Engaging ourselves in fun filled act - a better time management makes you a better manager..!

Let me start today's blog by asking some questions:

  • What is that one task which is pending for last two days?
  • How would it look like if you complete that task by this evening?
  • With whom you would like to celebrate the success of achieving that task?

These days I am seriously practicing one thing: 'capturing all my tasks and filling them in four quadrants of the time management matrix' and then acting on them.

Just wanted to share some of my thoughts..!!

Some steps:

  1. Every day before you leave office, write your tasks in your note pad
  2. Categorize all the tasks as (1) Important / Urgent, (2) Important / Not Urgent, (3) Not important / Urgent and (4) Not important / Not urgent.
  3. Create a time matrix and fill the tasks in the relevant quadrants (refer the diagram attached in an excel sheet)
  4. Look at the tasks which are in quadrant 1 (Q1), estimate the time taken for each task, if any task consumes less than five to ten minutes (most probably the mails, reminders, important phone calls, important instructions, etc.), you may choose to complete immediately and try to reduce no. of tasks in  Q1, so that you can save some time to act on rest of them when you come to office next day.
  5. Look at the tasks which are in Q3 and ponder on the below questions:
    1. What tasks would you like to delegate to someone in your team?
    2. Would you like to  delegate the tasks based on the interest and capacities of your team members?
    3. What opportunities are you going to create for your team by delegating those tasks to them?
  6. Look at the tasks which are in Q 4 and ponder on the below questions:
    1. Are those really tasks? Or Unnecessary things which are unimportant for you?
    2. How much time are you going to save by avoiding things which are in Q4?
    3. How much productive would you be?

I just started practising as stated above and feeling excited and empowered about it. Following are some of the changes I am experiencing:

  1. Initially I didn't focus on Q3 (Not important / Urgent) as I felt that those are not important now, as I ignored, the tasks in Q3 shifted to Q1 and over the period those became over poured. I asked a question to myself: "What was stopping me to delegate some tasks from Q3 to some of my team members?", that made me to find ways to delegate certain tasks to my team members and surprisingly this has become one of the capacity building techniques to improve my teams' performance. However initially my work delayed, I could manage. The key is to have 'patience' initially. Now I rarely find tasks in Q1 (Urgent / Important).


  1. Over the period of three months I could clearly see that, I have very exciting and important tasks in Q2 (Important / Not urgent). Most of those are related to the capacity building plans, planning for future, focusing on some strategic matters etc. More importantly the work has become more fun and exciting.

Thanks for taking actions..!!

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