Isle of Wight Business Women’s Lunch OCTOBER 2014 THE GARLIC FARM

Time Management Techniques, Tips & Hints ISLE OF WIGHT BUSINESS WOMEN WORKING TOGETHER

Use Modern Technology to your advantage  Online Calendar and tasks lists  Examples include: Outlook, Google Calendar  Cloud based tools  Evernote  Google Apps  Skype  Xero  Dropbox  Hoot suite

Have a good Diary System, Prioritise & Plan your day  Take the first 30 minutes of your day to plan your day before you start  Understand what you want to achieve  Highlight your diary  Colour code blocks of time for different activities, such as family time, work time etc.  Prioritise these tasks which have to be done, and try to eliminate the rest

Create Simple Systems  Would it be easy for someone else to see what you do?  Set up work flows for your business  Two benefits to this: 1) Easier to delegate 2) Easier to extract yourself from the business

Think about what you are doing  Do you know what you want to achieve?  Do you have a business plan and /or strategy?  Or are you chasing the next shiny object?  Ask yourself is this task or meeting going to help me to get to where I want to be?  Always ask the purpose of a meeting before accepting  Remember that 20% of activities produce 80% of the results

Lists  Daily lists of the 6 most important things to be done & stick to it!  Write your thoughts down under different headings & keep in one place – iPad, Evernote etc.  Alternative to Lists is to put your ‘to-do list’ into appointments. Schedule appointments with yourself & create blocks of time to complete. Keep the appointments!  Any activity or conversation that is important to your success should have a time assigned to it

Delegation  Do YOU need to be doing that task?  Delegate so you can focus on the BIG tasks  Can be business or personal; for example home delivery shopping, saves your time  Get over your inner ‘control freak’  Calculate the value of your time, the length of time it takes & then look at the cost of delegating that task

Block our distractions  You have control as to how much time you spend on them  Use ‘do not disturb’  Don’t be afraid not to answer the phone or immediately.  Set clear expectations of your service levels to your customers, staff  Do not be a slave to your !  Turn off notifications  Turn off your mobile phone!

Other techniques  Learn to say no  Unless what you are being asked to do is part of your strategy  Or will produce 80% of the results you are looking for say no  Mindfulness  Self-care  Do things that make you happy  Focus  does multi-tasking actually get you any further

There will always be 101 things to do You won’t always get everything done Be nice to yourself