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In today's fast-paced world time has become a luxury, with an abundance of tasks often being squeezed into as small a timeframe as possible in order to pave the way for productivity and efficiency.

As a business leader, you are responsible for managing the time of those you are responsible for and guiding them to ensure that critical deadlines, objectives and appointments are met.

In order to effectively manage your employee's workflow, your own personal planning skills need to be finely honed.  

Indeed, to become a successful leader, taking control of your diary is crucial.

If you're finding it difficult to manage your time as a business leader, here are some techniques to help:

Refine your ‘to-dos'

The power of a well-arranged to-do list should never be underestimated.

Beyond a conventional list of tasks, create an action point for each one such as ‘contact', ‘arrange a meeting', ‘read', and ‘write'.

By doing this, it is easy to understand the amount of time that each action will take, so it can be scheduled into your diary and followed up on more effectively.

Work smart

Once your tasks have been arranged by type, you could use this information to incorporate them into your weekly schedule in a smarter way.

Writing a report will require you to be in a very different mind frame to making calls or meeting staff.

Try to block out your day so that you can complete many similar tasks together, working smart rather than sporadically.

Set boundaries

As a business leader, many colleagues, clients and contacts will be battling for your attention throughout the day.

This can quickly disrupt any plan you had for completing your own projects.

Train your staff to understand how and when to contact you, depending on the type of query they have.

If it isn't urgent, allow yourself to ‘switch off' from emails and phone calls to address your tasks without interruption.

Delegate tasks

Even with the best plan in place, sometimes it can be impossible to complete everything on your ‘to-do' list in the time you have each day, week or month.

Learn when it would be more effective to delegate tasks to your employees in order to enable you to manage your own time more efficiently.

While these tips can be used to guide your own time management strategy, every leader will thrive with different techniques and over time, by triailling various methods, finding that ‘sweet spot' will be simple.

If you need any personalised advice about balancing your time, or any other challenges you face as a manager, get in touch with leading business consultant Trevor McClintock.