Steps to Save Time

5 Simple Steps To Give Yourself More Time In Your Day: How To ‘Work Smarter, Not Harder!’

Date: November 12, 2007

Category: Everything Else

How many times have you heard this phrase?

“You’ve got to work smarter, not harder.”

Certainly it’s a popular cliché, but ‘Oh Brother,’ how true it is. But how do you work smarter? Dr. Donald Wetmore, a 20-year consultant/speaker on Time Management, has developed his five “sure fire” ways to immediately increase the time you have available each week to “get ‘er done.” They are valuable suggestions worth considering.
Dr. Wetmore notes that we really only have about 112 hours a week of waking time to do what we need to get done (168 hours a week minus 56 hours sleeping). Here’s his suggestions for giving yourself more time each week:

Engage an intern. Local high schools and community colleges offer intern-work programs where a student has to spend so many hours a week in a real-life work environment. Although generally unpaid, they do earn credit hours. This is a great way to get an extra pair of hands for some of the mundane work, allowing you to free up your time for more important issues.
Run an Interruptions Log. You have to deal with interruptions constantly, those unanticipated phone calls, pages, emails, personal visits, etc. Many are indeed important and have to be dealt with, that’s your job. However, many are useless and have little value to your work. Run an Interruptions Log for a week, listing every interruption and its value to you: A-Crucial, B-Important, C-Little value, D-No value. In a week, review the list and eliminate the repetitive C and D’s allowing you to recoup some previously wasted time.
Run a Crisis Management Log. Crisis are inevitable. Most of them, says Dr. Wetmore, are deadlines that have, “Snuck up upon you and robbed you of choice, you have to respond and you are a slave to the clock. Crisis management is generally poor time management because you're rushing, the quality of your performance suffers, your stress level is elevated, and, most important, you are often having to go back and re-do what was done in the first place.
“If you want to manage it, you have to measure it,” he says.
For a week, log every crisis, in a log book or on a sheet of paper. At the end of the week, review each instance and ask yourself, “Which ones could have been avoided?” Take steps to ensure they don’t reoccur….you’ll pick up the time next week that you lost this week.
Become a Speed Reader. With the average person reading about two hours a day at the rate of 200 words a minute, speed reading can allow a person to double their reading rate or double the volume of reading material they can absorb in the same amount of time. There are many speed reading classes available, often at the local community colleges.
Do Daily Planning. Dr. Wetmore reckons that every minute spent in planning will save you nine minutes in execution. Daily planning not only helps you focus on what’s important in your day, it allows you to identify time hogs and avoid them. Being more productive gives you more time in your day for other things!