Step 1: Know your deliverables

• Everyone has job descriptions, most people have some form of appraisal and some idea of what is expected of them. On the other hand, how clear are you on your key deliverables? These are what you are ultimately going to be measured on. Performance against your key deliverables impact on your salary, your promotion potential for example. Yet surprisingly, people often do not know what their key deliverables are. If this applies to you, make it a priority to find out today.

Step 2: Analyse your time

• I often have clients keep a record of where they spend their time over a 2-3 week period. In many instances they discover that the bulk of their time is going on activities that do not directly contribute to key deliverables. Once you are clear on your key deliverables, do this for yourself and see if you are spending your time on what really matters.

Step 3: Make changes

• Once you have analysed your time and identified mismatches between your deliverables and activities, it is time to do something about it. This might mean that you delegate more, get more selective about meetings you attend or how you deal with e-mails.

Step 4: Make time for planning

• As a leader, planning is an important part of your role. You and your team need to be clear where they are heading over the coming months. Start with a plan covering the next quarter that subsequently breaks down into monthly, weekly and daily plans.

Step 5: Monitor results

• Plans deliver results when they are executed. Sometimes you will get the results you expected. Other times you will get different results than you expected and may not even get any results. Make sure that when you execute plans you have a process in place to check progress and make changes where appropriate.

At the end of the day we all have 24 hours at our disposal. The question is how smart do you want to be in using this?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

We all have the same amount of time available to us. So what differentiates those who achieve better results from the rest?

One of the key factors is where we invest our time.

Getting clear on where you are investing your time starts with recording where you are spending it. Keep track of where your time is being spent for a week or two and see if you are investing it on those things that make a difference.

Once you know where you are spending your time, you can start to make changes that really make a difference to the results that you achieve.

So what’s your first step?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

So if you are first to arrive and last to leave, what can you do to address this?

Get clear on your priorities
• You have lots of things you could do. The question is what should you be doing? Getting clear on your priorities is essential.

Focus on your priorities

• It is all well and good being clear on your priorities. At the same time, you need to make sure that you are focussing on them. That means continually checking what you are doing to make sure you are focussing on what matters.

Discover what can only be done by you

• In my experience, most tasks can be grouped into 3 brackets:
1. Things that need doing and can only be done by you.
2. Things that need doing but not necessarily by you.
3. Things that might not need doing at all.

Learn to delegate

• Delegation is not just about getting stuff off your desk. It also provides a great development opportunity. So learn how to and start delegating.

The reality is that if we allow it, work will expand to fill the time we have available. Remember, few things are so critical in management that they need attention right away.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Interestingly, when I ask clients this question they often struggle to come up with an answer.

Yet, without knowing your priorities, you will:

• Struggle with decisions on how to allocate your time.
• Carry on doing things that you should no longer be doing.
• Waste time and effort.
• Struggle to deliver the results you are expected to deliver.

So if you want to be a more successful leader, make a point of identifying your priorities.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

So if you need to boost and improve your personal productivity to get better results, check out the short video below and then leave a comment with your best tips.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps highly rated professionals to become highly effective managers and leaders.  He invites you to click here to take advantage of his free Weekly Leadership and Management Success Tips.

So how can you make better use of your time?

1. Start to view it in the same way as money and invest it wisely.
2. Plan how you are going to utilise your team each day.
3. Do what you do best and delegate everything else.
4. Get clear on your priorities and then focus on them.
5. Track how you are spending your time to spot the time stealers.

So what other tips would you offer to make better use of time?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Tip 2

Tip 3

Tip 4

Tip 5

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

1. Know what’s important and priority and what is just a time filler.
2. Set yourself challenging but realistic targets for each day, week and month.
3. Set start and finish times for every task.
4. Don’t leave things half completed otherwise you end up with a whole lot of work in progress.
5. Get organised so that you can find things.
6. Automate whenever you can to boost productivity.

What additional tips would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

So what can you do to take control of your time?

1. Know your priorities – what is it that your success or otherwise is measured against at the end of the day?
2. Set time limits for everything you need to do in a day – you will be amazed at the difference it makes.
3. Do a periodic time audit so that you know where your time investments are going.
4. Start thinking of time like money and choose carefully where you invest it.
5. Don’t overload your plan with too much otherwise you will get de-motivated.
6. Try, wherever possible, to batch similar types of activity so that you make better use of your time.

Remember that time management is really all about planning and decisions. So what’s your best time management tip?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. For more information click here

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?