Manage yourself

Time Management & Self Organisation An important part of of your day is how to organise yourself to make the best use of your time, equipment and resources available.

The acquisition of self-organisation and time management skills marks the difference between the PA/secretary who is always in charge of herself and and her job, always composed, calm and capable, and her disorganised counterpart, always stressed by imminent deadlines, behind with her workload and mostly driven by a series of lurches from one potential crisis to another.

Guidelines on Time Management & Self Organisation

DO

• Keep abreast
  Acquire the habit of anticipating events and needs well ahead of their arrival.



• Diaries
  Scan your own and your manager's diaries regularly and make time to plan what is needed for a coming interview, conference, visit etc.



• Think logically
  Develop a daily and weekly routine in which you tailor your tasks around your manager's needs and intermittent absences.



• Filing
  Save filing and routine, non-urgent typing for the two hours during which your manager is attending a meeting. Plan larger personal projects to coincide with your manager's 'away days'.



• Keep up to dat
  
  • Keep an electronic or paper notebook of the various 'work in progress' jobs which are delegated to you.
  
  
  
  • Reorder their priority (daily) according to the speed of approaching deadlines or your manager's ever-changing sense of what is urgent.

• Be consistent
  Encourage your manager to work as far as possible according to a series of routines.



• Set times for dictation and reviewing work schedules, signing cheques etc - which avoid last-minutes rushes and provide you with enough time to complete allocated work each day or week.



• Be resourceful
  Make a habit of scanning office and business systems magazines for labour- and time-saving devices and resources. Develop as helpful a set of equipment and material as possible. Avoid the trap of sticking to time-worn routines just because they are routines!



• Reminders
  Keep your own bring-forward or memory-jogging diary of items for attention which occur on an infrequent or irregular cycle.



• Keep up to date
  Ensure you take the time and trouble to master the office equipment and systems available, and always be prepared to absorb a new technique.

Don't

• Be a Black Hol
  Don't deny access to all from your manager. Ensure you act as a responsible communication with everyone in your network and you will find that an invaluable two-way process develops based on mutual trust between you and your colleagues.



• Be reactiv
  Don't have a reactive approach to your job. Always adopt a proactive approach in which you anticipate jobs, problems and eventualities and plan and control events rather than letting them control you.



• Waste tim
  Idle gossip is one of the biggest time wasters. If you're worth your salt you should be earning a good salary, with the emphasis on earn.
  
  Don't waste your time on routine jobs you could easily delegate and monitor.



• Betray your manager's confidences
  Even to close friends. Most managers work under much stress and have virtually no one in whom to confide other than the secretary with whom a close professional relationship may develop. Many secretaries have shared their manager's promotional good fortune because they have proved entirely trustworthy.



• Be afraid to disagre
  If you think your manager is wrong, don't be shy of telling them - diplomatically of course. If, for example, the memorandum he dictated in a fit of anger or frustration is dangerously terse or a matter is best left to fade away. Good secretaries develop a much appreciated knack of sometimes saving managers from themselves and of proffering the benefit of another perspective upon a given problem. But don't be too upset if advice is ignored.