[Insert pdf cover]

A newsletter subscriber bonus report, helping you better

Get It Done!
motivate yourself and your team

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 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

Get It Done!
This e-book is published by Mind Tools Limited, of
2nd Floor, 145-157 St John St, London, EC1V 4PY, UK.

Version 2.0

Copyright © Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011. All rights reserved.

This e-book is protected by international copyright law.

You may only use it if you have downloaded it directly
from the mindtools.com site, or if you have received it
under license from Mind Tools Ltd.

Cover image © iStockphoto/

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 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Organize for Success ............................................................................................................................................................. 6

Scheduling: Planning and Defending Your Time ........................................................................................................... 11

Delegation ............................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Get Busy .................................................................................................................................................................................. 17

It’s Time ................................................................................................................................................................................... 23

Have you found this e-book useful? ................................................................................................................................. 24

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011. 3 of 24

 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

Get It Done!
Introduced by Mind Tools CEO, James Manktelow
Many people feel management skills, your performance will
out of control of improve. What’s more, when you’re seen to be
their workload. In a good manager of time, people will take you
fact, it’s probably seriously if you say that you have too much to
the most common do. Rather than just saying “he’s/she’s no good
issue that people at time management”, they’ll work to help you
experience when resolve the problems you’re experiencing.
they first come to
Mind Tools. People This workbook pulls together proven time
find themselves management tools and techniques that you can
working very long start using right away to bring your workload
hours, but still not and working habits under control. It’s organized
getting their work in three sections:
fully done, and experiencing intense stress and
unhappiness as a result.  Organize for Success – Focus your
time. Stop frittering it away!
What’s more, some people sabotage  Delegate – Do YOU need to do it?
themselves with bad habits like procrastination  Get Busy – Step out of your own way
and lack of delegation… and get down to work!

If any of this describes you, you may be
frustrated by frequent interruptions, struggling
to accomplish important objectives, and feeling
that life is in a constant state of crisis. You may
sense that your boss is losing confidence in
you. And you may find that work is trampling all
over your personal and family life, so that you
have no time for the things that you enjoy.
Together, the tools you’ll learn here form a firm
foundation for breaking through and getting
those key tasks done. Learning to control your
time is certainly worth the effort as the payoffs
and benefits are huge – in fact, these are some
of the most fundamental skills you’ll need to
progress your career! We hope you find this
workbook useful!

Fortunately, there can be a lot that you can do

about this: You simply need effective tools and
tactics to gain control over the time you spend
at work. And when you make your work time
more productive, the wonderful side effect is
that you have more time to allocate to your
family and to leisure activities.

The goal is to maximize the return you achieve James Manktelow, CEO,
on the time you invest. When you make a MindTools.com
conscious decision to control your time on the
job, and you back that up with solid time

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Organize for Success
Focus your time. Stop frittering it away!
Time is one of the most important and scarce
resources you have. Most of us have a never-
ending list of things that we could do if we have
the time, and finding the time to do the things
we have to do is always a problem.
This is why it helps to start thinking of time as a
real economic resource that needs to be spent
wisely.
If you work eight hours a day, five days a week,
for 50 weeks a year, then you have 2,000 hours
a year to allocate to accomplishing various jobs.
Think of this in the same way as if you had
$2,000 for office supplies in your budget, or
2,000 gallons of gasoline that you could use in
a year. To make this even more difficult, if you
found you haven’t used your time wisely,
there’s no begging more resources from the
boss, or buying more – when it’s used, it’s
used, regardless how well you allocated it.
When you recognize the reality that time is a
valuable and finite resource, the idea of not
squandering it becomes that much more
attractive! With this attitude, you can approach
decisions about time allocation more efficiently.
You’ll be less likely to waste time and be more
reluctant to do things that don’t contribute to
your important goals.
But it’s not just about focusing on deadlines and
to-do lists, it’s more about looking for ways to
maximize the return on the time you have. Time
doesn’t have to just tick by; you can get time on
your side, and find opportunities to savor the
© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2010.
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precious moments you’ve been given, knowing
you are using them to your best advantage.
What do you have to do?
The best way to get control of your time is to
make that an important goal. Decide right now
that you are going to make a positive change,
and firmly commit yourself to that in your mind.
When you make a real commitment to
improving your time management, you are
much more likely to follow through. While we
won’t go into detail here about the process of
long range planning and goal setting, you
should start your time management plan with a
specific goal that you will monitor and measure.
With your overall goal in hand, the next step in
the process is to bring together all of the tasks
you’ve accepted and commitments you’ve
made into one place, so that you understand
the totality of what you need to achieve, and
can create a coherent plan for dealing with
these tasks and commitments.
With our theme of getting those difficult,
troublesome tasks done, we’ll use a variant of
that very basic but important time management
tool – a To-Do List – and we’ll adapt it to help
you motivate yourself to complete those tasks.
So what do you need to do?
Start by writing down a list of the all of the tasks
you need to complete on the next page.
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I need to:
This is the extent of a typical To-Do list. The
problem is, it’s not particularly inspiring, is it?
Where is the time line? Where is the
motivation? Where is the understanding “why”
you need to accomplish these things?
When you first start building the habit of making
To-Do lists it’s important that you set yourself
up for success. When you have positive proof
© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2010.
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your To-Do list will work for you, you will stick
with it and keep accomplishing more and more
with your time. Two key elements for
accomplishing any goal are making it time-
bound and relevant.
For each of the goals you listed above,
determine when you need to complete it and
why.
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My Motivating To-Do List

