Top Five Time
Management Practices
By Damien Parker and Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
From our 30 years’ experience in the field of time management, we’ve
developed the Top Five Time Management Practices to help you pack more
punch into every day. And here they are:
1. Plan an hour per day for “Me Time”
Give 23 hours to the world, but keep one hour for yourself. During this hour,
add a new dimension to your life that hasn’t been there before because you
didn’t feel you had the time for it. Read books, learn a hobby, learn a foreign
language, develop computer skills, spend time on health development. etc.
One hour per day is 365 hours per year.
The average college course is about 35 classroom hours – that equals 10
college courses per year! One hour per day and you become a full-time
student! By taking one hour per day of focused study, you can become a
world-class expert in a topic of your choice. Would your future be more
secure, certain, and successful if you became a world-class expert in a topic of
your choice?
2. Establish a regular reading program
It can be just 15 minutes a day. Even with that small investment, the average
person will read 15 books in a year.
Also, consider taking a speed-reading course. I did. It helped me to double my
reading rate and comprehension. I can now read twice as much in the same
time period.
3. Overload your days
Build a daily action plan that includes not only the things you “have to do”, but
the things you “want to do”. Parkinson’s Law tells us that a project will tend
to expand with the time allocated for it. If we give ourselves one thing to do
during the day, it will take us all day.
3. Overload your days (continued)
If we give ourselves two things to do during the day, we get them both done. If we give
ourselves 12 things to do, we may not get 12 done, but we may get eight done.
Having a lot to do in a day creates a healthy sense of pressure on us to get focused and get it
done. We almost automatically become better time managers, less likely to suffer interruptions,
not waste time in meetings, etc. by having a lot to do. (“If you want to get something done, give
it to a busy person.”)
4. Prioritise your list of “things to do”
Some of our tasks are “crucial” and some of our tasks are “not crucial”. We have a tendency to
gravitate to the “not crucial” items, because they’re typically quicker, more fun, and easier to do.
Identify the most important task you need to do and label it as “1”, the second most important
task as “2”, etc. Then tackle the items in their order of importance.
5. Radiate a genuine, positive attitude
Often, like attracts like… and it repels the opposite. When you are in a negative mood, you tend
to repel positive people who do not want to be drained and strained, and brought down by your
negativity. And, when you are in a negative mood, you will attract the other negative people who
want to share their stories of misery so that the two of you can compare experiences to decide
who has the worst life.
Positive people help to bring us up. Negative people help to bring us down.