Chapter 59

Evaluate your time usage. Compile a spreadsheet to keep a record of your daily activities in 15-min segments for a week. Analyse this graphically and identify areas for improvement.

List your short-, medium- and long-term tasks and allocate priorities. Produce several lists, one for each of the three timescales, and prioritise each item. Use this list to plan your time management, by scheduling high priority tasks and leave low priority activities to 'fill in' the spare time that you may identify. This task should be done on a regular (monthly) basis to allow for changing situations.

Plan an 'elephant' task. Spend some time planning how to carry out a large or difficult task (learning a language or learning to use a complex computer program) by breaking it down into achievable segments ('bites').