Time Management Strategies - your Keys to Stay Ahead in This Competitive Era

In today’s competitive era, we face with a lot of new products, technologies, problems, rules and regulations been introduced to us daily and they are fast changing too. In order to stay ahead or at least not to be left behind, we need to keep up the trends. However, everyone has the same limited time resources in day and these create stress to our life. Therefore, we need to formulate a better time management strategies to handle these in less stressful way. Below are some of the time management strategies that you can use.

1. Habit of Thinking Ahead
Murphy Law said if anything can go wrong, it will do so. Crisis management always impacts our work schedule due to its urgency but most of the time is unnecessary or unimportant. Therefore, you need to acquire the habit of thinking ahead and create contingency plan for any potential problems. Based on the frequency or seriousness of the problems, you can formulate the preventive steps or alternative plans in the event the problem arises. This will ensure faster response time during crisis. Besides crisis prevention, thinking ahead habit allows you to spot and seize any good opportunities before your competitors.

2. Master of Choice
You cannot do everything that is available to you to do as always they will be more things available than your available time. Thus, we need to be selective, identify the most important items and prioritize them accordingly. Always start work on the most important items which will contribute significantly to your day and complete them. Just ignore those items that are not important if time does not permit.

3. Other People Time
In order to cope with the volume of works, you need to leverage your time, particularly to self-employed. Delegate as much work as possible to others so that you can concentrate on your best skills in generating high returns. Pareto’s Law said 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your result. Therefore, always work on the 20 percent of your task. In order to be cost-effective, you can employ interns or part-time school-leavers or outsource the works to other countries where the labor cost is much cheaper.

4. Learn from Others’ Success Strategies
You can shorten your learning curve by learning from others’ success strategies. Find out what works for them and think on how you can utilize them for yourself. You can gain the knowledge by reading their books, audio tapes or attending their talks and seminar. You may also want to check with them to be your mentors. This will save you tremendous of time from trial and error.

5. Punctuality
Punctuality is basic habit of good time management skill that a lot of people overlook. I believe you have heard early bird catches the worm. Always be early when attending any appointment, meeting and classes. If you are often slow or late caused traffic problem, then set more buffer time or you may want to set your watch advanced by a few more minutes. W.Mathews said nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps in reputation that that of being always behind time. Always plan your delivery date or deadline carefully with some buffer time so that you can meet the promised date.

6. Pay Yourself First
Imagine using your time as spending your money. If you only plan to spend your time on what others’ needs first that you may have limited time for yourself. You must first plan to allocate time for your self-improvement which will contribute to your long-term goals before allocate time for others short-term goals. Example, plan yourself to take a course in your current field which can increase your productivity, employability and salary. Spend time to look for ways to improve your time management skills and reduce your time wasters. Make self-improvement as one of the compulsory item in your daily to-do-list.

These are some of the time management strategies. Constantly learn and practice effective time management strategies will ensure you always stay ahead in the competition.

“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