1000 Business Lessons Every Businessman Must Know

Chapter 79 Time Management: Being an Efficient Leader (3)
Many experienced leaders advocate the principle of immediate processing.Whatever you decide to do and work that needs to be dealt with, do it immediately and finish it all at once.This saves the repetitive time of memorizing or doing it from scratch, and the bigger advantage is that it will make people feel relaxed and happy to finish the things at hand at any time.When encountering a problem that needs to be negotiated, visit the door immediately, so that the competitor will not snatch the order; when there is an email that needs to be replied, write the reply immediately after reading the original letter, otherwise you have to read the original letter again; do not delay the report that must be finalized today until tomorrow Otherwise, it will leave the impression of procrastination and inefficiency to others.People who love to procrastinate can always find excuses for procrastination, such as the timing is never right, they are very busy now and cannot spare time, and they can do better after a long time.But habit is the real cause of procrastination.Once a habit is formed, it is difficult to change.A procrastinator always likes to put things off until tomorrow, next week, or later. As a result, nothing gets done.

Oftentimes, procrastinating on problems doesn't kill them, it just keeps them piling up, and the best thing to do is to act now.Tell yourself at any time: don't be controlled by inertia.

643. Grasp the best working time

Everyone has the best working time in a day, and we should grasp this time to improve work efficiency.Our body is like a complex machine, with various personal meters, indicating our physical and intellectual conditions throughout the day, which have certain regularity and affect our work efficiency.

During the day, people's physical strength and spirit change periodically, sometimes reaching the highest point and sometimes falling to the lowest point. This rise and fall occurs at roughly the same time every day, which is called the efficiency type.Many people reach their peak productivity an hour after breakfast, then slowly decline, reaching their lowest point around 4 p.m.After dinner, there was a slight rise and then a gradual decline.

Everyone's efficiency cycle is not exactly the same, and it can be roughly classified into three types:

Morning type: can erupt at any time from morning to noon, full of energy, reaches the peak at noon, and then gradually declines.

Afternoon type: Feeling tired and depressed all morning, refreshed in the afternoon, and at his best in the evening, he can concentrate and do a lot of work when everyone else is resting.

Anytime type: The energy is good in the morning, a little rest at noon, and full of energy in the afternoon.

644. Don’t begrudge the rest time

In order to maintain a good working condition, we should pay attention to exercise and rest.No matter how busy you are, it is very necessary to set aside a certain amount of time every day to exercise.For example, if your residence is very close to the company, you can walk to work, which not only exercises your body, but also thinks about some problems on the way.

No matter how good the body is, people can't escape the time of fatigue. After all, people's energy is limited, so don't begrudge the time to rest.Being able to stay up all night working overtime is not something to brag about, you have to pay for it, and for the rest of the time, you will be groggy and have a hard time concentrating on things.Resting allows you to do more sane, productive things during your waking hours instead of wasting your life.

Rest before you feel tired, and use any rest time you can to "repair" yourself.It is also a good way to pay attention to the rhythm of work and relax.

645. Spend time on important things

The same busyness may not always receive good results.Because the key depends on whether you are busy to the point. Spending time mainly on important things is really busy, but on the contrary, it is fruitless busy.

McCormack's IMG Group started its business with a capital of less than US$500. In more than 20 years, it has suddenly developed into a multinational company with an annual income of hundreds of millions of US dollars, largely thanks to the Pareto principle.

When insurance magnate Frank Bigger sells insurance business, 70% of the deals are made on the first meeting, 23% are on the second meeting, and 7% are on the third, fourth, or fifth meeting.He spent almost half of his time on the 7% turnover business, and was so exhausted that he was "so discouraged that he almost wanted to resign and leave."

Later, he adopted the Pareto principle. When selling insurance, he stopped visiting after the second time, and used the time to find new customers. As a result, the sales volume rose sharply, and the annual insurance business fee was more than one million US dollars. .

646. Establish a New Concept of Time and Efficiency

Successful leaders must have one thing in common, that is, they all cherish time very much, are good at grasping opportunities firmly, and enrich every day and even every minute and every second they have to the maximum extent.Because they are good at using time, they can do more things in the same time, and can complete a job that others take a long time to complete in a shorter time, making themselves more efficient, so they can handle more. things, take on heavier responsibilities.

