At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus: Concentrate on results, not on being busy : Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little because they are not concentrating on the right things. How does one rectify this? There are many ways of doing this. The first is to understand the Pareto Principle or the 80:20 rule.

Maintain the log for a minimum of a week. This will help you include even the cyclical activities. Have columns made for time (start as well as end time), activity, total time utilized, and remarks. The remarks column can contain any special comments like felt bad after a particular activity or enjoyed a particular activity, was stressed during an activity etc. Include all activities undertaken for the day e.g. coffee break, bathroom break, gossip, attending phone call, meetings etc.

Once you have maintained the log for the week, you will also be able to see where exactly you spend the time. If you are maintaining the log for the first time, it will be a revelation. Now, you must analyse the log for patterns. Find activities which are not productive and cut them down. The remarks column will also help you to analyse your emotions or feelings attached with some of the activities. You will save a lot of time if you analyse and implement the changes required based on the log.

One of the reasons why people are unable to accomplish all their tasks in the day is simply that they may not remember all the activities that need to be completed. Or if they do remember the activities, they may not be completing the important ones when required. How can this be overcome?

By using To-Do Lists. To-Do list is a list of all tasks that you need to carry out.
Write down the tasks that face you, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything that you have To-Do. Once you have done this, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important) to F (unimportant). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order. Now carry out the jobs at the top of the list first. These are the most important, most beneficial tasks to complete.
You will then have a precise plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face. You will be able to tackle these in order of importance. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones.

To-Do Lists are essential when you need to carry out a number of different tasks or different sorts of task, or when you have made a number of commitments. Whilst To-Do Lists are very simple, they are also extremely powerful, both as a method of organizing yourself and as a way of reducing stress too.

Go through your To-Do List several times during the day. Once you've accomplished a task, tick it off. This will motivate you to accomplish more tasks! Any unaccomplished task from today's list must be carried over to the next day's To-Do List (unless the task itself has become irrelevant!). Prioritized To-Do Lists are fundamentally important for working efficiently. If you use To-Do Lists, you will ensure that:

• You remember to carry out all necessary tasks.

• You tackle the most important jobs first, and do not waste time on trivial tasks. 

• You do not get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs.

Another very important tool that is useful in managing time is Goal Setting. Goal setting is useful since it helps us focus. Here are some broad guidelines to help you set effective goals:

• Make sure the goal you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good. 

• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake

• A goal cannot contradict any of your other goals. 

This is called non-integrated thinking and will sabotage all of the hard work you put into your goals. Non-integrated thinking can also hamper your everyday thoughts as well. We should continually strive to eliminate contradictory ideas from our thinking.

• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.

• Don't set goals in only one area of your life. Develop goals in the 6 areas of life:

• Family and Home 

• Spiritual and Ethical

• Social and Cultural

• Financial and Career

• Physical and Health

• Mental and Educational

Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.

• Write goals down: this crystallizes them and gives them more force.

• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.

• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may be naïve in setting very high goals. You might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how many skills you must master to achieve a particular level of performance.

• Do not set goals too low: Just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high, do not set them too low. People tend to do this where they are afraid of failure or where they are lazy! You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them. No one will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember that your belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. If this could be the case, you can try to change this belief by using imagery effectively.

Now that you are ready with your Goals and To-Do Lists, you must identify your common Time Wasters. In the next article we will see how to identify and minimize Time Wasters.

- Rupa Mehta
(Rupa Mehta is the co-author of the book 'Credit Cards-A Legal Guide'. The author is the Director of CorporatEdge, a firm that specializes in training employees on soft skills. She herself trains extensively on Time Management, Stress Management, Supervisory Excellence, Effective Communication Skills and other topics.)