Welcome Back to Time Management

As you may notice this blog is late, which leads me nicely to what time management is all about: making your valuable time more efficient as well as expecting the unexpected.

I’m now going to give you a real life example of how time management techniques can help if there are lots of extra things thrown in to your working week.

Setting the Scene

I’m at home and it’s 1am. I’m typing this blog which I should have done a few days ago and I know I’ve got to get up in 5 hours for a meeting.

18 Hours Previously ...

I’m up at 6am and suited and booted for a meeting at 8am. Meeting goes well, but carries on until noon.

After grabbing something to eat, I run a couple of errands and head in to Manchester city centre for another meeting at 3pm. I arrive at 2.30pm and I get the opportunity to talk to a couple of people before it gets busy. Turns out to be a really great meeting, made a few good contacts, agreed to arrange 1 to 1’s and got invited to another event. However, when I realised it was 5.25pm and knew I had to get to Rhyl to visit somebody at 7pm, I knew I was on my back foot.

By the time I get home from Rhyl, it’s 10.30pm and I still hadn’t done any work … Not exactly true. You see, by using my time management techniques I deliberately packed my iPad, laptop and paperwork that morning before my meeting. This gave me the chance to benefit from opportunities that came along during the day.

Firstly, I managed a bit of work at the breakfast table before setting off to Manchester. When I got to Manchester I deliberately went to a bar near the event where I did some more work. This was a conscious strategy to get close enough to the event so I only had a couple of minutes walk, but not to go in so I wouldn’t get drawn into a conversation.

Secondly, after the meeting, on the way to Rhyl, I got my wife to drive which meant I could catch up with my emails.

Got home at around 11pm. I had a customer quote to finish, some other paperwork to do and this blog. So we’re now back to where I started - typing away at 1am.

The lessons that time management have taught me in the past have helped me this week: I’ve cleared a few things that I had on my calendar (see my first blog for more details), and I got about 6 and a half hours of work done today even with the unexpected trip to Rhyl. Overall, I had a good and productive day because of the time management techniques I used.

If you’ve been following these blogs you will know that this should have been about effective meetings, but I think you’ll agree that this practical example of how a few simple time management techniques can save the day has been worth the change.

I look forward to giving you my experience in effective meeting next week, now it’s time for me to manage my sleep!