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

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 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

I need to

by

because

As you get started with this approach, make it a won’t need to articulate the “why” so formally,
habit to list everyday the things that you need to however, when you are getting started it is a
do and add a completion date. As you get more great reminder and motivator.
confident with your time management skills you

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2010. 8 of 24


Tip:
Once you’ve started to get things moving
with To-Do Lists, take the next step, and
start prioritizing items on your To-Do List
from A to F, so that the most important items
are at the top. More on this next!
Prioritization: Urgent Versus Important
As we said at the start of this section, to be
effective, you need to treat your time as a
precious resource, and ensure that you get the
best possible return on it. This means
concentrating on important, high-return
activities, and minimizing the amount of time
you spend on low value tasks.
The problem with this is there are so many
“urgent” tasks screaming for our attention!
Important tasks have a high immediate value,
help you achieve your long-term goals, or have
serious negative consequences if they’re not
completed.
These items may or may not appear to be
urgent. For example, something like self-
development is very important to your career
success, and thus should be high priority.
However, in the scheme of a busy day, it
doesn’t have much urgency, and therefore it
tends to get overlooked. The small, detailed
tasks that have very little long-term value to you
are what are often deemed urgent.
Unfortunately, they then get treated as if they
are important, when in fact they may not be!
What you need to do, then, is separate
importance from urgency, make sure that
urgent work genuinely is urgent, and ensure
that you put a reasonable amount of effort into
important but non-urgent activities.
A good prioritization plan helps you focus your
time and attention in this way. When your
energy is focused, you can concentrate and get
urgent items out of the way so that you have
time to work on your most important, but not so
urgent tasks. These are the high value tasks
that give you the best return on your time
investment.
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This is where the “Urgent/Important Matrix” can
be a highly effective tool for managing your time
and helping you to concentrate on the highest
value tasks on your To-Do list. See figure 1
below for this.
The matrix plots task importance versus task
urgency and yields four categories of tasks:
Urgent and Important – these are Critical
Activities that have to be done. Maybe they are
unexpected or unplanned items or perhaps they
were left to the last minute due to poor time
management previously. Whatever the reason,
these items need to be attended to right away.
The goal is to reduce the number of these last
minute, critical tasks by deliberating working
away at the important items on a daily basis.
Important and Not Urgent – these are your
Long Term Goal items. This is the area in which
you want to maximize your time, and the only
way you can accomplish this is to plan every
day effectively (we’ll deal with this next). The
more time you allocate to these tasks every
day, the less likely it is that they will creep into
the urgent pile and cause you undue stress.
Urgent and Not Important – these items are
the interruptions that plague you and keep you
from accomplishing your important work. The
tasks that come up here are often termed
important to others and therefore they see them
as important to you. Step back and analyze
each request for its true importance to you. See
if you can delegate or reschedule these items
or, if you can, avoid taking them on altogether.
Then take proactive measure to limit your
exposure to interruptions by making yourself
available at certain times of the day or blocking
off time periods completely for work on your
important tasks.
Not Urgent and Not Important – these are the
distractions. Sometimes they are self-imposed
and sometimes others introduce them. They
don’t contribute to your long term goals and you
can’t afford to lose your focus dealing with
them. You might have to say no to requests like
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this, and you will certainly have to say no to Now look at your revised To-Do list and place
yourself to ensure your time is spent wisely. the items in the correct category on the
Urgent/Important Matrix.

