Work-Life Balance

08 Manage your time wisely with the right tools and methods

Blessings from San Diego, California in the United States, I'm Elaine Kung. We continue to number eight of Work-Life balance. So, we've been working through these six ‘S’ on effective time management. So, we talked about goal setting, the right priorities. Today, we're gonna focus on some specific skills to help us with the time management.

We always want to make sure we set the right priority and manage them properly. How do you do that? So, you always start with a to do list, and then you set the priority and align to the goals. These could be some decisions that you make. Are these things you're doing really a must-do? Very important to do? Or nice to do or just wish list, it's not really at all needed. Or, very important, not to do. So, it isn't just what to do, also should include what not to do.

If you look at the priority matrix, it may give you some idea. So, of course the far upper right is where you have the highest social economic value of return, and it’s the easiest to do for implementation. Do those now. And then for those that are high value, but difficult to do, let's review and think about it because it's very difficult. And then for those low value, it's easy to do, maybe plan it, because it’s easy, even though it's low value. And then there’s low value and very difficult to implement, we’ll wait, rather not do them. So, this gives us some idea how to prioritize. And then for what we prioritize, usually, we have this 80/15/5 principle, where 80% of your time you want to work on what's really your strength. If you're using most of your time on what you're strong and good at, you'll feel like a fish going into the water and you enjoy swimming, you enjoy doing the work. 80% using your strength.

Then 15 % of your time would be things that you're gonna learn, because that helps you to get renewed, and you’ll be challenged, and you'll be more motivated. And then the last 5 % would be things that you really need to do, even though it may not be your strength, it may not be something you learn, and yet you need to do them. So that gives you some idea on setting and managing your priorities.

And then we want to use time management tools such as calendar. So, I’m very very busy. I have 30 some talks a month, going on zoom, during the pandemic. And I have 3 to 10 meetings a day. Every month I do 20 or more one on one coaching. So, all these are in my calendar. It has to be very important to schedule them all. And also, I allocate time for resting, for cooking, for family time. So, I use tools like my Microsoft outlook, like OneNote to jot down all the key summaries, and also my cell phone to set reminders and set alarms. So, every day it's clear what I need to do, it's on my calendar.

And these are all aligned to my goals that we talked about last time and proper time allocation based on the importance and how difficult it is and be realistic on my time. Making sure there's enough time. And I that I don't procrastinate, and then try to finish what's planned for today, so that I don't procrastinate and move them to tomorrow or next week. So that way I will focus on what I need to do and plan for every day, for every week, and every month. And that's all in my calendar, on my computer. And then whatever information I need to do certain work, I try to group them together, so I don't have to go find them. All these are good tools to consider.

Now, as busy as I am, like I said, all the talks and coaching and my own family and personal life, don't just get blind and get busy, or even sometimes get bored and don't keep filling up your calendar and become overbooked. So, we want to avoid that because when you're overbought, you have no margin. Sometimes I feel that way and get maxed out. So, it's very important.

And I block out time on my calendar, so that the calendar is not my boss. I should be the boss to the calendar. By God's grace, by God's a wisdom, help me to prioritize and how to set my calendar to allow margin. We call that white space. You know how in books, at the edge of the book, there's a margin? Sometimes you may take notes on it. The idea is that you don't have words that overflow into the edge of the paper. In other words, in our calendar, in our life, we want to have margin, and white space? For what? The reason is that helps us to have time buffer. Some things you may not expect, accident, something happened. Now you have a buffer. It's time for us to do these ‘R’s to get renewed, be refreshed, and restore our energy and retain, remember things that we worked on. And refresh our memory so that we're challenged, and we have space to take care of these.

Finally, also time to reflect. When you reflect, you evaluate, what did I do well? What can I improve on? And that is very healthy, and that really make very good use of the time. When you have margin and a white space. So, how much time do we want to have white space? We aim for 20% that's not scheduled, and it's available as buffer. And honestly, I don't really have 20%, I need to work on it. For me, I have about 10%. But ideally, if you can do 20, that's good. Then for our reflection, what do you do? It's a popular P.D.C.A., you Plan what you need to do, and then you go ahead and Do it and perform. And then you Check. You monitor, self-monitor and also monitor others, and the environment and the whole project, and the team. And then you Act on improving it. That's a very popular P.D.C.A. that you can consider doing when you have the margin, the white space to help improve.

