In this issue we show you the benefits of keeping your business and personal lives apart; how to organise your time more effectively and give you some tips to ensure that you never again sit – pen poised over paper – wondering where to put the apostrophe in a word!

• Editor's Desk
• Bite 1
• Bite 2
• Bite 3
• Working Web
• Last Word

How to Organise Your Time Effectively

Do you often come home at night feeling that you’ve not done very much and that you wish you had more hours in your working day? The majority of people feel like that at some point in their career and there are a few simple steps that you can take to get things back into balance!

The first step in organising your time is to realise how valuable it is. Once a minute or an hour has passed, it has gone for ever. So it’s important that every minute of the working day is used effectively.

There are many ways in which you can waste time: starting work late; being disorganised; being easily distracted or doing unnecessary work. Let’s have a closer look at these:

• There are several reasons why people start late. These include arriving late, having a coffee and reading the paper/surfing the internet, chatting with colleagues or just simple laziness.

• Some people always seem to be disorganised. They never seem to be able to find the correspondence they need and their desks are usually untidy. Simply by being more tidy and organising things properly you can save a lot of time.

• There will always be interruptions and distractions. These can’t be avoided but you can keep them to a minimum. Chatting to colleagues, personal phone calls and emails, spending time on social networking sites can be avoided!

• Some people do work that is quite unnecessary. This might be because they are disorganised and duplicate work that has been done already. Or, they do simple work that could have been delegated to someone else.

You can save valuable time by avoiding these major time wasters. In addition, there are several things you can do which will help you to use your time more effectively. Here they are:

List your jobs: The more organised you are, the more efficient you will be. So why not list all the jobs you have to do at the beginning of each day? Then put these jobs in order of priority and do the most important ones first. Any jobs which you do not complete should be put at the top of the next day’s list. If you do this, you’ll be surprised at how much easier it makes planning your day and how much more time you seem to have.

Delegation: Another way to save time is to delegate as many jobs as you can to others. This does not mean that you pass on all your work to others (or all the jobs you don’t like doing!) But it is a waste of time if you do routine tasks that less senior people can do. Instead, pass them on to someone else. If you are in a managerial position you should only do the jobs that nobody else in your department can do.

However, make sure you delegate jobs to competent people and explain clearly what needs to be done. Otherwise, you will just waste more time sorting out their mistakes.

Meetings: If you have to organise or attend meetings keep them as short as possible. A great deal of time is wasted in organisations because people sit around drinking coffee and enjoying the sound of their own voices. So draw up an agenda and get people to stick to it. If necessary, set a time limit on proceedings.

Closed Door Policy: Finally, we’re not advocating that you make yourself inaccessible to your staff. But you may find it useful to let it be known that there are certain times in the day when you must not be disturbed, because it’s those minor interruptions that really eat into your time. Also, discipline yourself and have set times for answering your emails rather than turning to your screen and jumping to answer each one as soon as it comes through. Obviously, you would make an exception for urgent matters!

Follow these tips and we’re sure you’ll find you can pack more into your day – or get through your work faster and leave yourself more time for doing the things you really enjoy!