Soft skill - Time Management

Continuing our series on soft skills, one of the most important might be time management.

Time management is important to business owners to meet deadlines, to plan for the immediate future and to be profitable.

One of the first places to exhibit a proper sense of time management is submitting applications, paperwork and arrival at an interview.  If you have met those deadlines, you have a good start.

525,600 minutes is the time you have in one year - as made famous in the musical "Rent" song Seasons of Love.  How you use the time is up to you.  Managing time is what we will discuss.

What are some of the symptoms of poor time management?
You always feel like you aren't accomplishing anything, you miss deadlines, you take work home, you spend an overabundance of time socializing at work, interrupting others, or too much time on the telephone.
Do you have a problem saying "NO"?  Do you end up doing others work?

How do you manage time?
Four basic skills you need to manage time well are:

• Strategize, Organize, Implement, & Monitor

Strategize - try to envision the outcome.  What do you see?  Now, make a plan with the goals and time line to achieve each step.  Determine how to measure how effectively you meet each goal.
Organize - what resources will you need to accomplish your goals or steps. Do you need to consider money, time, help from others, equipment, or team work.
Implement - Who is going to complete each step, do you need interim due dates, and then follow-through to complete each step.
Monitor- how effective are you, do you need to reassess and adjust to meet your time-lines?

Stephen Covey wrote in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, that Habit 3 is Personal Management includes knowing how to define what is urgent and essential. The whole concept is to be able to work within quadrant 2 - deciding when you can accomplish something, not feeling like it needed to be done yesterday.  This process comes along with learning to be pro-active rather than reactive.  If you work in a team, who delegates the duties?  If you work independently, who can help you when you are under a bit more time pressure?  How can you work smarter, not harder?  Where do you focus your energy?  What things do you control and what things do you have no control?

Here are nine ways to help you begin to manage your time better and accomplish more:

1. Plan your activities the day before.
2. Know the time of day when you accomplish certain types of tasks better - i.e. do you need to be more physically active in the morning vs. the afternoon?  Identify your high energy time of day.
3. Deal with your toughest tasks during the highest energy time of the day.
4. Learn and use current technology effectively - work smarter, not harder.
5. Use an agenda and keep to a time schedule for meetings.
6. Alert others if you need time "to concentrate" without interruptions.
7. Segment your schedule - block out a time of the day or week for all your meetings, desk/computer time blocked out, only make phone calls from xx AM to xx AM, or only read your emails 2-3 times a day instead of checking constantly.
8. Organize your office/work area so that it works best for you.
9. Use a personal organizer - does paper work better for you or do you use a digital calendar/planner.

The whole focus is to make time management work for you.

Coping with Stress

Stress is defined as (among others):

1. Physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension: Worry over his job and his wife's health put him under a great stress.
2. A situation, occurrence, or factor causing this: The stress of being trapped in the elevator gave him a pounding headache.
3. A specific response by the body to a stimulus, as fear or pain, that disturbs or interferes with the normal physiological equilibrium of an organism.

When we as individuals encounter stress under the first and second definition, we almost always see the results in the third definition. There are several methods to cope with stress that we will address.
Alter – one of the most effective ways to cope with stress is to alter the source of the stress. In effect, remove it. This may not be the easiest option, but is THE most effective. For example: your shoes do not fit, causing you stress because you are unable to walk properly. Change your shoes. While this solution is simple it illustrates how you can alter the situation.

• Express your feelings instead of bottling them up.
• Be willing to compromise.
• Be more assertive.
• Manage your time better.

Avoid – remove yourself from the situation. You know that a particular person “pushes your buttons” so to avoid the stress of the situation, avoid interactions with that person. Many of us have acquaintances or family with whom this may be the biggest source of stress. If at all possible, don’t allow yourself to be caught up in those types of situations.

