Effective Time Management Techniques

Getting The Most Important Tasks Done

The Pareto principle - known also as the 80/20 rule - says that, in any situation, a small number of causes produce most of the results. Applying this principle to the tasks on your to do list, just a few of them will make a big difference to your long term goals. The other tasks are simply less important.

The key is to get those most important jobs done, even if that means leaving many of the less important jobs undone. Several experts on time management techniques agree with this general advice.

• Management consultant Ivy Lee gave the following common sense advice to Charles Schwab, president of the Bethlehem Steel Company in the 1930's. "Write down the most important things you have to do tomorrow. Now, number them in the order of their true importance. The first thing tomorrow, start working on item number one and stay with it until completed. Then take item two the same way, then item three and so on. Don't worry if you don't complete everything on the schedule. At least you will have completed the most important projects before getting to the less important ones."
• Stephen R Covey recommends splitting tasks between important and urgent. We need to spend time on tasks that are both urgent and important, but the key to achieving long term goals is to spend time on important tasks that are not urgent.
• Richard Koch wrote a book called The 80/20 Principle where he advises how you can achieve much more with much less effort, time and resources, simply by concentrating on key important activities. On the other hand, you could spend huge time and effort on matters that really won't help you get to where you want to be.

The one problem I have with these 80/20 time management techniques is that you might never get round to the smaller tasks which have to get done sometime. Therefore, my advice is to allocate half an hour to an hour each day for 'dealing with the smaller stuff' - emails, tidying the desk and so on. So your plan for the day might list out five very important items - plus a sixth activity that says 'clear small items'.

If you decide that it's a good idea to focus on the most important tasks, you have to deal with one key question: how do you judge what's important? The answer is that you need to set some long term goals that you really want to achieve - for example, building a successful home based business. As part of your goal setting, you should plan the key tasks that you will enable you to achieve your long term goals. These are the important but not urgent tasks that should be near the top of your to do list.

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