Figure 1: The Urgent/Important Matrix

Urgent/Important Matrix

Important Goals Critical Activities

Important

Distractions Interruptions

Urgent

How many of the activities you’re currently
stressed by really belong in the “Interruptions”
category? And how many items in the “Critical”
category should really have been dealt with a
while ago? And what does this tell you about
the way you should manage incoming tasks?
Sometimes “stuff” will come up. These
unplanned items can be quickly assimilated into
your Urgent/Important Matrix as well. You might
have to decide quickly whether or not the task
deserves a high or low priority. Having clear
goals will help make this decision much easier.
Remember that there is never enough time in a
day to make everything happen. You can’t feel
guilty about that – what you can do is control
your time as much as possible, and know that

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you’re allocating this precious resource to the
highest value tasks.
To learn more about the important topic of
prioritization, Mind Tools Club members can
Scheduling: Planning and Defending Your Time
So, if there’s never enough time in the day to do
everything, how do you make best use of the
limited time you’ve got, handle the interruptions,
and still make sure you’ve got time to work on
your important tasks?
The answer is “By planning your time”, also
known as “Scheduling”.
By creating a proper schedule, you can identify
the time that you want to make available for
© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011.
Get It Done! | MindTools.com
take our How to Prioritize Bite Sized Training
session located here:
http://www.mindtools.com/community/Bite-
SizedTraining/HowtoPrioritize.php
work, and then plan your use of time so that
you can get important jobs done, at the same
time that you leave time to deal with the urgent
activities and interruptions that come up. What’s
more, when you know where your time goes
and what your commitments are, you can
manage the delivery promises that you make to
other people (“I’ve got a very full workload up
until the 14th, but I’ll be pleased to get it done by
the 20th.”) To create your schedule, start with a
page showing the days in the week.
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Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

