Effective Time Management and Productivity Enhancement

A black belt karate athlete doesn’t become a black belt by practicing 4,000 different moves but by practicing 12 moves 4,000 times. This is also true in sales skills, especially in time management.

Six proactive steps to manage time can change your life. It only takes five minutes to do, but the results you get each day could double. The issue isn’t whether these steps will work because they absolutely do. The issue is whether you are fully committed to doing them consistently.

Step One: Touch It Once

Do you often pick something up from your desk, read it, and say, “I have to do this, but I can’t deal with it right now”? If you do this a few times a day with a few different things, by the end of the year, you’ll have to spend a month rereading the information you didn’t complete. So, if you touch it, move to the next step.

If you want to see if you often waste time, every time you’re about to do something, put a red dot on a piece of paper. When you have three red dots, you’ll start feeling the pressure, and it will force you to do it.

Step Two: Make a List, but Focus on the Top Six

When we conducted this time management workshop, we asked how many people in the audience made a list. In fact, everyone did. People usually list 25 to 40 items. They pride themselves on having a list long enough to keep them busy.

A quick survey quickly revealed that a long list keeps you busy but not productive. When you have a long list, you have to focus more energy on cutting it down than on working through it. Each day, choose six things you’ll work on with the highest productivity and complete all six that day.

Step Three: Plan How Long Each Thing Will Take

You’ve started your day by listing the top six most important things. That takes two or three minutes. Now spend another minute planning how long they’ll take or how much time you’ll allocate to them.

When we conducted this workshop, people with long lists often found they could have an extremely productive day with just six hours of work on their six important things. Most people who use these steps find they accomplish more important work in less time because they focus on the most feasible tasks.

Step Four: Schedule Time

Now that you know how much time to allocate to each task, you need to plan when you’ll do it. Additionally, you must build time in a reactive mode.

For example, if you’re frequently interrupted by “one-minute” meetings, schedule a fixed time to handle those types of meetings. Unless it’s an emergency, don’t let anyone come to your desk and take a minute!

Think of any top executive you know. Can you simply call them up, or do you have to schedule time to meet them? Many executives plan their day down to the minute. Everything is done on a schedule, including “one-minute” meetings. Scheduling time is the key to time management.

Step Five: Demand Results

Very few people are highly productive. People want many items on their list that they can cross off. But that’s not enough. The things that produce the best results are generally the hardest. Therefore, they get excluded from the list or scheduled at the end of the day, causing them to be pushed to the next day, and so on.

Schedule important tasks at the start of your day. Making those difficult calls to try to get appointments are the things that produce the best results. However, the average salesperson usually avoids doing this. After you make your list, ask yourself if these tasks can produce the best results.

Step Six: Will Throwing These Things Away Hurt Me?

80% of the information that passes through is never mentioned again. With this time management idea, I started throwing away four out of five things I used to keep. Ten years have passed, and I haven’t thought of when it has hurt me.

Keep It for a Long Time

Human behavior can only truly be influenced in two ways: repetition and direct involvement. You might agree that the six smart steps above will increase your productivity, but until you practice and consistently use them, your behavior won’t change.

It usually takes 21 days to form a new habit. In my experience, it can sometimes take years. But now, if you can truly focus on this program for just 21 days, you’ll forever remember its power, and you’ll be more likely to use these key steps.