• Learn how to say “no” – Know your limits and stick to them.
• Avoid people who stress you out – Limit the amount of time you spend with the person or end the relationship entirely.
• Take control of your environment – Traffic gets you tense, see if you can use public transportation, change your work hours or take a longer but less-traveled route.
• Avoid hot-button topics – Repeatedly arguing about the same subject with the same people, excuse yourself when it’s the topic of discussion.
• Pare down your to-do list – Distinguish between the “shoulds” and the “musts.”

Accept- just as it says. You have no control over the weather, but if you are flying from one destination to another, the weather may be grounding flights. You need to accept the fact that you cannot go anywhere, SO why let it stress you out. Another example: you must work with someone that just grates on your nerves; accept them for who they are and learn to work with them.

• Don’t try to control the uncontrollable.
• Look for the upside.
• Share your feelings with a friend or a therapist.
• Learn to forgive.

Building resistance – There are three ways to build resistance – physical, mental or spiritual. In certain situations you will need to do all three to effectively do your job. Example: you feel stress because you were just placed on a new line at work and physically cannot keep up due to your inability to lift 25 pounds. It causes you to worry about whether or not you will be able to keep your job. You can begin a weight lifting regime to increase your strength.
Changing perceptions – a quote I heard was “when I change, others change”. It isn’t so much about the others changing as it is about your perception of others.
Manage expectations – this once is quite simple – if you have no expectations, you have no disappointments. Is what you are expecting of yourself and others realistic? If you are expecting too much of (insert whatever or whoever you want here because it would apply) you will surely be let down. Humans are fallible beings and can only do so much.
Build self-esteem – if you are more confident in yourself, you will be more self-assured. If you help build others confidence, it will go a long way to avoiding a conflict situation.
Navigate change by your reactions – everything about stress can be handled within yourself. It is how you react to the situations that present themselves to you. But you can help control your stress level by taking care of yourself:

• Get moving - For maximum stress relief, try to get at least 30 minutes of heart pounding activity on most days but activity can be broken up into two or three short segments.
• Make food choices that keep you going and make you feel good - Eating small but frequent meals throughout the day maintains an even level of blood sugar in your body.
• Drink alcohol in moderation and avoid nicotine - Alcohol only temporarily reduces anxiety and worry and smoking when you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed may seem calming, but nicotine is a powerful stimulant, leading to higher levels of anxiety.
• Get enough sleep - lack of sleep leaves you vulnerable to stress.
• Reducing stress by prioritizing and organizing.

• Time management tips for reducing job stress

• Create a balanced schedule.
• Don’t over-commit yourself.
• Try to leave earlier in the morning.
• Plan regular breaks.

• Task management tips for reducing job stress

• Prioritize tasks.
• Break projects into small steps.
• Delegate responsibility.

Do you have "soft skills"?

Most business owners today are very selective when making hiring choices.  Hard skills are often required to be able to interview for a position.  You can learn hard skills in high school, college, technical or trade school or by working on a job. But what is your knowledge of and comfort level with your "soft skills"?

The definition of "soft skills" will vary depending upon the person with whom you are discussing, but in general include these areas:

• Customer Service
• Teamwork
• Effective Communication
• Maintaining Professionalism
• Interpersonal relationships
• Problem Solving/Conflict Management
• Coping with Stress
• Time Management
• Positive Work Attitude

Any good interviewer will try to draw out of you, with the questions they ask, how you are able to handle:

• Effective team behavior;
• Work ethics;
• Problem solving; and,
• Critical thinking as they relate to workplace scenarios.

Soft skills can also include writing your resume, conducting a job search and interview behaviors and performance. 

Life skills are just as important when trying to gain or maintain a current employment position.  Do you call in when you are unable to make it to work? Are you on time to work? Do you have alternate plans in case your babysitter is unavailable, your car breaks down, or one of your children is sick?  In other words, does life get in the way of you keeping your job?

Before we hit the hard job market, employers would teach people the hard skills as long as they had exhibited the soft skills we just discussed.  In today's market, you need superior soft skills to give you the edge.

Do you need more information on soft skills? Watch for upcoming posts.