Use the 3 P’s, Prioritizing, Planning & Producing, to Manage Your Schedule & Workload Better   

“Time management.” What does that phrase mean, and how do you become an expert at it? Not many people are experts at it, but continuously applying it in your professional and personal life can definitely  make you better at it than others. If you ask different people what the definition is, you will get different responses as to how it plays out in their day-to-day activities.

What are your time management techniques? There may be levels to your abilities, based on your innate gifts of timeliness and organizational skills.  To understand your starting point, you will likely fall into one of two categories: timely/organized or procrastinator/somewhat disorganized. You should consider yourself in the first category if you are a frequent list-maker and prompt to appointments. Consider yourself in the second category if you regularly wait to the last minute to start tasks and habitually arrive late to appointments.  Recognizing which ones of these applies to you is all about “being real” and understanding your habits as you work to improve this skill. (You need to be aware that it may take you longer to get stronger in this area if you are a procrastinator versus being a list-maker!)

A Starter Course in Time Management

Below are the “3 P’s” to time management that will likely help minimize stress levels and improve work/life balance:

Prioritize
Understand the Sense of Urgency for the Projects on Your To-Do List. Place them in order of completion date, with the most current assignment due at the top of the list. If you have competing priorities, follow up with the project requestor to confirm if the date is movable and/or if the project is even still needed. How many times have you been tasked with a project just to find out later it is no longer needed or on anyone’s radar?

Plan
Put your Projects in Order of Difficulty. Review your list and apply how much time you think each task will take you to accomplish it. Rule of thumb: double or triple the time, since projects often take longer than anticipated.

Next, think about all the steps needed to complete the project. For example, if you need to research a topic for a presentation, consider the time it will take for you to research, compile, write, and practice the presentation. All of these require separate preparation time – but after you’ve assigned time to each task, add it up and double or triple it.

Then, schedule time on your calendar to do the task. Spread it over several days or do it all in one day, if needed. Whichever it is, this is the most valuable step in the time management process. Scheduling time on your calendar is necessary to ensure the task actually gets done. And it makes it real. A vision or idea isn’t real until you take the time to put it on paper.

Produce
Perform the Requested Task. Use the time allocations you assigned to the task and stick to it. This provides the needed focus to accomplish the task.

The next step is to determine the quality of your work. Should it be acceptable or should it be awesome? Not all projects require the same level of effort to satisfy the requestor. This is not to say you should not always try to produce quality work; but it does mean you should factor in your audience to determine the level of effort that will give your requestor the outcome and level of performance they require. Sometimes, perfectionism can spur us to put more effort into projects than what is needed or required (or as the famous quote says, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good”).  This is where your level of time management experience comes into play.

As you determine what you want to improve in the area of time management, only you know your journey and what you want to accomplish to align with your personal and professional goals. The key is to be aware of your abilities, and then continue to make small steps that work best for you.  You should focus on those steps that work and make you happy, and that limit your professional stress levels to achieve your desired work/life balance. Once you understand this, you are on the right track to advancing your time management skills!

One last  thought: “If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail.”  By using the “3 P’s” as a starting point, you can get on track to avoid that scenario!