And then I have this very practical, 12 successful skills for time management. Number 1, always begin with the end in mind. Think about what your goal is, remember, the smart goal we talked about? Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. And then once I have the goal, begin with the end in mind, align my work and prioritize according to the goals. Number 2, allocate, time for quadrant 1, important and urgent, then quadrant 2, important and not urgent. And you see more examples of that coming up. Number 3, use electronic tools. We just talked about those, Outlook calendar, OneNote, to do list.

Number 4, set time limit for each goal and task. So that it’s not limitless, right? Make sure you say, okay for this task, I give it 10 minutes, for this, an hour. So that helps to have a little bit of a time bound in your smart goal and give you some healthy pressure so that you don't drag on and waste time and not being efficient. So, know that you have exactly as much time and work toward it. Number 5, use waiting time. I do this a lot. Any time when I’m not driving, when I’m waiting for something, when I have quiet time or just waiting time, we call them time fragments, I use them very well. Perhaps memorize the bible verse or doing some of my social media, respond to some of the questions. And that way, use my waiting time to complete the little things that doesn’t take up too much time.

Number 6, one action with multiple blessings, that is a huge win for me. Ever since our children were young, we would do family chores together. We talked about it last time, right? That way, it's a family event. We all get to contribute, had the privilege to contribute to the family, cleaning, cooking, preparing. And that way, also builds family relationships. So, one action with multiple blessings that happens to be very important in a lot of what I do, every day. Number 7, when other people are very busy using the highway or using certain equipment, avoid those peak time. Because that cause delay, so that you can use it when it's not as busy. You can get on the road when it's not as busy. Be creative.

Number 8, do Q1 and Q2 at peak performance because these are important and urgent. When you are the most alert, perhaps if your morning person, do them first, and we had the schedule last time to show you, right? Number 9, at night, I plan for the next day. Prioritize according to what's important and work towards my goal. Maybe every Friday I plan for next week, and then same thing end for each month, plan for next month. Number 10, organized the office, so that it’s easy access that I can get to what I need when I need it, instead of wasting time to look for them. Organize it in a way by putting the most popular and most common need near you, and what you don't use as much, put it further away. So that makes it very time efficient.

Number 11, cut out procrastination and stop doing it. Because if you procrastinate, what may be not urgent becomes very rushed and very urgent. Last minute, high stress, poor quality. Number 12, self-aware. Remember the Plan, Do, Check, Act? So, this is the check. Monitor yourself, be self-aware, and then act on the improvement. And remember the self-discipline, doing healthy and good, right things. And self-control, do less of what's not so good. And these are very practical, 12 successful skill for time management.

And some people put them into a cartoon, and this is a very good idea. So, you can see upper left, record your current schedule and see how your time fit with the quadrant one and quadrant two. And I have students who know they were only spending 40% on Q2, important and not urgent. And then she became very diligent and make an intentional effort. She increased for quadrant 2 from 40% to 80%, and she feels so satisfied, so now she knows how to improve.

And then group the things, badge similar tasks together. I do that all the time. When I need to go buy things, I try to group all the nearby locations and buy them in one time instead of going out making multiple trips. And for example, email, group the time, 1 hour, dedicated to just doing email, so you don't have to check email throughout today. Some people put in the calendar, maybe right after lunch for an hour when you may not need the most attention for these email.

And then when you're working, focus, turn off your phone, put the phone away, ignore your calls and emails. And then the meeting time, very important, try to minimize them. In our workdays, we try to limit the time of meeting could be 30 minutes or 50 minutes, so that we have time in between. So, we don't have meeting back to back to back. And only have a meeting when you need to interact as a group.

And remember, use the waiting time, effectively, like I said, and I use it all the time. And then 30 minutes at the start of each day to plan on what you do today. Or last night for 30 minutes plan for tomorrow, what you need to do. And then delegate what is not the most urgent or important ones, so that someone else can do them and train them. And then turn what's important into healthy habits. We talked a lot about those healthy habits, it’s a secret weapon. And then block out time from social media, so that you don't have to be distracted when you're focusing on some work. So that’s some of the examples of skills for good, successful time management, see you next time.

Reflections:

1. Do you have a habit of using a calendar? What time management tools are commonly used?

2. In your schedule, what are the high rewards and easy things to do, and which are the difficult but high rewards?

3. Please check the 12 suggestions to help us manage time shared in today's program one by one, and put these skills into every day's work and life.