5 Secrets of Time Management The Toyota Story In the years following World War II, American auto executives visited Toyota manufacturing plants in Japan to examine how the company was able to produce so many vehicles so quickly. They discovered a humanising philosophy driving the manufacturer’s innovation, one that intrinsically motivated workers to change process, procedures, and themselves for the better. Instead of punishing employees for errors, Toyota encouraged workers to stop production at any time to fix a problem or provide suggestions to management about how to reduce waste and improve efficiency. As a result, Toyota’s factories experienced fewer costly errors and benefitted from consistent improvement. This philosophy, Kaizen, is one that the American executives took home and has since revolutionised multiple industries, from healthcare to software development. “Kaizen” in your Daily Life
Kaizen is the Japanese word for "Improvement". Its an expression used to define the Japanese philosophy of quality management and that means the continuous improvement of the productive processes by the permanent introduction of small improvements and easy implementation, lead to massive gains over a period of time. I urge you to use this philosophy of kaizen and make simple and easy changes in your daily and to make things simple, I am listing these 5 Steps or “5 Secrets”. With these 5 secrets, I hope you will pick up one and implement the Kaizen Philosophy in your life by making small but productive improvements every day.
5 Secrets of Effective Time Management
All Ultra Successful people have one thing in common. They develop highly productive habits and thereby accomplish much more in less time. They understand the importance of time and act. Over the years I have been researching on this subject and after reading hundreds of bestselling books and articles on this subject, I am listing down Top 5 and hope you will find them useful. These principles are not technical and exotic but simple to read and implement but the key here is to pick up one of these habits and start implementing in your daily life right away without any delay.
SECRET 1 – Start with Planning Start with Planning: (5-7) Minutes
Let’s learns from kids, they make “Time table” for next day’s school today evening. Why today, because when you sleep with a specific agenda in mind your sub conscious mind is continuously working on “registering” these tasks and they by processing them during 12 hours of break the night before to morning when you reach your office.
Take some time out, just before you wind up for the day. Go to a Quiet place and write down your list of tasks to be done next day. This simple habit alone will prepare you to create that Edge for the next day and be more organised.
Secret 2 – “Write” Your Tasks In his bestselling book “Getting Things Done” author David Allen narrates that our mind is not designed to store too many things at the same time. Now just imagine if you have stored your mind with 15 things to be done one a particular day coupled with the attention you need to give to your what’s app alerts, cricket match score, your stocks and news alerts, calls and colleagues in office and so on. If you realise, your mind is already under too much stress to take any decision. One of the best and the easy way is to write down on a Dairy. Sir Richard Branson, the CEO and founder of Virgin Atlantic and over 120 companies, famously once wrote on his “Passport” since he was not carrying a diary.
Writing it down is like taking it “out” from your mind, and getting it ready for “execution” But remember the conventional way, Write with Dairy and Pen not on Mobile Phone or computer if you want this to be highly effective. Please “No digital only paper” here.
Secret 3 –Top 3 Rule
So, now that you have Made your To Do List, and written key tasks the pervious night, here is the next best thing. Now you need to Prioritise. Best Performing CEO’s worldwide use this formula to increase their productivity. They Prioritise their list. And here is how you create an Edge - You must Clearly Define your TOP 3 priorities during the day and number them in order of priority. Now, most important thing during that particular day becomes executing these Top3 things. No Matter what happens, make sure you finish these Top3 things before you wind up for the day.
These TOP 3 things can be for your office as well as personal things.
For example, you can write down Top3 Official and Top3 personal things every day. Incidentally reading one Chapter of a book is always on Top3 Personal List every day. This habit alone has helped me in reading more than 12 books a Month.
Secret 4 - Urgent Vs Important
Dr. Steven covey in his Book “7 habits of Highly effective People” mentions this principle in a subtle way.
One of the biggest depreciations in our quality of work happens when we think that checking a what’s app alert Joke is more important than talking to a client or finishing your current task.
Important tasks should not be compromised at the behest of perceivably urgent tasks. For example, a Phone calls might look urgent but if you compare with the task you are involved in , a better idea would be to message the caller and don’t pick up. While Picking a call might sound “URGENT” but may not be.
Research has shown that it takes 23 minutes to be Re- focussed on your task once you are distracted. You must Focus on Important tasks.
Secret 5 – Cut Digital Distractions What’s app and social Media- First things first, go to your phone settings and “block Notifications”- This will free you. In a detailed study done among Top executives of a Fortune 500 company, researchers concluded that in a day employees during work hours:
Check notification of EMAIL – Every 35 Secs
Switch between computer Applications – 566 times
Check Face Book – 21 times
Check Whats app – 112 times
All these distractions will mean, that you are getting De focussed and distracted more than 600 times during your work hours.
Your twitter feed can happen once a day and you don’t need to be online 24*7. What’s app and face book revolution happened just 8 years back and there will be more exiting innovations waiting to happen. You don’t need to be falling prey to all of them. Of course, I am not saying don’t do this but understand how much time and mental space you are allocating here. For example, If you can save 1 hr every day it can be utilised to listen to on chapter of audio book, or read an article related to your business which it can be far more productive.
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