Denny Strecker’s Blog

By Kirsty Dunphey

“Until you value yourself… you will not value your time; until you value your time… you will not do anything with it.” - M. Scott Peck, Author

Time management, as anyone who works with me would know, is one of my big complaints, issues, concerns. It’s also one of the most frequent things that people rate themselves lowest on in things like performance reviews.

Today I want to provide you with some simple tips to improve your time management, efficiency and productivity that work for me. Fingers crossed and there may be a few here that work for you too! 1. Eliminate these words from your vocabulary: “I don’t have time.” This one’s a tough one, and although this is one of my aims I’ll admit that sometimes they do slip out, but my aim is consistent - to eliminate them. The next time you go to say those dreaded words, just remember - you have exactly the same amount of time as everyone else, you have exactly the same amount of time in your day as the Olympic swimmer who gets up at 4am, you have the same amount of time in your day as presidents and world leaders who run entire countries. Eliminate the words because what you’re really trying to say is: “I don’t want to make time to do that,” and that’s quite alright too! The next time you go to say “I don’t have time,” imagine if that task you’re saying you don’t have time for was a family member at a hospital - you’d have time to get there, so what you really need to decide is, “Does this deserve my time?”

2. It’s an oldie but a goody - start each day by getting rid of your most despised task. Nothing ruins a day like dreading a task you have to do later in the day.

3. Set rewards for yourself if you can achieve all your tasks, find out what motivates you. For me - it might be that if I can get through these three hard tasks I can eat some of the doughnuts that one of my team brought into work today. Another great thing about that reward is that if I procrastinate - the doughnuts will be gone! Another great thing to do is to buddy up with someone and become accountability partners for getting your tasks done.

4. Unless you have the world’s best memory (I don’t), make lists. When someone gives you a responsibility, write it down, whether you record it in your phone, your organizer, email yourself, write it on the back of a napkin - it doesn’t matter how, write it down! Nothing’s worse than the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night thinking - oh no, I forgot to do that.

5. I’ve never been a huge believer in labeling tasks A, B, C, in order of their importance. I’ve tried this system and it doesn’t work for me - of course that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. What I try to do instead is what I call Little Things First. What this means is that when I get an email, if it’s small or has a small task, I’ll get rid of it quickly rather than continually come back to it over and over again. I have many recurring tasks in my diary and the small things on my list are gone by about 10:30am usually, leaving me the bulk of my day to work on larger projects.