Have you ever felt time-poor..?

There was a time, pre-computer, when it was predicted that computers would save us all so much time and leave us with very little to do...

Instead the speed of life has increased and in this busy age most of us admit to being a little time-poor. There's so much to do each day that we often find ourselves running about like headless chickens, achieving less than we feel we should.

Time (pardon the pun) to stand back a little and look at how to get more out of our time.

At Be More Effective we can't give you more hours in the day, no one can. What we can give you are insights and techniques to enable you to use the time you have more efficiently and effectively.

Our annual survey of the most commonly reported time management problems revealed that, just as it was last year, "attempting to do too much and setting unrealistic time deadlines" was the No.1 problem.

Let's just look at that sentence: attempting to DO TOO MUCH and setting UNREALISTIC deadlines. How can we possibly feel we have achieved anything if we are setting ourselves unreachable targets? Of course, it's important to know what our outstanding tasks are and plan time to get them done but if we are unrealistic in our planning, even though most of us work at our best under some pressure, we will try to do too much and only experience guilt and failure as a result.

Why does this happen..?

Simply because most of us are rubbish at estimating how long things take and so we try to squeeze too much in to the time we have. The knock on impact is defused focus and energy as we hurry from one thing to the next, spinning plates, and most likely doing somethings twice because we didn't have enough time to finish them properly the first time...

The top problem is also connected to the No. 2 most 'popular' issue which was "lack of objectives, priorities and planning". You've probably heard the phrase if you fail to plan you are planning to....... You got it.

The Be More Effective approach to planning enables you to almost double your output or results through more effective planning. Planning when done effectively makes a dramatic difference, when done poorly can in fact make things worse...

Here are the remaining eight most common time management problems:

3. Telephone interruptions
4. Crisis management - shifting priorities
5. Inability to say "no"
6. Emails
7. Lack of self-discipline
8. Personal disorganisation
9. Leaving tasks unfinished
10. Procrastination

They are all common problems we face and none of them are insurmountable. Which one or ones apply to you? With Christmas and New Year coming up (sorry to mention them!) how about making it your resolution to learn to get more out of your time and effort by getting rid of whichever difficulties are standing in your way?

And if you'd like some help from be More Effective, please get in touch.