Lost time can kill your success

Time Management 

No matter what you do, there will always be 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week, 8760 hours a year. You can’t save it up and – even if you don’t “use” it – it disappears anyway. In this sense, you don’t really manage the time, you only manage what you do in the available time.

The solution to time problems is not to expand the time available. Rather, the solution is to make better use of the time available by eliminating less productive uses of it. Since you can’t create more time, but can only use time better, first think about the following: 

Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness: Being efficient means getting things done well, without wasted time or effort. Being effective means producing important results by concentrating on the most important elements of the task. 

Efficiency means doing things right; effectiveness means doing the right things. It’s not enough to be efficient; you need to be effective too. 

The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the “value” comes from 20% of the items in a group. For example: 

You wear 20% of the clothes in your closet 80% of the time. 

20% of the banks conduct 80% of total banking transactions. 

 20% of the beer buying public buys 80% of the beer. 

20% of your activities yield 80% of your results. 

You should identify the elements of your job – the 20% - that will yield the highest value – the 80% - and treat them as priorities.

Behavior Management

There are approximately 260 working days in a year and approximately 22 working days in the average month. Yes, 12x22=264 but the difference is a holiday here and there. OK, now, let’s look at working days lost over a period of a year.

 1.    Two weeks vacation is 10 days lost.

2.    Average sick days = 6 days a year.

3.    15 minute break in morning and afternoon is 16.25 days lost.

4.    One 30 minute errand a week is 3.25 days lost.

5.    Average 10 minutes before lunch and 10 minutes after lunch (whether you leave the office or not) is 10.83 days lost.

6.    Family emergencies and special events average 6 days a year.

7.    15 minutes late to work once a week is 1.62 working days.

8.    Personal calls, business and general ineffectiveness of 30 minutes a day is 16.25 days gone.

9.    First 30 minutes of the day in hello’s, coffee and office gossip is 16.25 days lost.

10. All of this drastically changes if you are a smoker as it takes 600 minutes during a work week which we WILL NOT calculate but it takes 520 hour a year off your time for smoke breaks and extra illness.

 If we stick to calculating only 1-9 and add up these times, it amounts to 86.45 days lost a year because of these habits. So if we subtract 86 ? days form 260 we have 173.5 days left. Divide that by 22 and there are only 7.8 months that we even have available for work.

 Now, if we are ineffective during that 7.8 months (unenthusiastic presentations, no daily plans, not selling hard, calling dial-a-prayer) then we can see that many of us are producing our year’s volume in less than six months time.

 Some of us do not exhibit all the traits listed and some of us have even more. The idea is to understand the compounding effect that any sloppy habits have on our yearly performance.

We cant save time or borrow it or turn back the clock but we can work smart and get more done once we identify the keys to the 20% - that will yield the highest value – the 80% - and treat them as priorities.