Time management article

This article is an excerpt from audio program "Become a Master of Time Management in 30 Minutes" which is included in the TMI Toolbox.

Being efficient vs. being effective

Key to good time management.

By Robert Rolih

Imagine the following situation: You want to buy a new, big screen, high definition TV. You want a really good one and are prepared to pay a high price for it. You also have a very good friend who is a tech geek – he knows all about new technologies and owns three big screen TV sets himself.

What would you do?

Would you go on the Net, spend five hours comparing different TVs, read a ton of information about each one of them, and then go through a thousand customer reviews?

Or would you simply call your friend, ask him what he recommends, and only after that go on the Net and check his choices?

Well, with the first option you could be very efficient if you are good at searching the Net. As a matter of fact, you could be extremely efficient for the whole five or six hours you are doing the research.

You could select great search terms, read the content really fast, and so on. But it’s still the totally wrong thing to do if you have a friend who can help you achieve your goal in a few minutes.

So, calling your friend is effective. It’s the right thing to do because it will bring you closer to your goal fast.

Doing research on your own is not effective; it’s not the right thing to do in this situation, but it can be efficient and you can be very good at it. So, let me recap: effectiveness is doing things that bring you closer to your goals.

Efficiency is performing a task in the most economical manner possible. Now think about your work. Ask yourself, “Am I being productive or just active? Am I making up activities just to fill my time? Or am I doing things that will bring me closer to reaching my goals? And then ask a crucial question: “What are my most important goals right now?”

I see a lot of very busy people in companies all the time. They are constantly under pressure, they work all the time, and they are stressed. But when you take a closer look at what they are doing you will often find they are doing just a lot of stuff that has little value.

They shuffle papers, get interrupted all the time, surf the Net searching for god knows what, check every e-mail when it arrives, and so on. They spend the whole day doing activities that don’t help them achieve their goals. They are just doing stuff. The first thing you have to be clear about if you want to be good at time management is your goals.

What do you want to accomplish? Are you clear about that? If you own a business or manage a department, you probably have very clear financial and development goals. Like “open three new locations by the end of the year,” “launch a new product by the end of May,” or “increase our sales by 30% in the next year.”

Clear goals are crucial for success. If you don’t have them, set them now! When you set your goals, it is critical that you follow some rules about goal setting.

1st rule: Your goals should be specific. The clearer the goal, the clearer the outcome. So, always set specific goals that can be measured. Let me give you an example. If I say, “Next year we will increase our market share,” is this specific? Well, not really! But if I add “by four percentage points,” it makes this goal specific and measurable. There’s an old saying that goes, What gets measured, gets done, so always be specific when you set your goals.

2nd rule: Every goal must have a deadline. Human beings operate best when they have clear deadlines. Deadlines get us moving. So every goal you set should have a deadline – the date by which you will accomplish it.

3rd rule: Your goals should be challenging. Aim high: Set goals that will provide you with a challenge; but be careful – they must be realistic! You must believe you can achieve them.

4th rule: Write your goals down. Gene Donohue once said, The difference between a goal and a dream is the written word. So, write your goals down. This will make them concrete.

Ok, those were the four goal-setting rules.

But what if your goals depend on a boss, and you don’t know what they are? Then go to your boss and ask him! Always be clear what your boss expects from you. Otherwise, you will be doing the wrong things most of the time. So, the real secret of effective time management is choosing the right things to do. That means choosing the things that help you achieve your goals. And those things that help achieve your goals are the tasks that will bring you to your goals faster.

Best-selling author Timothy Ferriss once said: Doing the right things is infinitely more important than doing things right. Efficiency is still very important, but only when you do the right things – the things that will bring you closer to your goals.

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