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Best Time Management Tips
(Part 2)
Keep Maps in your car – Always keep maps in your car to make sure that you don’t get lost, a major time waster. You can also get low-cost, no cost map programs that will run in your PDA/Pocket PC/laptop, these can be amazingly handy. Don’t worry if the program is a year or two old, streets for very little if you’ve ever watched one closely. I sometimes use MapQuest to get refined maps for my purposes, I then print them out and keep them in my glove compartment. AdvantGo is a free program that will allow you to do this on your PDA or Pocket PC (store your specialized maps).
Tape TV shows - I developed this technique in college. I was going to college for my bachelor’s full-time, cheating in some Masters courses, working full-time, working a second part-time job in trying to leave some time for my girlfriend each week. I read somewhere that 20 minutes out of every hour of TV with commercials. By using my VCR I could tape the shows and skip the commercials to save time. I even got in the habit of skipping the boring parts, like the repetitive introductions and credits.
Use a good SPAM filter - I love e-mail because it can be a great timesaver. But at some point the SPAM got so bad, that I no longer felt like I was checking my e-mail – I was checking my SPAM. That’s when I got a good spam filter. Yahoo Mail has a good filter or you can buy a separate filter if you’re using a different program. I had a great filter one time that would not only take out the SPAM, it would SPAM the SPAMer right back! Somehow that pleased me greatly.
Conference Calls (teleconferences) - The conference call is a great new business tool that didn’t exist in its current format just a few years ago. You can do meetings and trainings for free with up to a hundred people (more for a small fee) by simply signing up at a website that hosts teleconferencing. And it is much simpler to use than the old teleconferencing technology and can be done from anywhere. This can allow you to do meetings or trainings from virtually anywhere and nobody has to travel. It’s a great idea to use PowerPoint’s in conjunction with these meetings that you just send everybody’s e-mail address. Additional handouts and forms can also be e-mailed in the same fashion. TIP: don’t try to do a from a cell phone, the sound clarity is terrible and you can lose signal and the call will be dropped.
Stop Staring - My dad loves to stare! He will sit and watch a download go across the screen for hours, it never seems to get boring for him. He stares at his coffee cooking in the microwave. He watches his VCR tape rewind. He watches the coffee pot make coffee. I once think I caught him watching paint dry, but I have no physical evidence. I thought this was a strange behavior of my father, until I began to notice in my employees. I noticed them watching the copier or make copies, watching the fax machine fax, watching the printer print , the list goes on. This is just more downtime disguised as being forced to wait. Learn to immediately do something else to make use of this time, these little bits of wasted time make up a large part of our day. We have to be aware these time thieves.
That’s it for now … but look for more soon!
Paul J. Cline MA CAGS CAP Ed.D (ABD) is a Trainer / Seminar Leader, University Professor, Certified Addictions Professional (CAP) and local expert on Addictions and Mental Health. Paul is owner of Advanced Training Seminars, providing seminars, consulting and coaching based in St. Petersburg, Florida (727) 204-0779. Email: paulcline7@yahoo.com - Visit our website at: www.advancedtrainingseminars.com - Check out our selection of FREE Articles and Useful Links & Resources.
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