optimize your time. don’t handle time, use it

Considered as one of the most important resources, time cannot be handled, it can only be used. Strategies, tips and methods to follow step-by-step in order to use time at its best and save it, following the Parkinson law.
Break the schemes and the habits that force us to reiterate ineffective behavior and attitudes both in work and in private life.

One of the factors we always have to deal with in our job – as well as in our private life – is TIME.

Time  is one of the most important resources in our life, which we own completely but we cannot increase at our pleasure.

We cannot gain it, we can only lose it or invest it as best as possible.

It is common belief that we can handle time as we like.

As a matter of facts, time is a limited resource that we cannot handle, the only thing we can do is use it at its best.

Using time well means:

• Decide which are the goals to be achieved
• Fix deadlines
• Meet the deadlines

Furthermore, it is important always to remember that time can also be an obstacle to decision.

For an effective management of time it is essential to learn and control the way it is used by following the 3 basic strategies:

1. making a daily plan
2. identifying the so-called “time-Thieves”
3. delegating activities.

1. Daily plan: Planning our day means to decide which are the things to do and establish the sequence according to their priority.
   In order to learn daily planning the following 3 stepscan be taken:

1. Step one:start from the study on time and on movements by:
   • A ship’s log
   • A recorder
2. Step two: plan the daily actions (would you build a house without a plan?)
   In the first place planning means fixing the goals, then priorities and their sequence.
   Actions must be written in a diary so that they can be carried out according to a coordinated sequence, remembering to register deadlines.
3. Step three: assign the correct time to the activities that must be done. The most difficult thing is to calculate in a realistic way the time needed for each action and each plan.
   Monitoring your time for a certain period will help you to assign the correct time (a month could be significant)

• Time-Thieves: There are some factors that steal part of the time at our disposal. These elements are always present in our days and they cannot be eliminated because they often depend on external factors. Still, they can be identified as time-Thieves.
  Their knowledge allows us to recognize them as such therefore keep them under control.
• Delegation: In order to handle your time at its best, an important strategy consists in the use of delegation.
  Delegation consists in entrusting other people with duties that have low surplus value, those that imply more routine and the mechanical tasks, with lower decision-making contents.
  In order to be effective, delegation must be used in a correct and continuous way, trying not to impose to the addressees the way you would have done the job, just verifying the final result instead.
  Besides a good use of time, there are some time saving techniques that can be summarized into 3 main points:
  1. Eliminate the unnecessary actions such as those that depend on habit and make us waste time. We spend many minutes of our day doing routine activities. Break schemes and habit.
  2. Stop doing things in the most difficult way, the easiest way is the better and the more simple way.
     It is better for an action to be rough but fast than refined but slow.
  3. Learn to do two or three things at once.