How To Write Your
Time Management Action Plan

Have you ever set up your Time Management Action Plan? 

In order to reach your major goals, you will need time management efficiency on a daily basis. Here’s how you reach that.

Your Daily plan; Making a list of things to do every day

Develop your daily “time management action plan”. Plan daily what you want to achieve that day.

 This is a common sense rule which implies that you need to do some advance planning every day and not rely solely on your memory.

You should also have only one list not multiple lists on several scraps of paper.

It requires a backdrop of a weekly and monthly planner, even your quarterly planner.

In particular Outlook used to be a great favourite of mine in planning the day, as all previously set appointments were automatically entered in the day.

The important point is that without an action plan for the day, you will hardly get though the day successfully.

Time Management Action Plan

There is an old Irish Proverb that says:

“The half hour you lose in the morning is the one you will be looking for the rest of the day”.

This suggests to take 10 minutes first thing in the morning to decide on what you would like to do that day, otherwise you’ll be chasing time for the rest of the day!  

Take your list of events for that day, such as meetings you are supposed to take part in. Assess the necessity of the meeting and cancel any unnecessary meetings.

Now you know how much free time you have left for your planning.

List out all the Tasks using:

Category of Task

With the Category of the task, you form shortcuts to gaining an overview of what you have to do. This will enable you to plan better.

Is this a phone call, a net meeting, a chat, an informative briefing? Is this an email, a report, some research to be done on the internet, a letter? Is it an idea, a reminder, something urgent?

Check the following list for symbols that are suitable to your needs and use them to make your daily list more “readable with one glance”.

Setting Priorities to Your Action Plan

Give each task a priority, for example:

Priority Level 1: Top Priority

Priority Level 2: High Priority (but not quite Top Priority)

Priority Level 3: Important, Needs to be done.

Priority Level 4: Can be done now.

Priority Level 5: Low Priority; Could be done next week.

Don’t forget the concept of Low-hanging fruits though. Many items on your list may be easily completed in a short amount of time and although they may be low priority, you may be well advised to clear those out of your action list.

Access To Your Daily Plan

Do others need access to your daily plan? Colleagues, Boss, or Personal assistant?

If so, ensure that your plan is available and always updated to avoid double bookings or confusion.

On that note, it can be advisable to block a certain amount of time on your daily plan so that you actually get the time to finish up your personal set of tasks.

Conclusion:

Remember the weather forecast approach. Despite having some of the best equipment in the world, weather forecasts are only for the day we have – at most, for two days.

Why? Because so much can happen in one or two days, the forecasts will be inaccurate.

The same goes for your daily plan and this is why we recommend taking that 10 minutes every morning to set up your plan for that day!

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