Time is one of the most important resources we have and knowing how to manage it properly can make the difference when leading a company. The main barrier to our productivity is probably ourselves. Recognizing it might be the first step to begin a road towards continuous improvement.
“Time is the most valuable resource we have, knowing how to manage it can make the difference when we are seeking personal and professional success”
When we study a MSC in Business we probably care too much about management, finance, business and this kind of things that we actually don’t pay any attention to time management. This will turn into an issue when we get to lead or work in a company, with many responsibilities and tasks to develop in very little time.
In this line, the consultant and lecturer on personal organization, David Allen developed a famous method on personal productivity called GTD (Getting Things Done).
GTD or Getting Things Done
This method on personal productivity, affirms that it’s necessary to achieve absolute concentration on the task that’s being carried out in every moment, forgetting about the rest of concerns, appointments or tasks pending execution. To do this, David Allen defines a process based on five stages that encourages us to keep on going forward with our tasks. This way, we can keep control at all times of everything that we still have to do.
Briefly, we can define the five phases as follows:
Collect: Looking for all the information in our mind regarding pending tasks, appointments, projects… to be stored in different inboxes (books, boards, boxes, apps).
Process: Reviewing inboxes to determine what types of tasks we should focus on first and what should be discarded in our priorities and strategies.
Organize: Planning, through task lists, of the activities we need to carry out and the ones we need to keep track of after delegating them.
Review: Review and check the lists created and nurtured during the organization phase.
Do: Execution of the remaining tasks. It’s useless to achieve an excellent planning if finally we don’t end up running the tasks.
The importance of controlling our tasks
Currently, there are numerous web, desktop and mobile applications that allow us to implement the GTD method easily. These applications are a great medium that enables us to follow this method, but it’s obvious that a tool by itself does not improve productivity if we don’t have a clear idea of how we want to work.
The most productive and efficient people, aren’t those who apply a procedure that has them occupied during each hour of each of his days as if they were robots. But those who know perfectly what they expect to achieve and those who gain control over their activity, acquiring the ability to modify these actions depending on the changes or unforeseen circumstances that may arise during the process.
Something as simple as knowing what to do, gives us a wonderful and powerful tool that will enable our personal and professional success.