8 am

9 am

10 am

11 am

12 am

1 pm

2 pm

3 pm

4 pm

5 pm

6pm

7 pm

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Then work through this process:
1. First, block out the hours that you don’t
want to work, so that these are not
available. (If you’re starting from a
position where you’re seriously behind
with work, you may want to consider
coming in early and/or leaving late,
however you should normally plan a
reasonable length day.)
2. Mark in a proper amount of time for the
things you absolutely have to do to do a
good job. These will often be the things
on which you’re assessed.
3. Next schedule in the genuinely urgent
activities from your To-Do List that have
to be done in the next week.
4. Then schedule in appropriate
contingency time to handle the problems
and urgent situations that routinely crop
up from day to day. Generally, the more
unpredictable your job, the more
contingency time you’ll need,
HOWEVER, work over time to minimize
these, and don’t accept frivolous
interruptions.
5. The time you have left is your
“discretionary time”: time available to
work on the Important and Not Urgent
tasks on your To-Do List or
Urgent/Important Matrix. Now block
these in, making reasonable estimates
of the time needed to complete them.
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By the time you get to step 5, you may find that
no time is available to work on these Important
and Not Urgent tasks. This is clearly a problem!
 Revisit your assumptions about the
things that you have to do and check
that these are valid. Drop what you can
here.
 Revisit your assumptions about the
urgent actions that you have to take. Are
they genuinely urgent? And how can
you stop these things from becoming
urgent in the future?
 Look at the contingency time you’ve
made available. Is it fairly estimated?
Should someone else be handling some
of the chaos? And should you be less
available to be distracted?
When, in the future, someone asks you to take
on a new piece of work, make reference to your
schedule and your To-Do List, and check your
commitments to other people. If it conflicts with
these, negotiate deadlines appropriately. Also,
build in a bit of contingency time to the deadline
you promise, just in case things over-run.
With an organized approach to managing your
workload, with effective prioritization of your
tasks, and with a well-managed schedule, you’ll
soon be well on your way to getting those all-
important things done!
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Delegation
Do YOU need to do it?
The sheer magnitude of work that goes into
accomplishing important, long term goals
makes it necessary to involve more than just
your own hard work. Here, the days of “if it’s to
be, it’s up to me” are gone, and to attempt to do
everything yourself is foolish and inefficient.
As we’ve been discussing, your time is best
spent on the items of highest value. To achieve
whilst also ensuring that everything that needs
to get done is done, you will probably need to
delegate some of your work to others.
Don’t forget that delegation is not the sole
preserve of managers. Everyone can benefit
from effective delegation as a time
management tool, as it frees up discretionary
time that can be then spent on other, more
important, things.
If delegation is done only when a person
feels overloaded, it can backfire. Those
being delegated to will resent the practice,
and sense they are being treated as a
means to an end. For delegation to be really
effective, the person being delegated to must
feel empowered as well. This means that
you need to hand over enough responsibility
so that the other person can reap the
rewards of doing a good job, and view the
task as important to them.
There are several distinct advantages to
delegating that you should keep in mind when
evaluating the “cost” versus the benefits.
Delegation:
 Increases your discretionary time.
 Develops other people’s knowledge and
capabilities
 Demonstrates trust and confidence in
others.
 Enhances the commitment of others.
 Improves decision-making with
increased access to information.
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 Enhances the efficiency and timeliness
of decisions.
 Improves work coordination between
teams and individuals.
While the benefits of delegation are quite
compelling, the practice is not so easy.
Delegation is much more than asking someone
to do something for you. It’s definitely not about
offloading your work onto others either! It’s
about involving others in meaningful work and
cultivating a team spirit so that everyone’s
capabilities, knowledge, and effectiveness are
improved. It’s about deciding what you do and
what you have others do.
Complete this mini self-assessment to
determine how well you currently delegate.
Place a checkmark next to the items that you
do, or have done, in a delegation situation. If
you have not had an opportunity to delegate,
think about what you might do if given the
chance.
Delegation self-assessment
When delegating work to others (check all of
the boxes that apply):
I clearly specify the results I want and
need.
I make sure the amount of authority I
give matches the amount of
responsibility for the outcome.
I acknowledge limitations and
knowledge gaps and provide support
where needed.
I clearly specify the level of initiative I
expect. (Do they wait for directions,
submit interim reports for review, or
complete the whole task with only an
end report?)
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I allow the person to participate in
deciding when and how the work is to
be done.
I clearly outline the consequences of
success and failure.
I work within the organizational
structure so that no one is bypassed
(or at least informed of my decision to
delegate elsewhere).
I delegate regularly and consistently,
not just when I’m overloaded or prefer
not to do something.
I encourage the person to come to me
with solutions and not merely asking
for advice or answers when a problem
is encountered.
I maintain overall accountability for
results.
The more checkmarks the better! The
behaviors listed are all ones that are needed for
a positive delegation outcome.
Deciding when to delegate
Empowered delegating involves deciding when
to delegate tasks to others and when to perform
them oneself. To determine when delegation is
most appropriate, there are four key questions
you need to ask yourself.
1. Does another person have the
necessary information or expertise? You
may even find that other people are
more qualified than you to perform
certain tasks. When this happens, use it
to your advantage!
2. Will another person’s capabilities be
increased by the assignment? If you use
delegation purely to get out of unwanted
tasks, the results will be less than
stellar. Make sure the task you delegate
has sufficient appeal and benefits.
3. Can I trust another person to use good
judgment and values that are aligned
with the organization’s needs and
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strategies? The point of delegating is to
increase your available time. If the
underlying values are inconsistent then
you may feel compelled to monitor
closely and supervise the whole task, in
which case you are better off doing it
yourself. Make sure you communicate
“why” the job is important to help ensure
a common perspective on the outcome.
4. Do I have enough time to delegate the
job effectively? Delegating requires work
on your part. You have to make sure
you have time to train, answer
questions, and check on the person’s
progress. (However, think long term
here, not short term. In the short term,
there’s never time to delegate. In there’s
a long term in the relationship, it’s can
be mad not to delegate!)
Look at your To-Do list and identify three tasks
that can be delegated to others. Make sure you
can answer “yes” to at least a few of the
questions asked above.
If any of these conditions are not met, there will
be a greater probability that the delegation
outcome will not be completely successful.
Three tasks I can delegate are:
1.
2.
3.
Deciding to whom you will delegate
Having decided to delegate a task, you must
now consider whom to ask. If you are a
manager you may be able to delegate to one of
your staff quite easily. If you aren’t a manager
or the task you are delegating would be best
done by someone you don’t have authority for,
it takes more planning.
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Certainly to delegate effectively, you need to
have sufficient influence with the person. In an
authority relationship this influence is assumed,
as it is in a situation where you have the formal
right to delegate work. When delegating to a
peer, you need to ensure you have sufficient
credit with the person to make delegation
feasible.
You can’t simply walk up to anyone in the
organization and ask him or her to do
something for you. There has to be a reason
and a plan. You may have to think of someone
else to delegate to or take time to foster a
relationship and build the credit you need to
work collaboratively.
For each of the tasks you identified above,
determine whom you will delegate it to by
completing the table below.

