Using the Diary

If you find that you have run out of time in your Weekly Planning Diary you are in good company - most people find that there are not enough hours in the day. Check the following six points:

• Examine the dates and priorities which you have given to the list of results to be achieved. Have you set yourself an unnecessary demanding task? Remember it is wasteful to overspend effort.
• Look at your Weekly Planning Diary and examine the list of appointments and meetings. How many of these are really necessary or essential? Go through each one in turn and tick it only if it is an essential activity. Then decide what you are going to do about those which you have not ticked.
• What about those essential routine activities? Can you speed them up?
• Working away from the office is one way of avoiding those interruptions. Use it for completing those tasks which require several hours of continuous effort. Remember, each occasion on which you break your work flow - you waste valuable time picking up your thoughts again.
• The majority of Managers are used to extending their working day outside normal hours. However, there is no virtue in this - unless your job is your hobby. Treat evening and weekend work as a safety valve - not a permanent solution.
• Share the workload by effective delegation.

Your Weekly Planning Diary is your work plan for the next week following this programme. Now that you have set up this plan try to stick to it. However, planning should never be so rigid that it cannot adjust to changing circumstances.

Use the line marked ACTUAL to record how you spent your time and compare it with PLAN. Try the exercise again for several weeks - with practice (especially at estimating) you will find yourself getting progressively better results.

If you have run out of time in your Weekly Planning Diary, you should check the six points.