Time Management and Priortization

Time Management - Prioritizing
Do the same way as a Road Warrior calling on customers and prospects.

1st What's the Target (quota) you aiming to reach - achieve? $xxxxxxx. Sales

List customers you need to see. Rank according to past sales
Adjust them to what you think they could be doing in sales.

Ok they're (listed) ranked highest to lowest in volume and therefore highest rank has highest priority.
Divide the list into 4 lists A, B, C, and D.
List A has only approx. 15% of total
List B has approx. 25-30%
List C has the majority
List D has a few that generate so little is easier to find new customers than bring them back to life.

Say your goal (task) is to see each A every month or every quarter.
You build your route (routine) to accomplice this
B's include in routes on the way to and from A's.
Do the C's only when you have time left.

(Note I covered North TX from Shreveport to El Paso plus all of OK. About 110 NAPA store, had to call on each at least once a yr.)

Back to the Internet. Target = seek to accomplish
Goals= tasks you do to get closer to Target
OK what's your Target? What your seeking to accomplishment. $$$XXX Sales?
List all the thing you need to do to reach Target.
Rank as to importance and divide into A B C
Schedule your route or routine around the A goals. Do all A's need to done daily??

A's your goal/task is to do/reach each during a cycle (daily or weekly or monthly cycle. your choice)
What's the most productive thing you can do? Should you be doing it daily?
May be its placing Ads and attend training

Bs What next important, schedule to do some each cycle
Promote on social networks and e-mail responses
10 minutes per soc net not 1 hr on each net

C's Do a few each cycle but as after thoughts
Learn new ways to promote business Check e-mails

So your building scheduling days activities to insure A's are accomplished because they have the highest priority. They are the absolute must do's to reach Target $$$$.

.

Good time management is the results of great prioritization. In other words, first prioritize the tasks you have and you'll find yourself managing time a lot better and easier.

Eliminate unecessary workload, good prioritization means eliminate the unimportant tasks you can work out for tomorrow. Focus on today, what's important to achieve on the present. When you are already focus on today and what you are trying to achieve a good time management will then takes place.

Just focus on the milestones and divide your time accordingly for each one.

Time management is only easy if you are committed to sticking to it. Otherwise, it will be useless. Prioritize on what you need to do first. Have fun later. Work hard and party harder as they say.

I know from experience that the littelest things can sway me for wayyyy too much time and then when I get back to what I was doing I forget what the outcome is supposed to be. LOL ;-)

This is a very good question. There's so many ways you can go about it. it all depends on what you are willing to implement to manage your time & prioritize you to-do list. For example i am more of a technical person. I use my blackberry for managing my time by scheduling my day & I put an automatic reminder which sets off 15 mins before my next task. I do this every night & I also set recurring tasks so I don't have to be inputting the same things all over again. Some people use excel sheets, others a notebook, it all depends.

I hope I didn't confuse you further. LOL

Giselle

Get yourself a copy of the following two books...

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
First Things First

Both are by Stephen Covey and can be had for around $20 together from Amazon. They break down an extremely effective time management system you can start using daily and weekly. 7 Habits touches on the time management system as well as covering the infamous habits and First Things goes more in depth on managing your time, business and life.

I also grabbed a daily, 2 page per day planner from FranklinCovey.com. I splurged and spent around $200 for the planner system, nice Italian leather cover, etc. You can get a cheaper system if you desire and get the same results.

I personally enjoy splurging on the things that help me stay on track, measure results and frankly, "get shit done".

Good luck!
Chris Elliott

Another great book is '4 Hour Work Week' by Tim Ferris

He writes with a very casual style and is quite inspirational.

This book really pointed out some simple techniques and breaks them right down for you.

Elimination seems to be an area that isn't considered when coming to time management but really they come hand in hand. You will be amazed when you break down your tasks, how many are actually necessary.

There is also some priceless info on outsourcing in this book

Hi foxpro9,

Have you read about the 80/20 principle which can help you achieve more using less. The principle helps to tackle the 2 problems that you faced.

I have written an article on the 80/20 principle and you can read more about it by clicking here

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

First you need to prioritize what you really want to achieve during the day, the most important among them, those that are needed immediately, set aside those that you can do tomorrow. Then you can start working, time management will go along since you already know what you are going to work on the present.

Thank you, mccflo, that was exactly what I was going to suggest. Those two books--along with a copy of the Franklin Planner "training" video or audiotape--still represent the highest plateau of personal time management, for the best possible reason:
Just as can be said about money, don't work for time. Make time work for you.

Hey foxpro9, I know where you are coming from, I used to have a lot of problems with time management and prioritizing. Have you ever heard of The Big Rocks Time Management? I just searched for this video on Youtube to share it , This is an animation, and I am sure you will get the point

kept a pretty detailed journal for one week of exactly what i was doing and how long i was doing it, it was a pain in the ass but very revealing,i've been mapping out the next day and week with fairly specific blocks of time set for each task, not a perfect system but definitely better than what i was doing, just doing something in a forward direction is a start, momentum follows with your level of persistence

Thanks for the post, I learnt alot reading other replies to you!!

Now to put them into action..........