Task 1 Task 2 Task 3

Who has the
necessary information
or expertise?
Of these, whose
capabilities will be
increased by the
assignment?
Of these, who can you
trust to make good
decisions with minimal
supervision?
Of these, who do you
have influence over, or
credit with, to make
the delegation doable?
Do you need to build
credit with anyone to
make this delegation
possible? If so, how
will you do this?
Of these, who has
time to take on the
task?
Of these, who is most
reliable?
Of these, to whom will
you delegate?

To learn more about delegating and to complete a full delegation plan, Mind Tools Club members
can take our Bite-Sized Training lesson on Delegation here:
http://www.mindtools.com/community/Bite-SizedTraining/Delegation.php

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011. 16 of 24


Get Busy
Step out of your own way and get down to work!
The unfortunate truth is that many of our time
management errors are entirely our own doing.
We simply decide to use our time in ways that
aren’t optimal – we choose easy, interesting,
and fun over productive and laborious.
Some classic unproductive uses of time
include:
 Bad Habits – Productive habits are
great. What happens all too often,
though, is that our habits lead us to
doing things in the same unproductive
ways. Doing ”what we’ve always done”
or doing them “the way they’ve always
been done” is not necessarily conducive
to efficiency. Furthermore, habits like
reading the paper, chatting in the hall, or
taking lots of short coffee breaks eat up
potentially productive time.
 Concentrating on trivia – We all thrive
on accomplishment. What often
happens is we complete small,
unimportant jobs as a way to satisfy our
need for completion. These only provide
temporary satisfaction and they don’t
lead to strong, long-term performance.
By concentrating on the prioritizing tools
we discussed in part one of this
workbook, you should be able to
conquer this classic time waster.
 Procrastination – We put off decisions
and action until the last minute. In crisis
mode, good decision making and
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planning become severely hampered.
The best actions are made with the right
amount of time and with sufficient
pressure to motivate us to do a good
job, but not so much that we make
mistakes.
Breaking poor time habits
What habits are you succumbing to that eat up
the precious time you have for work?
Do you make the rounds chatting with various
colleagues every morning… catching up on the
match results or replaying what you did the
night before? Maybe you consume three cups
of coffee before even opening up your email to
see what the day holds. You might simply be a
slow starter who takes the first hour of work just
to wake up and join the land of the living.
Whatever your habits are, it’s important you
identify them and look for ways to change
yourself and your environment to minimize their
distraction factor.
Start at the beginning of your day and replicate
a typical schedule. What do you generally do at
what time? Begin with what time you wake up
and end with returning home from work. Include
when you take coffee breaks, when you get
really focused on work, how long you break for
lunch, and other main events. Focus on the
habitual things you do in and around your work
time.
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Daily Schedule

Time Activity

Wake Up

Arrive home

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Now take some time to analyze your typical
schedule critically.
Do you see some obvious places where you
can steal back unproductive time?
Would 30 minutes for lunch be sufficient?
What about getting up half an hour earlier or
eliminating one coffee break?
Be honest with yourself about the habits that
are wasting your time. It’s not realistic to think
Time Efficiency Goals
Busting procrastination
You know you’re procrastinating when you
compulsively check your email hoping someone
has sent you something (anything, please!) in
the last five minutes that will take your attention
away from the task at hand. Or you suddenly
decide that your files, your desk, the office
supply room, must be reorganized… now!
These are some of the many signs that you
clearly do not want to do what you know you
have to do.
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you will become an automaton at work, solely
focused on tasks and not taking your mind off
work for one instant. You can however, limit
your free time and make sure you are
maximizing your discretionary time.
Write down three changes you can (and will!)
make to your schedule to improve your time
efficiency. Write them as goal statements with
clear targets, timelines, and measurability
factors. Make them SMART (Specific,
measurable, attainable, relevant, and time
bound).
There is no easy way around procrastination. It
too is a nasty habit that is hard to break once
you get used to it. At first the stress and
pressure of always having something hanging
over you is uncomfortable but then you get
used to it and suddenly, “I do my best work
under pressure” becomes your mantra.
Like any bad habit, the first step in breaking it is
acknowledgement. If you are a procrastinator,
and many of us are, to some extent, then use
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the following space to write a statement Next, think of the benefits you will receive when
acknowledging that you do procrastinate and a you complete the task. What can you expect to
few current examples. enjoy as soon as the job is finished?

