The Principles of Time Management

The key principles of effective time management consist of organization, such as scheduling and planning; prioritization of the upcoming tasks accordingly to their importance and urgency and the elimination of unnecessary, time-wasting tasks.

#1 Organization

The importance of organization can be clarified by envisioning the time-consuming results of not being able to organize one’s daily-schedule and the upcoming tasks. A lack of organization results in chaotic working methods without being able to get an overview, which finally causes a loss of time.

One organization method I found to be very effective in regards to time management and organizing in general was the creation of a to-do-list where I regularly wrote down whatever task needed to be done. By investing 10-15 minutes in the morning to think about the upcoming tasks and the projects I wanted to be completed I was able to avoid postponement of all kinds. I furthermore started to include the problems that needed to be addressed and the goals I wanted to accomplish during the day. Whenever there was a task that I had to perform regularly I included it into my “general task list” that listed all the task and duties that I had to accomplish on a daily basis.

#2 Prioritization

The prioritization of the upcoming tasks is the part that I consider to be the most important time management technique, as it enables one to address the tasks with the highest priority (“important & urgent”) before focusing on tasks that are not so important, do not contribute to the intended outcome and can therefore be neglected. Personally, I prioritize all my upcoming and regular tasks from A - “important & urgent”, B - “important, not urgent” to C “unimportant & not urgent”, while adding numbers from 1 to 10 besides the task, to elucidate its importance. The tasks that need to be addressed immediately accordingly to their high importance and urgency get the rating “A - 10”, whereas really unimportant tasks that can be neglected receive a “C - 1” scale. Nevertheless, there are numerous methods that allow you to prioritize your work, including the “Pareto analysis” and the POSEC method that are described more precisely here: Prioritizing Methods for Time Management.

#3 Elimination of unimportant tasks

In every operating procedure there are tasks that are unimportant or even unnecessary that either just distract us or prevent us from spending our time more effectively. Whenever we have spotted an unproductive, inefficient and time consuming tasks we have to ask ourselves if we could possibly eliminate these tasks by either delegating them to subordinates, co-workers or trainees. Especially mundane operations and tasks that are do not require much working experience and expert knowledge should be delegated, especially if these tasks are very time consumptive and reduce the time we have to spend for important tasks. Some tasks might even be so unnecessary that we can completely eliminate these, without affecting the general outcome of our daily work negatively.