Time Management – Personal and Professional

February 11, 2025 - February 11, 2025
When running your own business, particularly a fashion brand, time management skills are critical. The use of a time management plan can reveal what you need to do to improve your relationship with time.
MANAGE YOUR TIME DEADLINES
With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, that includes your stress and energy levels. You make progress at work and you are able to maintain balance between your work, personal and family life. Plus, you have enough flexibility to respond to surprises or new opportunities as they arise.
All time management skills can be taught. It is more than likely you will see improvement from simply becoming aware of the essence and causes of common personal time management problems. With the time management actions listed below, you can adapt your techniques so they are relevant for each situation.
If you already know how you should be managing your time and yet you still don’t manage it – don’t give up. There can be psychological obstacles that can make you procrastinate, have difficulties in saying ‘no’ or in allocating delegation, or making time management decisions.
Revisit the advice below on a regular basis and over time positive time management practices will become second nature.
HOW TO WRITE AN ACTION PLAN
When writing an action plan, and the key is to write or type the plan out, try the following steps:
- Clarify your goal. Visualise a picture of the expected outcome? What makes your goal measurable? What constraints do you have, such as the limits on time, money, or other resources?
- Write a list of actions. Write down all actions you need to achieve your goal. At this step focus on generating and writing as many different options and ideas as possible. Take a sheet of paper and write lots of ideas, just as they come into your mind. While you are doing this, try not to judge or analyse.
- Prioritise and prune. Look at your list of actions. What are the most necessary and effective steps to achieve your goal? Mark / highlight them somehow. After that, what action items can be dropped from the plan without significant consequences – cross them out.
- Organise your list into a plan. Decide on the order of your action steps, think about deadlines and what needs attention first. Rearrange you actions and ideas into a sequence. Finally, look at your plan once again. Check if there are any ways to simplify it even more.
- Monitor the execution of your plan and review the plan regularly. Check and tick off all progress. Review with new information. Use this information to further adjust and optimise your plan. Review your plan at the beginning of each day so you are clear on what you need to prioritise.
TIME LOG TECHNIQUES
Time tracking with a time log is much more than a boring exercise in book keeping. If you approach it right, it will become a very effective time management learning tool. A few minutes of writing and analysing your time and activity logs will eliminate many hours of wasted time.
EMBRACE THE REALITY OF YOUR PERSONAL TIME
Unless this has already happened to you before, your time log is more than likely to surprise you. You will see how much time is wasted in many unexpected ways. Often, it appears, that the busier you feel the more time is wasted.
Another important discovery is how much time certain jobs or activities really take. One of the most common problems in personal time management is underestimating the time needed for a specific activity. This is one of the main reasons why planning and scheduling do not seem to work well for some people. If you always expect more than you able to do with your time, then writing plans and to-do lists will just get you even more stressed.
Once you analyse how much time is required per task you can realistically plan your day and feel more in control. It is a good idea to have a time buffer between tasks so you are not rushing from one task to another.
PREPARING AND WRITING YOUR TIME LOG
It isn’t necessary to write a time log permanently however, it can be helpful for those that are multi-tasking, or running their own business. Divide each page / day into columns, and include the following headings:
- Time
- Activities
- Scheduled
- Interrupted
- Urgent
- People (involved)
Throughout the day update your time log. Do it every time you switch to a new activity, or at intervals, such as every 30 minutes. Add entries to your “Time” and “Activities” column, and try to put marks like “Yes” or “No” in the “Scheduled”, “Interrupted”, and “Urgent” columns. Where relevant, make short notes on what happened.
WHAT DOES YOUR TIME LOG TELL YOU?
When you have your time log filled in, you can move to the most important part, the analysis. Review your records at the end of the week and try to get answers to the following questions:
- What percentage of your time is spent in each different area of your life? How is it divided between work, business, family, recreational, spiritual, health?
- What percentage of your activities is important?
- Are urgent?
- The people you spend the most time with?
- What percentage of your tasks go as planned?
- What are the main interruptions?
Then think of possible adjustments and action steps. For example:
- Are there any activities you can cut back on.
- Are there tasks you can delegate or simplify.
- Are you wasting time in one certain area.
- Do you need to implement cut off times from say; work activities or social media use.
It sounds simple, but seeing how you spend your time in black and white can really help with time organisation and planning. Time logs and planning might seem like a mammoth task initially but once you get in the habit of analysing your time and prioritising your goals the benefits can be tremendous.
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