Success management tips for when it all starts to work

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Here are my personal tips for success management - setting goals and managing your time effectively to ensure you achieve your goals. I believe in keeping things simple! Over the years I’ve attended a number of time management courses and read several books on the subject. These are the things that work well for me.

Success Management Tip 1: Set goals for everything

We’ve already covered setting targets for your sales. Why not set targets for other things too? Examples could be: your earning level; your spouse’s earning level; your savings; your pension; your overall net worth; your golf handicap; other sporting or leisure-time skills; training courses; holiday destinations you’d like to visit. Think of anything you’d like to achieve. Then decide when you’d like to have it, realistically. Make your targets stretching, i.e. higher than you think you can achieve. Then list all the things you need to do to reach that objective.

Success Management Tip 2: The simplest time management system

There is a real danger, as a business owner, that you try to do too many things at once. As a result, you may end up doing none of them very well. Here’s the simplest way I know to overcome the problem and focus clearly on the job in hand. At the end of every day, make a list of up to six tasks you need to do tomorrow. Number them in order of priority. Then, in the morning, work at number one until you complete the task or can go no further. Then do the same for number two, and so on down the list. If you finish all six, great! Add some more to your list. If not, use the list as your starting point for the next day. I found I could get twice as much done in a day by adopting this simple idea.

Success Management Tip 3: Do the least pleasant task first

There’s nothing worse than that nagging thought at the back of your mind “Must speak to Sandra … well, maybe later.” Do this several times a day and you lose more time than you can imagine. It also does nothing for your stress level. Get any unpleasant task out of the way as quickly as you can. Imagine the satisfaction of having done it. You don’t need to worry about it any more. And was it really that bad? Next time you’re faced with a similar job, you’ll breeze through it before you’ve even had time to worry about it. I was going to do a section on procrastination, but maybe I’ll save that one for another time …

Success Management Tip 4: Handle each piece of paper just once

Ever had the feeling you’ve seen that bill before? Read that letter before? You opened it this morning and put it in your pile of post. Glanced at it while going through the pile. Decided to deal with it later. Picked it up later and put it down again. Finally, asked your secretary to deal with it. You could have done that the first time. Measure how effective you are in dealing with paper. Have a red felt-tip pen handy on your desk for a week. Each time you pick up a piece of paper, put a red dot in the top right-hand corner. If your papers develop measles, you’ve got a problem! The first time you look at any piece of paper you should either:

• Deal with it: do whatever is necessary;
• Delegate it: pass to someone else to deal with;
• Diary it: note when you will deal with it and forget it until then;
• or Dump it!: file it or bin it.

You’ll be amazed how much time you save.

Success Management Tip 5: Spend more time ‘thinking’ than ‘doing’

Your value to the business is in thinking of new ways to do things, new directions to take the business, how to keep ahead of the competition, how to give your customers the best value you can. You should not be so busy ‘doing what you do’ that you ignore the strategic work that you must do in order to succeed.