Time Management Tips from

 The Fun at Work Cafe

The Heck with Multi-Tasking

- It Doesn't Work

Do you feel that you are rushed and don't have enough time in your life? You are fooling yourself as to how efficient you are if you are a believer in multitasking (perhaps you are like me and have always hated this word anyway).

Several researchers, including David Meyer of the University of Michigan, have shown that multitasking is not only detrimental to the results attained but also to the health of
the taskers. Multi-tasking also adds to workplace and office problems.

Indeed, if you want to have fun at work and also be efficient, sensible time management principles means no multi-tasking.   

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported, "Multitasking not only lowers efficiency and creates errors in the tasks performed, but it also compromises memory, causes back pain, can give people the flu and indigestion, and even hurts teeth and gums, recent studies show."

According to the Seattle Times, another research study showed that polychronicity - the preference of juggling several tasks simultaneously - had a negative relationship to work habits.

Based on data collected from 181 workers, Rick Jacobs of Pennsylvania State University concluded the polychronic workers were more likely to miss work and were tardier than employees who liked to finish one job before starting another.

In short, to complete all your tasks properly, do one at a time. You may also get rid of the back pain and indigestion that you have been experiencing.

Top-10 Time Management Tips to Outwit Your Boss and the Workplace

These time management tips come in the way of quotes about work and the workplace made by various people. Hopefully these time management tips will help you enjoy The Joy of Not Working.

Time Management Tips from the Book The Lazy Person's Guide to Success

These time management tips  are from my by The Lazy Person's Guide to Success, which has been published in 10 languages and has sold over 95,000 copies.

Know the moment when to work diligently.
Even more important, know the moment when not to work, but to relax and play instead.
This will not only benefit you immensely, but also will astonish your friends and competitors.
- from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success

Most people are too busy working on insignificant projects and pursuing life's frivolities to tap their creative abilities.
It's a mistake to be one of them.
Striving for excellence where excellence doesn't matter is the stuff misfits are made of.

The Lazy Achiever's Motto:
Regardless of how little time and work someone takes to perform a task, there has to be a more efficient and effective way to perform it.

You are fooling yourself whenever you think you are productive just because you have worked fourteen hours in a day.
You will be truly productive when you do the same amount of work in four hours, and take the other ten hours to enjoy the good things
life has to offer.

Understand that workaholics aren't productive people.
Quite the contrary.
A workaholic is someone who takes twice as much time to accomplish half as much as a Lazy Achiever.

Refuse to be intimidated by the adage, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well."
This is one of the most ridiculous statements ever made.
The truth is, most things worth doing aren't worth your best efforts.
There are just a few really important things that are worth doing well.
After that, a greater number of things are worth doing adequately.
Even more things are worth doing in the most haphazard fashion possible just to get by.
Of course, most things aren't worth doing at all, best left for the misfits of this world to pursue.

You can't earn more time, no matter how hard you work.
And you can't buy it, no matter how much money you have.
So spend it wisely, much more so than money.

Away from work, do the simple things that are important for your happiness.
Spend time with the people who you like most.
Get involved in the activities that you enjoy most.
And totally avoid the people and activities that you like least.
Indeed, this strategy is so obvious, but few people use it.

This cannot be emphasized enough:
Choose your activities wisely.
Spend your time and energy on the important few instead of the insignificant
many.
Once you have this mastered, you will achieve success and happiness
beyond your wildest dreams

 

More Time Management Tips from Picasso and Ernie Zelinski

You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.
- Picasso

It may appear that the way to put more time in your life is to rush more during the day and try to do as many things as possible in the shortest time. Perhaps you have tried this many times and discovered that you always feel even more time deprived. No wonder that an old Dutch saying contends, "The hurrier we go, the behinder we get."

To be sure, squeezing as many leisure activities as possible into your personal time won't help you attain a balanced and relaxed lifestyle. Ironically, the activities that are supposed to help you relieve stress and enhance your health can actually have the reverse effect if you try to rush through them.

