Time Management – The Secret To Getting Stuff Done

Contrary to what most people think, we aren’t just born with time management skills.  Time management doesn’t just happen without any work being done. It’s no different from the fact that a cake doesn’t appear without baking. Once you learn all of the ingredients and how to successfully bake a cake, it becomes part of your daily (well, maybe not the best health choice) actions. You hardly have to think about it.  The point is that time management is also an acquired skill that requires learning before it is perfected.

How Do I Know If My Time Management Isn’t Working?

This question is probably best answered with the fact that you’re here reading this article. Chances are, you’re not completely satisfied with what you’re accomplishing each day.  Maybe you’re getting things done, but not enough. Or maybe the things that you are getting done aren’t the right things.

Sound familiar? You strategically plan out your day completely but nothing on your to do list got done.  Or you’re doing what you think is time management, but at the end of the day you’re still left with too much left in your inbox.

What does it mean? Are you hopeless when it comes to time management? Will you have to spend the rest of your life with a personal assistant?

No, No, No. This simply means you’re not managing your time correctly.

Don’t beat yourself up too much! How can you possibly manage your time if you don’t know how to?

Mastering Time Management With the Titanium Method

The very first thing you need to do is to change the way you think about Time Management.  You have to think of time management as a quadrant

Again: Think of Time Management As A Quadrant

The quadrant (Seen Left) is based on tasks and how urgent they are and how important they are. By categorizing each task, they’ll fit into one of the quadrants.  If you were to take a guess, knowing that tasks are either Important or Not Important and Urgent or Not Urgent, where do you think you should spend most of your time?

If you’re like most people, you’ll say “Important and Urgent”; those are the things that are crucial and need to get done as soon as possible.

Like most people you’re wrong! See! Told you this would be about learning.

Breaking Down The Time Management Quadrants

So, if working on important and urgent tasks isn’t the answer, what is?

In the Titanium Method:

Quadrant 1 contains urgent and important tasks that you have likely let go until the last minute.

Quadrant 2 contains important tasks that are not urgent. This is where planning, relationship building, and improvement take place. More importantly, it’s where the all important prevention happens.  This is where you prevent your tasks from becoming Quadrant 1 tasks. This is where you should aim to spend most of your time. Not because things need to be done right away, but because you have the freedom to work at a comfortable pace, and build your project to the right capacity without feeling rushed. This is called, “The Zone.”

Quadrant 3 is when someone assigns you a task that has nothing to do with you, but ends up being urgent by proxy. This is where the not important yet urgent tasks fall. It’s just a matter of who they’re urgent to. You may have gotten a lot done in any given day, but how many were beneficial to you? Zero if you hang out in Quadrant 3.

Quadrant 4: You are probably very familiar with this quadrant. Things that are not urgent and not important and amazingly where we subconsciously spend a lot of our time.  From side conversation, to making plans that have nothing to do with our work day, Quadrant 4 is the reason for lack of time management in most cases.

Time Management Quadrants Image

 

Ever wonder what the biggest killer of time management in Q4 is? The internet. The same thing that provides so much information and often helps us be masters of time management is actually our biggest downfall. We get lost searching for the wrong things, and one link about Beyonce’s new album lands us on the latest edition of US weekly and Jimmy Hoffa was found and… then it’s time to go home for the day and nothing has been accomplished.

For Effective Time Management, Where Should I Be Operating?

The secret to time management:  Aim to operate in Quadrant 2: Operating in The Zone allows you to work on things that are important, not urgent, and helps tasks not build up. Example would be paying your bills early on time, doing your research ahead of time, taking the car in for maintenance regularly before it breaks down, and being a good spouse regularly.

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