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24 Jul 2014

Are you great at time management – or priority management?

 When a recent college grad puts together his or her first resume for the real world, it can be tough. For most people, it means finding ways to fill a page with relevant work and school experience coupled with those all-important skills lists. If you take a look at any resume – fresh out of college or not – you’ll likely find some sort of reference to proficiency in time management. Everyone wants to believe they can manage their time effectively, and being able to stay on task certainly makes you an attractive job candidate.

But honestly, what does great time management even mean? Are you saying that you can tackle tasks quickly and still have time to check your Twitter feed? Can you squeeze your work into 35 hours and take leisurely lunches? Are you able to step out to that doctor’s appointment without an issue?

Whether you’re seeking new employment – or running your own business – it’s time to change the way we think about time management. What if, instead, we said we were great at priority management? Having excellent priority management skills likely says what you actually mean anyway: When you are charged with a certain list of needs, you can prioritize the most important tasks, accomplish those first and then manage the following priorities.

If you are a business owner or leader, having a priority management mindset also will help you to find the time to work ON your business instead of just IN your business. Once you’re able to manage your priorities and put them in the order you need to, you’ll easily be able to identify those low level tasks that probably don’t need your direct attention. Rather than trying to take care of everything on your own, try delegating those lower level tasks to your staff or find a way to systematize the business so those tasks don’t come to you in the first place.

Essentially practicing excellent priority management can help you better manage the hours you work each day, find ways to remove lower level tasks from your plate and free up time to work on developing your business! If you had even five extra hours per week, what could you do to make your business stronger? We bet you could find ways to improve your systems, beef up your marketing efforts, learn new business trends and more.

If you are having trouble identifying your priorities or developing your business, it’s time to reach out to your local Growth Coach: http://www.thegrowthcoach.com/locator.aspx.

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