If you burn the candle at both ends, you are not as bright as you think.
- Author Unknown

Exercising in a hurry, for example, is liable to create more stress than it dissipates. In the same vein, you can't meditate effectively if you feel rushed. You are likely to regret having meditated at all when you realize you have wasted your time.

In the corporate environment, time management is frequently touted as the way to control time and put more of it into our lives. However, time management doesn't work because it supports trying to do more and more in a limited amount of time. The problem with using time management techniques is that you will still be dedicating a lot of your effort and time into things that are unimportant.

Consider this carefully:
If you are working more than eight hours a day, you are in the wrong job.
Either that - or you are doing it wrong!
- from Career Success Without a Real Job

Instead of managing time, you must transcend it. Part of the total Lazy Achiever time management experience is being able to do your own thing at your own speed. Again, forget about what the masses are doing. Even if practically everyone else seems to increase the pace of life every day, you don't have to try to keep up. Take control of your physical and psychic space instead of allowing the distractions of the modern world to influence your lifestyle.

The Lazy Achiever's secret to time management may surprise you: To make your days longer, don't rush; slow down instead. In a somewhat magical way, you will have more time when you start living every moment for all it is worth.

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
- Robert Byrne

Once you slow down, you will no longer fight time; you will master it. Full involvement and appreciation of any activity, whether writing your first novel, walking in the park, talking to your neighbor, or taking a shower, will make the whole world slow down for you.

The more you think, the more time you have.
- Henry Ford

The next time you think that you don't have time to enjoy a sunset, think about it a little more. You will realize that the most important time to enjoy a sunset is when you don't have time for it. Taking ten minutes to watch the sun go down will do more to help you catch up with the world than rushing around for several hours. To your surprise, the world will actually slow down for you.

The more sunsets you stop to enjoy, the more relaxed and less rushed life will be. Moreover, you will realize the importance of utilizing the 80-20 rule to reduce the quantity of your other activities so that you get more quality in those that you pursue.

Needless to say, there is no obligation on your part to apologize to anyone for slowing down and enjoying life. If someone asks what has gotten to you, tell them you read The Joy of Not Working. Not everyone will approve of your behavior, but this adds to the satisfaction.

More Fun and Serious Time Management Tips

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
- Bill Watterson

Though it can be a tough reality for a perfectionist to accept, the truth is that the aesthetics of an envelope or package simply don't matter. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the substance of the contents. A person has a choice: He can spend his time editing commas and wrapping packages, or he can utilize his time working on important, creative projects. The latter produces financial results, the former produces only high blood pressure and twitching.
-  Robert J. Ringer in his book Million Dollar Habits

It's simply fantastic the amount of work you can get done if you don't do anything else.
- Unknown wise person

Understand that workaholics aren't productive people.
Quite the contrary.
A workaholic is someone who takes twice as much time to accomplish half as much as a Lazy Achiever.
- from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of t his fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man who has time to spare."
- C. Northcote Parkinson

A good rest is half the work.
- Yugoslav proverb

Understand the difference between being at work and working.
- Author Unknown

The best way to fill time is to waste it.
- Marguerite Duras

A day is a span of time no one is wealthy enough to waste.
- Unknown Wise Person

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
- William Shakespeare

Those who make the worst use of their time most complain of its shortness.
- La Bruyère

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Remember that time is money.
- Benjamin Franklin

Don't overdo things that shouldn't be done in the first place.
- Author Unknown

Well-arranged time is the surest mark of a well-arranged mind.
- Sir Isaac Pitman

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

A person has a choice: He can spend time editing commas and wrapping packages, or he can utilize his time working on important, creative projects. The latter produces financial results, the former produces only high blood pressure and twitching.
- Robert J. Ringer, Author of Million Dollar Habits

 

COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski

Author of  The World's Best Retirement Book

All Rights Reserved