You need to be both efficient and effective

Time management in any environment, electronic or otherwise, involves working both efficiently and effectively. You are working efficiently when you complete tasks in the best possible way. You are working effectively when you concentrate your efforts on the best possible tasks. What you do is more important than how you do it.

It is impossible to do everything that we would like to do. There are simply more jobs to do than there is time. Working efficiently, crossing off each task on a “To Do” list as it’s completed, is not necessarily good time management. We must first determine our goals, both personal and job-related, and then select those important tasks that will help us achieve these goals. Then we must schedule time in our planners to work on these goal-related activities.

Most people use their planners for meetings, appointments, and other activities involving people. They relegate their own wants and needs to an ineffective “To Do” list. Who has time to work on a “To Do” list when other people’s priorities are clamoring for our attention? When we fail to schedule time for our own priorities, we are showing more respect for other people’s time than our own. We should at least give ourselves equal billing. This is not being selfish, it is being effective. Other people’s wants and needs may be the same as our own; but in many instances they are not.