Diamond Discussions: Time Management Tips

From losing those last 5 lbs for summer to learning a new skill, we as humans are designed to always try to improve however, 92% of people fail to achieve their long-term goals.  Our Management team here at Diamond Media Solutions found that we could all work on time management as one of our first hurdles to try and improve on.   

But what does time management mean and how does that look?

Time management breaks down into three areas:

• organization skills, knowing how to rank or prioritize based on importance
• the ability to clearly communicate your idea and needs
• self-accountability. 

By effectively combining these three areas, we can get more done, complete our projects at a higher degree of accuracy, in less overall time, and with A LOT less stress.

We find that within advertising one of the hardest steps in time management is being able to prioritize properly when it seems to have a never-ending list of tasks that need to be completed in order to meet client deadlines.  We find the “ABCDE method” helps our teams prioritize. 

The ABCDE method

After making a complete list of the times you need to complete, you will then classify each task with either an A, B, C, D, and E in which:

1. A stands for the most important tasks: You have to complete these tasks at any cost otherwise it could have serious consequences.
2. B stands for less important tasks: Such tasks should be done but won’t affect as much as the ones falling in the above category.
3. C stands for tasks with no consequences: Such tasks are something that would be nice to do, but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not.
4. D stands for tasks for delegate: If there is something that could be delegated to someone else, it would be marked as D. However, it could be situational because not every task could be delegated to someone.
5. E stands for tasks you can eliminate: An E task is something that is completely irrelevant and could be eliminated as doing them isn’t already doing any good to your productivity and efficiency.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299336

https://www.briantracy.com/blog/personal-success/the-abcde-method-for-setting-priorities/

Jayme Hill is Chief Operating Officer for Diamond Media Solutions.