Time Management

Figure 1: Source: http://www.activegarage.com/time-change-15-finding-8020-path
Ever think that you might be spending the majority of your time on stuff that doesn’t just make that big a difference? Well, you might be right. An Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that, “80% of the land was owned by 20% of the population, and that this ratio seemed to recur with regularity even in nature [ (Reed, 2012) ]” The same can be said of our work habits. 20% of our effort brings 80% of our results.

The holy grail of leadership is finding ways to be more effective, to do more with less. How you manage your time will greatly affect your ability to bring positive results to your organization.

There are three essential pieces of information one must have in order to manage their time effectively 1. Where do you spend your time? 2. How can your energy cycle affect your productivity 3. How different personalities might approach time management.
How do you spend your time?
An effective way to measure how your time is spent is to create a time log. A time log is a simple spreadsheet that keeps track of what you do, when you do it, and its relative importance in your day. There are a number of different time log methodologies, regardless of which you choose, you should look to keep track of the category of the task, a description of the activity, and the time you spent completing that activity, and the priority of that activity.

Figure [ 2 ]: This is an example of what a sample time log might look like.
You should expect to keep track you for activities for at least a week to get a good understanding of how your time is spent. You should develop your categories to be broad enough that they can capture a number of activities, but specific enough that they can be used to effectively analyze trends.
Once you have tracked