Time Management Planners
- Which One Works?

Time management planners are popular – and with good reason.

Proper planning is vital for effective use of your days, weeks and months. Once you know what you’re doing, any sort of action on it is easier.

So which ones should you use?

It’s a personal choice. Many people highlight the advantages of PDA tools as time management planners. Other people prefer a paper based approach. Whichever you use, their purpose is simple: to help you turn your intentions into actions.

Planners may be electronic or paper based, but they need to be functional. Do you actually look at it? Frequent access and referral to whatever you choose is the key to success.

For this reason, try using a paper based daily action planner. This is a simple page-a-day diary that you use for your time and tasks. Either buy one or make your own using a free printable daily planner template. Alternatively, a plain and unlined A5 notebook is a good choice because it’s so adaptable – thoughts, tasks and ideas can be added quickly and easily.

What it does

1. Tasks
2. Appointments

It’s a list of what you plan to do and when you plan to do it. Used properly, it will allow you to manage your time far more effectively than most people ever do. Why? Because you start each day knowing exactly what you have to do today – no more, no less.

How to use it so it actually works

Things come into your life randomly. A request here, an invitation there; you just don’t know what to expect. Effective time management planners impose order on things so you know what to do and when to do it.

A Daily Action Planner works like this: Whenever you are given a task, or think of one to do, defer it. Put it off until tomorrow, or until the day that you deem most appropriate for it. Unless it’s genuinely same-day urgent (honestly, most things aren’t), write it on tomorrow’s date page.

Building in this buffer means you know the limit of what you will do each day. You also have the chance to prepare for it, mentally or otherwise.

An example

Whatever it is, unless it’s a must-do-today task, put it off. You go home on Thursday evening knowing exactly what to do tomorrow because you have a limited list of things to do. You don’t add anything to it on Thursday because it goes on your Friday list.

What if you won’t get the report all done on one day? Think in terms of time on the task rather than completion of it. Allocate as long as you can manage to it, then re-schedule for the next day. This may be the following working day or at a later date. Repeat to complete.

So, your DAP is a finite list of daily tasks to do. You’ll know what to do and when to do it.

Tip: Don’t forget that you still have to actually do it! There’s no way around that, although trying out these time management tips and techniques may help.

Appointments

Additional Time Management Planners

For example, you look at your 'big picture' planner and remind yourself that's you have a birthday to remember next month. Simply write down 'buy card and gift' in your DAP a couple of weeks before their big day.

Voilà! Job done.

To sum up:

• Task comes in
• Write it down on tomorrow’s action list (or some other future date)
• Do it on the date you say you will.
• Stay aware of the big picture, too.

Bottom line? Whatever your situation, effective use of your time management planners means you to know what to do and when to do it.

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