Sunday, May 9, 2010

Time Management for Busy Dads: How to free up time for the family: By Roland Poitevin

With our unrelenting focus on work and getting the bills paid we can easily lose sight of the things that really matter in life. In a survey of terminally ill patients none of them wished they'd spent more time working and all of them regretted not spending enough time on their kids and partners. Here are some winning strategies that will help you free up time for the important things in life and still stay on top at work.

Leave work on time. Commit to getting out the door on the dot. Choose one day a week to start with and then build on that success. You need to be assertive about this. Reduce meeting times by scheduling them into half our slots instead of 45 minutes. When you establish the time frame you will find the same amount gets accomplished anyway.

Set yourself a timetable for the drudge work. Having a fixed time for house work pays dividends by giving focus and routine that creates a more efficient outcome and frees up heap of time for the important stuff. If you can, hire a cleaner.

Plan your weekends well. Do not use them for the house hold chores or for work. Treat them as sacred family time.

Use your commute time wisely. Get a voice recorder and use it to dictate ideas while you drive. It won't save you time but it will make you feel like it's time not wasted.

In the work place develop a system to deal with the mountain of paper work. Categorize and separate the documents into different easy to access folders. Start your day by putting notes on each document that direct you quickly into taking the action necessary to deal with them in an efficient manner.

With email set yourself an allotted time one hour after you start your day and limit yourself to logging on only 4 times during the day. Reply once to multiple mails. Finally don't reply to mail after dinner, this is your family time.

Choose the two most important things that need to be accomplished that day and do them. Once these have been dealt with then you can move on to the next task. This will remove any feelings of being overwhelmed and increase your efficiency.

These simple actions will lead naturally to better time management and also reduce stress which means when your family needs you you're going to be there for them in body and mind.

By Roland Poitevin: Retrieved from "http://www.articlesbase.com/fathering-articles/time-management-for-busy-dads-how-to-free-up-time-for-the-family-2224934.html"
(ArticlesBase SC #2224934)

No comments:

Post a Comment