may not be unpleasant to someone else.
- Admit you’re procrastinating—and get the job done.
- Envision how good you’ll feel once you’ve completed the task.
- Schedule the task in a way that makes turning back impossible.
Fear of failure
- If you lack the training or resources needed to complete an assignment, say so—and get the help you need.
- If your fear stems from lack of self-confidence, defuse it by being proactive and planning all the things you’ll have to do to complete the job.
- Get on with the job: Activity can help dispel fear.
Unclear starting point
- Jump in anywhere. You’ll likely find a productive way forward.
- Break the job into component parts, then specify tasks needed to complete each part. Sequence them—then tackle the first task.
Schedule overloading
Know your key responsibilities and goals; Delegate; Don’t assume everything has to be done; Learn to say no to your peers and boss;
Direct reports’ problems
- Provide feedback on direct reports’ proposed solutions to a problem, but make sure employees—not you—implement the solutions.
Email and paperwork overload
heck e-mail only at assigned times during the day.
Distractions and switching costs
Scheduling Time More Effectively
- Keep “urgent but unimportant” and low-priority tasks off the list entirely.
- Block off more “free time” in your daily schedule to “Build flexibility into your schedule”
Dealing with Time-Wasting Bosses
Get clear directions on your boss’s preferences;
Consider how you might be wasting your supervisor’s time
- Don’t bring problems to your boss to handle. Instead, bring proposed solutions, and seek his or her feedback.
- Accommodate your boss’s work style. For example, if he or she prefers to receive information in writing rather than in person, honor those preferences.
At last, forgot it….
