START OWNING YOUR TIME

"Being busy isn't the same as being productive."

After this lesson, you should be able to:

1. Define time management.

2. Explain the basics of time management.

3. Identify the three principles for optimizing your time.

4. Explain how procrastination impacts time management.

5. Explain what you should do when procrastination is a challenge.

6. Define the consequences of poor time management.

7. List the benefits of effective time management.

The task below will be automatically checked off once you complete taking the quiz.

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WHAT IS TIME MANAGEMENT?

Time management is the strategy of planning your available time and managing the amount of time spent on specific tasks to work most efficiently.

THE BASICS

Before we get into the Best Practices, which are covered in the next lesson, let’s go through some basic tips to jumpstart your time management skills.

Click each tab to learn what these tips entail.

Get Enough Sleep

Use a Planner

This may seem like an out-of-date technique, but using a planner is one of the cheapest and most effective time-saving tools you can use. Seeing things in black and white helps ensure you don’t have overlapping appointments and priorities, and writing down the tasks helps solidify, in your brain, the priorities for the day. You can put a pen to paper in a pre-formatted written planner, make your own using a blank notebook or rely on a digital tool you can quickly scan in your phone. But you should find the one that works for you — and stick with it.

Customize Preparation Habits

Make sure you start every day with a clear idea of what needs to get done that day. You could make a list of priorities the evening before when the current day’s tasks are fresh in your mind and you have a clear idea of what didn’t get done that needs to carry over into the next day.

Try these suggestions:

Daily preparation: Spend the first 30 minutes of every Monday morning prioritizing tasks for the week. Then, on every other day of the week, take the first 15 minutes to plan your day.

Monthly preparation: On the first day of the month, review monthly goals to ensure they align with annual goals.

Annual preparation: If you have set activities, events and deliverables that are required every year, plan for them. Based on the due date of the deliverable, work backward to ensure that you have enough time to meet the deadline.

Example: You have a grant request due March 1st every year. In Mid-January, review the grant criteria. Shortly after your review, obtain or request the reports you need to support the grant. Begin writing at the beginning of February, allowing for at least an hour a day on the task. In the last week of February, ask for feedback, review and adjust as necessary so your grant application is ready for submission by the deadline.

Identify Time Wasters

Avoid Multitasking

Avoiding the temptation to juggle different work activities by shifting your attention from one task to another is much easier said than done, especially as association leaders. You’re being pulled in a thousand directions with competing priorities and volunteer management challenges.

The risk is you will end up with starting multiple projects without finishing any. Give one task at a time your full attention until completion, which will help you avoid mistakes.

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PROCRASTINATION

Procrastination is the common habit of delaying or putting off doing something that should be done now. The negative barrier procrastination produces is high-priority tasks are postponed or never completed. The downstream effect can be disastrous for your organization!

There are typically three reasons we procrastinate:

We find tasks unpleasant or uninteresting.
We have a fear of failure because we think we don’t know enough or lack the confidence to believe we’ll be successful.
We don’t know where to begin.

If you find yourself conflicted with these situations, use the following strategies to overcome them:

Click each tab to learn more.

Unpleasant/Uninteresting Task

Use delegation as an option because tasks that are uninteresting to you might be enjoyable (or at least tolerable) for someone else. This may be challenging due to the nature of your association’s teams having low volunteer pools or full-time employee time constraints.

Schedule an unpleasant task in a way that will make it difficult or impossible to turn back. For example, if you are avoiding a difficult conversation, schedule time with the person so you are committed to meeting.

Fear of Failure

Avoiding tasks that may lead to failure is common. In most cases, the best way to handle fear is to confront it directly. Often, we are fearful of failure because we feel we either don’t know what we need to know to successfully complete the task, we feel like we don’t have the resources we need, or we don’t have the self-confidence to believe we will be successful.

If you feel that you don’t have the knowledge or resources to successfully complete an assignment, then seek out the training you need.

As association leaders who may be setting the standards for what you’d like to accomplish, you may need creative problem-solving to find the appropriate training and resources.

If your fear stems from a lack of self-confidence, plan or sketch out all the steps required to successfully complete the task. Having a roadmap will supplement the self-confidence you need.

Unsure of Where to Begin

Unclear guidelines in some situations can encourage procrastination.

Two strategies for this type of situation include:

Jump in anywhere. Not every project has a natural starting point. Most likely, you will find a productive way forward, reducing the temptation to procrastinate.
Break the assignment into smaller tasks. Arrange the tasks in a logical sequence to identify the starting point, then get moving.

CONSEQUENCES

Without strong time management, your work and well-being will suffer, and it can lead to:

Click each tab for more details.

Poor Workflow

Loss of Control

Misaligned Work-Life Balance

Poor Quality

Poor Reputation

BENEFITS OF STRONG TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Now that we know what’s at stake when we allow time to get away from us, let’s move on to the benefits of controlling our time to be more productive, not just busy.

Benefits include:

Click each tab to learn why these are benefits.

Reduced Stress

Increased Time to Dedicate to Important Projects

Increased Ability to Pursue New or Interesting Opportunities

Realized Goals

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING

See if you understand the concepts by completing the quiz. Click Start Owning Your Time Quiz to begin.

Start Owning Your Time Quiz

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