Procrastination Acknowledgement Completion Benefits

I, am a procrastinator. 1

Some current/recent examples of my 2

procrastination include:
3

Look closely at the consequences and the

benefits. Repeat them over and over again to
yourself as a reminder of how important it is to
get this task off your plate and finished.

Now take some time to think about the
consequences of procrastination. What is likely
to happen/has happened to you because of
these instances of procrastination?
By recognizing that you do procrastinate you
are in a better position to face it and change it.
And the most effective means to do that is to
break the task down into small pieces and
whittle away at it.

Procrastination Consequences While you might balk at having to spend the

next five hours preparing a keynote speech,
1 you can probably take 10 minutes to come up
with a theme and topic sentence. That is how
2 you get things done, one small piece at a time.
Whether you choose to take the bites
3 consecutively or break them up is your choice.
When the task is unpleasant or overwhelming,
4 choosing to complete small sections in between
more interesting and rewarding tasks is a
5 powerful strategy.

6 Using one of the tasks you are currently

procrastinating on, break it down into small
7 chucks that can be completed in 10 to 30
minutes. You need to do something for at least
10 minutes and at that point you can decide

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011. 20 of 24

 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

whether you want to continue on or do will reward yourself for your efforts. Try to
something else. include a reward in the middle as well as the
end. The relief of having completed the project
and any extrinsic rewards attached to
TASK: completion might be enough making a midterm
reward the only type necessary.
Manageable Chunks:

1 TASK:

2 Reward Schedule:

3
Reward:

4 When:

5
Reward:
6
When:
7

8 Reward:

With these small, manageable pieces in mind
you should be able to see an end to the task.
All you need to do is get started!
Once started, you also need to provide a
reason to continue. Reminding yourself of the
benefits and consequences is helpful, and so is
periodically rewarding yourself for a job well
done. We all need external motivation at some
point. Promising yourself something pleasant is
a great way to keep your enthusiasm high!
Using the same task, decide when and how you
When:
Finally, as a way to tie together your
procrastination-busting plan, you can use a
proven self motivation technique – a personal
contract. We all respond to the authority of a
contract so making one with ourselves seem to
cement a plan and yield a much higher success
rate.
Using the contract on the next page, turn your
goal into a contract statement and incorporate
your “chunking” plan and rewards as well.

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 Get It Done! | www.MindTools.com

Task Completion Contract

I, do hereby commit to

by

, 20 .

I will accomplish this by working for at least minutes at a time, times per day until it is

complete.

I will reward myself for completion as follows:

© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011. 22 of 24


It’s Time
Put it all together
Your time is far too scarce a commodity to
waste. It is non-renewable and non-
purchasable. That means you need to get
serious about using it wisely. From the moment
you wake up to the moment you get home from
work, you should be thinking about how to
make the best use of your time. You want high
returns on your investments of time, and the
way to get these is to plan carefully and decide
how to allocate your time.
Use your talents to the fullest and work on high
value tasks that help you accomplish your long
term and important tasks. Use the skills and
experience of the people around you to get the
most productivity you can. When you put the
© Mind Tools Ltd, 2008-2011.
Get It Done! | MindTools.com
right people on the right tasks, the result is
efficient and satisfying. Don’t hesitate to use the
resources you have available to you to get the
job done right.
And don’t be afraid to dig in and get busy.
Scrutinize your habits and conquer your desire
to procrastinate. When you fully commit to
working hard and working smart the results will
come. It’s about being disciplined and
recognizing what you can do to improve your
time management. When you get control of the
time you spend you will be pleasantly surprised
by the extra time you find – time you can
choose to do what you want with, no questions,
no strings!
23 of 24
 Get It Done! | MindTools.com

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