”Work does expand to fill the time available” Parkinson’s Law
In laying out a weekly schedule, the key is to block out time for top-priority jobs:
Scheduling is the art of planning your activities so that you can achieve your goals and priorities in the time you have available. When it’s done effectively, it helps you: Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time. Make sure you have enough time for essential tasks.
Planning and scheduling of your resource plays a key role in project management. It helps you understand the scope of the project ahead of time and manage/assign your resource accordingly. Besides, it provides an overview of who’s responsible for delivering what and by when.
Advertisements
Reserve a particular day of the week – say Tuesday or Tuesday morning – for major projects.
Even if your schedule is broken up with interruptions, you can attempt to keep certain blocks of time intact for high-value priorities. Remember: there is always enough time for the important things.
Trying to do the same thing at the same time each day conserves and generates energy. You have two kinds of “prime time.”
- Internal prime time is when you know you work the best, whether it is morning or afternoon.
- External prime time is the best time for you to attend to other people. Those you must deal with either on the job, socially or at home.
Try to save external time for prime projects.
Build flexibility into your schedule. Reserve an hour a day that is uncommitted. Leave holes for interviews, conversations,or whatever else that may run longer than scheduled. Set aside time to read the mail and catch up on paperwork.
Do not neglect your personal life. Build in time for this as well.
Many men who make their personal lives subordinate to their careers fail in the end. I have seen this with athletes who are great leaders on the sports fields, but who fail to lead in many areas of their home lives.
This is frustrating to their wives, causes bitterness, and short-changes their children. In other words, it is unfair to your wife and children when they are not included in your priorities.
Do not put in too many hours of overtime.
The more overtime a person puts in, the more exhausted he is, and the less efficient he becomes. The answer is not to spend more time on a project, but to work more effectively in the time allotted.
You cannot work as effectively if you are fatigued from excessive hours. When it is built into your schedule properly, doing nothing is not a waste of time.
Schedule time to relax among your priorities.
If you arrange things so that you have time to relax and do nothing, you will not only get more done but have more fun doing it!
”When I first started in the life insurance business, I was excited about the fact that I could work seven days a week as many hours as I wished.
However, as I began to cut my selling time to five days and then to four, found I was able to do more business than when I had the whole week stretched out in front of me to see people anytime of the day or evening” writes Business Leader and Coach Mike Murdock.
Use the time you do have more wisely.
Why spend two hours at lunch, when back in the office, the phones are quiet and other people are gone?
Eat quickly and lightly – which also will keep you from getting sleepy or tired in the afternoon – and use that time to get things done that need concentration. If you are a homemaker, use the time when the children are at school or taking naps.
If you are an employer, allow your people to read, write, or whatever after their scheduled work is done.
You cannot push people to be creative by the clock. Beyond a certain point, simply putting in hours is not the best way to get creative work done.
Unless you schedule time for relaxation or creativity, you will never have it. If you allow it, there will always be enough work to spill over into any free time.
In addition to scheduling enough periods of relaxation during the week, it pays in the long run to take a look tow or three months ahead, see what is planned, and set the time aside on a monthly or a quarterly basis to take an extended period of time off. Perhaps it is just a long weekend, but it will pay off in increased efficiency over the long run.
Summary.
Good scheduling is about getting people in the right place at the right time and, importantly, doing the right task. At the same time, effective scheduling. The benefits of effective scheduling include lower cost, faster throughput, and dependable delivery.
One of the most important aspects of planning and scheduling is to develop baseline standards of productivity and success.