Legal Marketing & PR

Time management

By Jim Hassett

The simplest way to increase productivity is to manage your time better.  While many time management techniques sound like common sense, that does not mean they are easy to implement. 

Start by identifying troublesome areas: 

• How often are you interrupted?
• How do you manage disruptions?
• Can you section off blocks of solid work time?
• Do you make ?to do? lists and prioritize them?
• Do you have a flexible work schedule?
• Do you complete your work during regular work hours?
• Do you micromanage?
• Do you take on all tasks yourself?
• Can you say ?no??

Plan how to avoid situations that can waste your time, including:

• Poorly completed work that must be re-done
• Phone calls, email, mail, casual office talk
• Lack of delegation or improper delegation
• Information that is not easy to find or use
• Too many review cycles or layers of approval
• Multiple meetings that aren?t useful
• Postponing your work
• Unclear goals or objectives
• Excessive paperwork
• Too little time and too much work
• Lack of authority to make decisions or too many levels of decision making
• Only dealing with crises
• Perfectionism
• Poor organization

Identify the time management techniques that will work best for you, including:

• Manage your stress
• Prioritize your tasks
• Organize
• Follow your schedule
• Avoid useless memos, travel, conversations, emails
• Don?t procrastinate
• Do the hard parts first
• Start as soon as possible
• Carve out blocks of time for important things
• Delegate wisely
• Give attention only to items that need it
• Don?t let others give up and pass off tasks on to you. Help them to figure out how to accomplish their own tasks, if necessary.

Effective time management begins with taking a single step.  Identify one or two action items from the list above, and start today.

This post is reproduced from the second edition of the Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide which will be published in April 2011.  A formal announcement regarding the second edition will appear in this blog soon.

Full post as published by Legal Business Development on February 02, 2011 (boomark / email).