Having sufficient time is often cited as a key challenge for managers and leaders.  So what are 8 quick tips you can work on straight away.

Tip 1: Get clear on your goals

Tip 2: Think clearly, calmly and positively

Tip 3: Stop moaning about the circumstances and start taking action

Tip 4: Say no when you really cannot take on anything else

Tip 5: Take breaks and try to get some exercise

Tip 6: When you are working, focus on working

Tip 7: Tidy your desk so that you can find things quickly

Tip 8: Tackle the time bandits who steal your time

So what other tips would you add?

When it comes to money, the vast majority of leaders and managers will be able to give an excellent account of where they spent the budget they were allocated and what they delivered with that budget.  On the other hand if you asked them how they were using their biggest limiting factor, time, how many would be able to give a clear answer?

In truth, very few of us ever take the time to accurately capture where we spend our time and what results we deliver from the time we have invested.  So why should you bother anyway?

1. You might discover that your time utilisation is a bit like a leaking water pipe.  A lot is being lost but you are not quite sure why.

2. You might be struggling to achieve deadlines or rushing at the last minute to deliver because you are not investing your time wisely.

3. You might be having to continually work extra hours (usually unpaid) to get everything done.

Not taking care of how you spend your time is a bit like not bothering to take care of company money or company equipment.

Doing a time analysis is really easy to do and has a ton of benefits, for example:

1. You start to discover if you are spending your time on what is really important to your success as a leader.

2. You start to become much more conscious of the cost of doing certain things.

3. You find ways of adding more value to the organisation without having to make more and more personal sacrifice.

Bottom Line – Time is probably the biggest limiting factor for just about everyone.  So what action could you take starting today to tackle the biggest limiting factor to you delivering results and achieving success

If you are a leader, your the ultimate measure of your success is what you deliver.  Yes there are other factors that contribute to how you are rated as a leader but at the end of the day it is results that count.  If you are in any doubt about this, just pick up the business section of any good quality newspaper or sector publication and chances are you will come across:

1. Some leader who is under pressure to deliver a certain result.

2. Some leader who has been removed because the results delivered were not good enough.

With all of this focus on results, it is important that as a leader you use your biggest limiting factor wisely.  So what is the biggest limiting factor?  In my experience it is time.  There are always many options open to you on how you could use the time available but the amount you are allocated in a day, week, month or year is fixed.  Contrast with a constraint like the amount of budget you have available.  You can make a case for more financial resource and if your case is compelling enough, you have a good chance of securing additional resource.

So if time is a major constraint, you need to know when your own personal prime time is.  It will be different for different people.  Some people are at their best first thing in the morning, while for others burning the midnight oil is best.  When you know your personal prime time you:

1. Can schedule the most important tasks for the times when your performance is optimal.

2. Avoid wasting optimal performance time on anytime tasks.  You know things like e-mails, routine phone calls or texts.

3. Deliver better results, because you focus your attention on the things that have greatest impact on the results you deliver.

Bottom Line – Your personal productivity greatly influences your results.  So what steps are you going to take to do the most important things in your personal prime performance time?

Ask any manager what one of their biggest challenges is and chances are that a lack of time will be pretty high up the list of answers.  Given that the total time available per day, week, month or year is out of your control, it is how you use it that matters.

With lengthy job descriptions and vague objectives being the norm, you need to take control and get clarity on your priorities.

It is pretty easy to do this.

1. List out your understanding of your priorities

2. Arrange to meet with your boss

3. Ask him or her to tell you what they see as priority

4. Come to an agreed list of priorities

5. Plan your time to focus on these priorities

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professionals, teams and organisations develop their management and leadership capability.

If you are a manager or leader right now, chances are that you have to deliver more with fewer resources.  Despite this you are still expected to provide all of the key things necessary to run the business.  You know, pay staff, pay suppliers, do appraisals to name just a few.  So how can you get smarter with how you use your time and get things done?

1. Time Audit

Where are you spending your time?  Ask most managers and leaders this and you will get a vague answer.  The key to being smarter with how you use your time is a time audit.  Make sure this covers a typical work cycle so that you can get real insights where your time is going.

2. Know Your Priorities

What are your 3-5 key priorities?  Armed with this information and your time audit, you can quickly determine whether your time is being spent on what matters- your key priorities.  After all you want to spending time on things that are important to the organisation and your success.

3. Cut out the unproductive stuff

If you are doing something that is not necessary for you to do, stop doing it.  Delegate it, outsource it and even question if it is necessary.

4. Make a list of your time wasters

We all have things that fall into the time waster category.  What’s on your list? 

• Meetings that are just talking shops and never result in any productive outcomes. 

• Checking every e-mail as soon as it arrives.

Make a list of your time wasters and commit to doing something about them.

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I have recently being doing a survey on peoples biggest challenges.  One of the most common challenges seems to be time management.  So if you are challenged when it comes to your time, what can you do about it?

1. Plan how you are going to use it
2. Set time limits for individual tasks
3. Look at your time stealers and tackle them
4. Don’t set yourself up for failure by being overly optimistic about what you can achieve
5. Keep a track of where your time is going

What else would you add to the list?

I wonder how often we all say or hear others say that there is not enough time. Trouble is we cannot add to the number of hours available in a day, week or month. As a result it is how we use and manage the time that we have have available that matters. For me there are three key questions to answer in improving your time management.

1. What are my priorities?
2. Where am I spending my time?
3. What are my time stealers?

What other questions would you add to the list?

A lot of people talk about not having enough time.  However, the amount of time we have available is not going to increase.  There are only 24 hours in day or 168 hours in a week.  It is how we use that time that matters.  We all have things that I call time stealers.  These time stealers take our attention away from the things that matter to getting results.  They include things like:

• E-mail
• Text messaging
• Surfing the internet
• Chatting on the phone during work time

What are your biggest time stealers and what have you found to be most effective in addressing them?