Time Management

The first part of your focus on results should be to work out how much your

time costs. This helps you to see if you are spending your time profitably.If you work for

an organization, calculate how much you cost it each year. Include your salary, payroll

taxes, the cost of office space you occupy, equipment and facilities you use, expenses,

administrative support, etc. If you are self-employed, work the annual running costs of

your business. To this figure add a guesstimate of the amount of profit you should

generate by your activity. If you work normal hours, you will have approximately 200

productive days each year. If you work 7Ð... hours each day, this equates to 1,500 hours in

a year. From these figures, calculate an hourly rate. This should give a reasonable estimate

of how much your time is worth this may be a surprisingly large amount! When you are

deciding whether or not to take a task on, think about this value - are you wasting your or

your organization's resources on a low yield task? An important part of focusing on results

is working out what to focus on! Many people work very hard all day doing little jobs that

do not actually affect the quality of their work. This section concentrates on three areas

-clarifying what you enjoy understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are and

working out both what your job is and what constitutes excellent performance. It is

important for your own quality of life that you enjoy your job. If you know broadly what

you like and dislike, you will be more able to move your job towards doing things that you

enjoy. This is important as you are much more likely to do your job effectively if you love

it than if you loathe it. Note that almost every job has tedious or unpleasant elements to it

it is important that these parts are done properly. It is up to you over time to minimize

this. Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time

you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste!

Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time

spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, making coffee, eating lunch, etc. You may

also be unaware that