Whether you work for a nonprofit organization like I do, or you're just
struggling with time management and staying productive or focused in your
business, in your personal life - I'm hoping that some of the strategies that
I've picked up over the past couple of years have really helped me out can help
you out too! Don't forget to subscribe, because I do weekly videos on living a
life of purpose, social impact, nonprofits, leadership, and
so much more! Once again, if we haven't yet met my name is Amber Melanie Smith
and I make videos on helping changemakers with tips and strategies to
help you change the world while living a life of impact and purpose! So it's kind
of a sad joke in the nonprofit world that people who work for our nonprofits
are spread notoriously thin. We have a lot on our plates. We are working 50, 60,
sometimes 70, or more hour weeks and we are just really overwhelmed a lot of the
time. So time management is a crucial skill to not only help us meet the needs
of our mission and our cause effectively but also to make sure that we're taking
care of ourselves in the process. About two years ago, I decided that I needed to
get myself on track to be more mentally emotionally and physically healthy so
that I could sustain my mission and the work that I was doing for the cause that
I loved longer. Like so many others in my field, I had been working 60+ hour
weeks and it was just getting to a point where I was exhausted all the time and
not being an effective manager, fundraiser, leader, and other things for
my cause. So I spent some time over the past couple years carefully crafting an
environment around myself that would help me to be more effective with my
time management, and now I'm able to keep those 60 plus hour work weeks down to a
bare minimum - only when they're absolutely necessary. And I'm a lot
better off for it and so is my cause. Now, I work in the nonprofit field, but the
strategies that I'm going to share can apply to anyone
from any walk of life - whether you work for a large corporation, are running your
own business, or just want to become a more effective time manager of your
personal life. Okay, so let's get right into it! My first
strategy is something I started doing about a year ago, and that is combating
decision fatigue - yes, that's a real thing - by preparing some things from my day the
night before. Usually these are really simple things. I will lay out my clothes.
I will prepare my lunch. I'm also thinking about the next day and what
tasks I'm going to be planning to prioritize that day. If I prepare all of
these things the night before, then the next morning I don't have to think about
them and I could just get right into the most important things that I need to do
that day without too much worry. If I'm feeling really organized
I might even lay out my whole week's worth of clothes on the Sunday before
the Week starts by looking at my calendar, seeing what kinds of meetings
and activities I have going on that week so I know how to dress appropriately for
each day. This is also great for food preparation for lunches. If you are that
organized, you can certainly prepare your lunches in advance too, and just be able
to grab and go out the door. My second time management strategy that really
really has been helping me out especially as of late is what I alluded
to before, and that is choosing my most important tasks for the next day the
night before. Then the next morning I kind of have a little competition with
myself! I challenge myself to see how quickly I can do that very important
tasks first thing in the morning - before checking email, before anything else,
because if I can do that then I've already had a major victory for the day,
and I'm feeling pretty good the rest of the day. If you're struggling to think
through what your most important tasks the next day should be, then a great tool
that I've used before is the time management matrix developed by Stephen
Covey. The time management matrix basically helps you think through all of
the possible tasks you could be doing that day and breaks it down into
sections based on four criteria so we're talking about a matrix so think of it
if on one side you're looking at comparing things that are urgent and on
the other side it's things that are important and your goal is to find the
tasks that are both urgent and important so if you practice drawing this matrix
and then you have urgent and important or urgent and unimportant or not
important but urgent and you basically break down your tasks and write them in
the different quadrants of the matrix you can start to see which ones you need
to be prioritizing and those are of course as I said the ones that are both
urgent and important I'll leave a link to this resource below so you can check
it out and practice drawing the matrix for yourself if that's of interest to
you so what are some examples of what some
of these tasks might be well for tasks that might be both urgent and important
you might be thinking of meeting with a top supporter or getting your business's
website launched by the deadline that you promised your followers tasks that
might be maybe not urgent but are still important might be things like personal
or professional development or exercise these things are definitely things that
you want to fit into your day in your life but maybe you don't have to do them
in the next five minutes urgently examples of tasks that are not important
but urgent might be responding to an email from someone who needs an answer
very quickly or perhaps an interruption from a co-worker and then for those
tasks that fall in the quadrant of both not important and not urgent so maybe
things like checking social media these are the things you want to generally
just avoid doing completely if you can and then like I said for me personally
my goal is always to wake up and start on that most important important and
urgent task first thing in the morning knock it out and feel like super
accomplished the whole rest of the day okay so another time management strategy
that has just been completely life-changing for me was prioritizing my
tasks on a calendar so I personally use Google Calendar it syncs up really
nicely with my phone and my email but there are a lot of other tools out there
in terms of calendars what I mean by prioritizing
is that I'm not only putting everything that I need to do from events and
meetings personal and business on my calendar but I'm also prioritizing them
I like to use the tasks function in Google Calendar and make a note of which
ones are the most important by numbering them or putting a little asterisk next
to the most important tasks so that those tend to float up to the top of my
task list on Google Calendar and I know that that's what I need to be focusing
on first the next time management strategy that has been really helpful to
me and of course this one depends a lot on what type of business or field you're
in and what your role is but for me as a non-profit executive director I often
have a lot of meetings with different types of people all over my region so
something that I've been doing to help be more efficient is by batching those
meetings that are in similar geographic areas back-to-back this of course helps
cut down drive time and makes my day a lot more effective I like to personally
get all of my meetings done at the same chunk of time and then be able to focus
on the other tasks that I have to do that day the next time management
strategy that is actually taken me quite a while to work on for myself and I'm
still working on it is delegating now being able to delegate in a business
setting or in a non-profit setting in my world obviously depends on having people
to delegate to but with the proper structuring of your tasks and your team
and your day you can get a lot done by delegating tasks that other people are
better at such as video editing or developing a marketing campaign while
you focus on the things that you are best at so for me in my life I might be
wanting to clear some things off of my plate and out of my schedule to other
people on my team so that I can spend more of my time fundraising going out
and meeting with donors or supporters or sponsors which is something that is more
my core competency then perhaps other
members of my team but other members of my team might be excellent at accounting
or social media so I let those people handle those tasks and then we're all
using our time the most efficient efficiently and effectively as possible
for our cause delegating or in some cases you might
call this outsourcing is also strategy I hear a lot about when you're running
your own business and it can also be helpful for your personal life if you
have the ability to outsource or get some help with writing content for your
business or getting some help with housework even those things can help you
clear up time so you can focus on things that are a bigger priority to you the
final time management strategy that has really helped me out and I believe will
really help others out is going ahead and blocking out the time on your
schedule and even putting it on your calendar if you have to for things that
are outside of your work family time time with friends making sure that you
are curating and blocking out that time from the very GetGo the very beginning
of your week will make sure that you have that on your schedule to look
forward to to make sure that it's part of your life because relationships are
really important that keep you happy and healthy and sane that's all I've got for
now I'd love to hear from you what are some your time management tips and
strategies that have worked for you leave them in the comments below and
that's whether you work in a social change social work social impact field
or some other industry we are all in this together we have a lot of advice
that we can share across sectors so please leave those comments below and
share with the rest of the world I really hope you liked this video don't
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making a difference in the world and I'd love to hear what you have to say thanks
again for watching