52 •
The Lion King
• April - June 2017
FEATURE
INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY:
5 TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS
BY SOLANKE OLADIMEJI
you to sleep deeply. This will help you
increase productivity throughout the
next work day.
Schedule your time
Scheduling your time reduces
stress and releases energy. The
very act of using your organizational
skills to plan your day, week, and
month gives you a greater feeling
of control and will help increase
productivity throughout your day.
You’ll feel in charge of your life. It
actually increases your self-esteem
and improves your sense of personal
power.
Start early
The more time you take to
sit, think, and plan, the better
organized you will be in every area
of your life. In the biographies and
autobiographies of successful men
and women I’ve read, many of them
had one thing in common; they
developed great organizational skills
and the habit of going to bed at a
reasonable hour and rising early.
Organizational skills
Resolve to improve your
organizational skills and use a
filing system. As much as 30 percent of
working time today is spent looking for
misplaced items. These are things that
are lost because they have not been
filed correctly. Does this sound familiar
to you? There are few activities so
frustrating as spending your valuable
time looking for misplaced materials
because no thought was given to a
filing and retrieval system.
The best and simplest of all filing
systems is an alphabetical system. In
conjunction with a filing system, you
should have a master list or record
of all your files in a single place. This
master list gives you the title of each
file and tells you where the file is
located.
Increase productivity
with prime time
Organize your life so that
you are doing creative work during
your internal ‘prime time.’ Your
internal prime time is the time of day,
according to your body clock, when
you are the most alert and productive.
For most people, this is in the morning.
For some people, however, it is in the
evening. Occasionally, a writer, an
artist, or an entertainer may find that
her prime time is in the early hours of
the morning
It is important that you be aware of
your internal prime time so that you
can schedule your most important
projects accordingly to increase
productivity. Your most important work
usually requires that you be at your
very best, rested, alert, and creative.
You must also be aware of external
prime time. This is the time when your
customers or clients are most readily
available.
Prepare in advance
The best exercise is for you to
plan your entire next day as the
last thing you do before coming home
from work. When you plan your day
the night before, your subconscious
then goes to work on your plans and
goals while you are asleep. Very often
you will wake up in the morning with
ideas and insights that apply to the
work of the day.
A major benefit of preparing your
daily list the night before is that this
exercise lets you sleep more soundly.
A major reason for insomnia is your
lying awake trying not to forget to
remember everything that you have
to do the following day.
Once you have written down
everything you have to do on your
list, it clears your mind and enables
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