The time is the resource that is equally available to all competitors on the market. The time management is, however, a skill that makes difference between the successful individuals and organizations and unsuccessful ones. Do you often think: "I haven’t had enough time", are you under stress because you did not manage to fulfill planned obligations, do you work at night and over the weekend in order to complete important tasks on time, have you ever failed to meet deadline? If the answer to these questions was positive – it is obvious that you have a problem with efficient time management. Nobody likes to admit weaknesses. The readiness to change and invest little effort in organization is the first step. Start from the control of phone calls.
To many phone calls can destroy your concentration more than anything else
Of thousand people, it is hard to find one who won't pick up the phone when busy. The reasons why people accept phone calls are different: assumption that the call is more important than the work, fear that the person who called will be angry if you don't answer the phone, wish for information, sense of importance, wish for chats or convenient excuse for postponement of works that are not so interesting. Those who think that they have to answer the phone could ask themselves: do you have to answer the phone immediately and does talk have to last for such a long time.
The most practical thing to do is to classify the calls into several groups, which will be controlled by your secretary.
Some of the talks can be carried out by the secretary who would provide some of the basic information. In case she cannot do it by herself, then she could redirect the call to some other competent person in the organization. If the situation requires your presence, then the secretary can take the message and call back later.
If it is necessary to answer the call by yourself due to emergency of the situation and importance of the person who you should talk with.
The researches show that the average business talk lasts 6 minutes. The same researches show that 2 minutes are quite enough for constructive talk.
Good technique to have the talk under your control is to set the time limit for the talk. Critical point for lasting of the talk is the first sentence. The lasting of the conversation will depend on whether you talk in a business or professional way.
Another important technique of time -management is so-called quiet hour, which is one hour reserved for undisturbed work in complete silence – without phone calls, interruptions and chats. At average, one person can do as much work during that one "quiet hour" as the other person can do for 3 hours. The best time for this hour is early in the morning, before the killing tempo of the phone calls and meetings.
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