Leadership Resources
PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
- Time Management For Leaders
- Planning a Program
- Delegating Responsibility
- Managing Conflict
Time Management for Leaders
Time management is important to any person, but particularly to student organization and leaders. Involvement in co-curricular activities means that in addition to classes, homework, meals, jobs, and socializing, another significant amount of time is taken up with organizational obligations. The following information has been adapted to provide you with some suggestions on how to more effectively manage your time.
Time management is a personal skill. Only you know your peak work hours, your attention span, your eating and sleeping needs, which must be planned for. Thus it is important to fine a time management strategy that best fits your needs. The proceeding five steps can help you establish your strategy appropriate to your needs:
- Plan
- Assess
- Organize
- Prioritize
- Schedule
Plan
Research and individual experiences have shown that those who set personal goals have a greater chance of success. These individual's goals are realistic, believable and achievable. People set goals evaluate their progress and make necessary changes regularly. If you would like to manage your time more efficiently, your first step is to set goals you would like to achieve. These goals can either be set for the semester, year or throughout your entire college career.
Assess
Your next step is to assess how you are currently utilizing your time. Productive changes cannot be made unless you know what areas need to be changed. A simple way of determining this is by keeping a time log for three days, begin from the time you get up to the time that you go to bed. Provide details and comments (if applicable) of your specific activities in 15 minute blocks.
At this point, prioritize. First with what is important to you; second with what is important to others, and lastly maintenance items or the basic human needs. Note that maintenance items may become first priority items (i.e. exercising may be maintenance once it becomes a habit but could be a first priority until then).
Once your time log is completed, it is time to analyze it. To accomplish this answer the following questions:
- Were there any surprises?
- Would you judge this to be a typical week?
- What patterns could you identify in your time wasters? Interruptions?
- What part of the week would you consider most productive? Least productive?
- What time of the day do you feel was most productive? Least productive?
- What activities would you like to eliminate totally? What would be the cost of doing so? What is the cost of not eliminating them?
- Which activities during the week do you deem most rewarding? Would you like to spend more time doing them in the future? What is you plan for doing so?
In addition to reviewing your time log have someone else review your time log. An objective observer just might be able to point out discrepancies or patterns what you did not see.