The advent of the information age has triggered a wave of new technological revolutions, where space continues to depreciate, but time continues to increase in value.Leaders must change their concepts according to the status and trends of social development, and establish a new concept of time and efficiency.Being good at managing time is an essential quality for leaders.Leaders shoulder much heavier responsibilities than others. They are responsible for the operation of the company and cope with challenges from all aspects, including internal crises and pressure from the external environment.Leaders not only use their own time, but also directly and indirectly affect other people's time.How to use and arrange time often has many influences.For example, the determination of a decision and the convening of an important meeting may have important meaning and influence.The work efficiency of the leader determines the overall efficiency of the company.

Therefore, for leaders who always have unfinished work, do a good job in time management, learn and train various time management skills, so that the use of time by leaders can change from passive natural experience and casual coping to systematic, It is particularly important to allocate and use it in a planned and purposeful manner, and to be the master of your own time.

647. Use enough time to get things done in one go

Using enough time is the open source problem of time, that is, using enough time on the most worthwhile things to do.

1. Do the most worthwhile things first
Leaders should spend most of their time doing the things that bring the highest return and a small portion of their time doing other things.Do the things that get you closer to your goals first, and then the things you enjoy or are easy to accomplish.Arrange a lot of time for the first thing to do, and the secondary things can be done in the time when you are less energetic or grab a little bit of spare time to do it, and you can entrust others to do things that need to be done but not necessarily done by yourself.

2. Do important things with productive time

Everyone has their own biological clock, and people's reactions will vary widely at different times.For example, some people are full of energy in the morning, while others are concentrated at night.Leaders should determine their working methods according to their own biological clock characteristics and work requirements, and deal with important things at their physiological peak stage.

3. Concentrate for a long time
Arranging the time to be used as a whole can effectively improve the efficiency of time use. If the time is divided and used piecemeal, a lot of time will be wasted just for the conversion and adaptation of work.For example, even if it is only 1/4 of a working day, if it is used intensively, it is enough to do several important things.And even if there is 3/4 of a working day, if it is all fragmented time of ten minutes or half an hour, it will not be able to deal with important matters.

4. Focus on one thing at a time
After all, human energy is limited. To ensure high efficiency, one must focus on one thing for a certain period of time.Edison believed that the first element of his success was "the ability to apply the energy of body, mind and mind persistently on the same problem without getting bored".

648. Compress Time to Do the Most Worthy Things
Compress time, that is, the leader shrinks the front when using time, outsources what can be outsourced, authorizes what can be authorized, and withdraws from irrelevant or irrelevant affairs.

1. Do it right the first time
Every leader's time is set, as for how many things he can do and how many things he can do well, it all depends on his efficiency in doing things.If the leader gets things right the first time every time, he saves a lot of time; on the contrary, if he always gets things wrong, it takes a lot of time every time he does it again.

2. Authorize others to do what others can do

Delegation can greatly improve the effectiveness of management work.As a leader, the key to success is whether he has the ability to use his subordinates to play the role of one as ten.

3. Don’t take the hot potato
Leaders should not do things that others can do, and do not do things that are within the scope of others' authority, which you cannot do well even if you do, and do not do things that will affect the realization of your major goals.

4. Compress meeting time

If a leader cannot break free from the sea of ​​meeting, he will be drowned in boredom.Meetings can advocate debate, advocate expressing their own opinions, advocate all speeches, advocate no more than one and a half hours, and advocate standing up.

5. Reduce conversion time
When the leader transitions from one job to another, from one state to another, the time should be compressed as much as possible.The work of the leader is complex, and the time for connecting two tasks can be saved a little, and the accumulated amount will be considerable.

6. Don’t be someone else’s “time hostage”

While the leader has power, he also loses a certain amount of personal freedom—everyone can come to him at any time, and the time of the leader gradually becomes the time of others.This has become a rule.Once a leader becomes a "time hostage" of others, he loses himself and becomes part of someone else's plan.

649. Mastering the Technique of Extending Time

Time is equal to everyone, however, there is great flexibility in using time.Filling infinite events in a limited time is the elongation effect of time.

1. Reasonable planning time
The leader's time is a constant amount, but the work that can be accommodated in each fixed period is an unlimited amount.The work completed by the leader in a certain period of time is directly proportional to the leader's ability. The stronger the leader's ability, the greater the output per unit time, and the higher the efficiency of the leader's time utilization.This requires leaders to make overall plans for various tasks, arrange them reasonably, and allocate time scientifically.

2. Time to operate against the trend
If everyone has to do something, you have to do it when everyone has not done it, and try to stay away from the "peak hour".When others have not done something, you can save a lot of queue time.

Time management ability is one of the essential qualities of leadership.It is an important way for leaders to understand time rationally, establish a correct concept of time, and improve the ability to manage time scientifically in management behaviors.
(End of this chapter)