Blast your results into orbit when you eliminate these 7 time management mistakes

​Time management mistakes are very costly. Along with eating up a great deal of your valuable time, they can result in stress, management and communication problems. To effectively manage your time and maximise your personal organisation requires a thorough analysis of your time management practices. However, there are some common time management mistakes which can be identified quickly, and remedied swiftly, to help you make some of your desired improvements. Most of these time management mistakes can be rectified by improving your processes. Spending a small amount of time improving your processes will result in large time savings.

​The following list contains some of the most common time management mistakes. Review your processes using this list to help you identify any areas which need improvement. Make the necessary improvements and you will have a lot more time to spend on your most important activities.

To manage your time effectively, you need to have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve. This vision guides your goal setting, your priorities and your decision making. Many people set about trying to improve their effectiveness without a clear vision but they have little chance of creating the result they want, if they are not clear about the result that they want.

Having a clear vision at the beginning of the process is not enough. You must maintain your focus on the end result until the goal has been achieved. It may, at times, be necessary to adjust your vision but you must never lose sight of it.

Having a clear vision doesn’t just help you determine what you should be doing. Just as importantly, it helps you to identify all the things which will not get you where you want to go. All time management mistakes lead to one problem, spending too much time on things which don’t get you where you want to go.

For some simple strategies to get your time management back on track, check out The Organised Mind.

If somebody else is more suitable for doing the job; why are you doing it? Delegation and outsourcing allow you to hand the job off to someone who can complete it successfully, allowing you to focus on more important activities. Many of the biggest time management mistakes occur around delegation and outsourcing. These include:

​When everybody focuses on what they are best at, they get even better. Their knowledge and skills improve; allowing them to do a better job, much faster. So, allow yourself to focus on what you are best at by allowing others to take things off your plate.

​If you want to delegate effectively, you must communicate in way that encourages others to listen to you.

​A regular review of your time management practices will allow you to identify ineffective practices at the earliest opportunity; before they prove too costly. The review helps you to stay on track and keep your productivity levels as high as possible. I recommend a weekly time management review to all of my clients.

Planning is an important part of time management but as a quote from earlier in this article points out, it is not just about planning; it is about giving yourself options. When you take the time to review your time management and, your progress; you give yourself the opportunity to realise when things are not working as intended. From there, you can explore the other options you have for pursuing your goal and; identify the option which you believe will give you the best outcome.

If you don’t allow yourself a time management review, you are hoping that you choose the right option first time, which is a rarity. Making regular adjustments is a natural part of effective time management so make time for your time management review.

Poor time management is often associated with laziness. In my experience, it is rarely the case. Far more often, I encounter people whose time management mistakes can be traced back to having too high an expectation of what they can do i.e. perfectionism.

Perfection is an unobtainable goal. Expecting and attempting to achieve perfection will bring you stress and disappointment but it will never make you a great time manager. If you are waiting for perfection, you will be forever waiting and you will get nothing done.

Rather than seek to be perfect, aim to do the best you can, in any given situation, with the resources which are available to you at that time.

This approach will keep mistakes to a minimum. When mistakes do occur, see them as an opportunity to offer excellent customer service and build a stronger relationship.

It is easy to make the mistake of responding to urgency. When things appear urgent; you often fail to consider a task properly. There are pressures placed upon you by time or by other people. When you are guided by this sense of urgency, you are allowing your time to be controlled by the needs of others rather than by your own needs.

This is not an effective way to manage your time. When you face an urgent situation, you must assess how important a task is, based upon your own goals.

Urgency is sometimes used as excuse to put off doing something which is more important but also more difficult. You may convince yourself that something unimportant needs to get done.

To avoid this, keep your vision and your priorities to the forefront of your mind and before beginning any task, ask yourself

‘How does this task serve my priorities and bring me closer to my vision?’

​Most of the problems which you encounter on a daily basis are small. When something goes wrong, or you receive a complaint, it is easy to magnify the problem until you see it as a disaster. Then, you become distracted and spend a lot more time than is necessary attempting to resolve the issue.

Before you jump into fire fighting mode, take a moment to assess the true importance of the issue then, based upon the real importance, determine the best way to deal with it. Taking a brief moment to do this, whenever a problem arises, will save you an infinite amount of time and help you to avoid a great deal of stress.

I know that it can be hard to believe in the heat of the moment, but most problems are not worth the time, energy and effort which you give to them. On most occasions, they are not really problems; just nuisances and irritations. And, if you let them go, they soon disappear.

Some tasks are more important than others but no one task makes the entirety of your work. Some customers (internal or external) are more important than others but no one customer makes your entire business.

It is important to be able to identify which tasks and which people are most important for your work. These people can then be assigned a higher level of priority. However, it is important to remember that you have other tasks and other customers ​that need your attention.

Overestimating the importance of one task or one customer is a serious time management mistake. You end up giving them more time than you need to, to the detriment of your remaining tasks and customers.

Establishing effective task management and customer management processes will ensure that you give each task or customer the appropriate level of time and attention but no more than that.

For some simple strategies to get your time management back on track, check out The Organised Mind.

​Maximising your effectiveness requires regular work. It is not enough to make adjustments once and expect that you will be effective forever. As your life and work evolves, your practices will change and you will need to conduct another review. There are some common time management mistakes which most people experience from time to time. The list above covers 7 of the most common of these time management mistakes. Take the time to review your practices. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are making any of these time management mistakes. If the answer is yes, review your processes and implement new strategies which will eliminate these mistakes. When you eliminate these time management mistakes, you will be left with more time to spend on your most important activities, helping you to improve your performance and your outcomes. That’s a large reward for a small amount of effort.