Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5

Focusing Your Efforts, Prioritizing Tasks, and Blocking Your Time

In This Chapter

• Identifying vital tasks and goals with the 80/20 rule
• Prioritizing activities
• Developing the habit of time-blocking
• Staying on the road to successful time-blocking

What you do with your time is more important than how much time you have. Just as recognizing and understanding your life goals helps you achieve successful time-management skills, the effective use of your time goes a long, long way to shortening the journey to those goals. By investing your time with care and consideration, your journey toward your dreams is certain to be a smoother road. In fact, an old time-management adage says that for every minute you invest in planning, you save ten minutes in execution. Spend an hour planning your trip, and you'll free up ten hours — to achieve better business results, reduce stress, and add quality time at home.

The best way to achieve your goals is to prioritize them and develop an ordered plan to reach them. A universally recognized method for maximizing productivity, called the 80/20 rule, has proven successful time and again, for more than 100 years. In this chapter, I explain the general concept and show you how to apply it — at work, at home, in your relationships, and beyond.

People who are most productive have another common trait: They treat everything in life as an appointment. These people value their time and the activities to which they commit, whether business or personal. ...