Time Management Tips from a Nonprofit Executive Director - YouTube

Whether you work for a nonprofit organization like I do, or you're just

struggling with time management and staying productive or focused in your

business, in your personal life - I'm hoping that some of the strategies that

I've picked up over the past couple of years have really helped me out can help

you out too! Don't forget to subscribe, because I do weekly videos on living a

life of purpose, social impact, nonprofits, leadership, and

so much more! Once again, if we haven't yet met my name is Amber Melanie Smith

and I make videos on helping changemakers with tips and strategies to

help you change the world while living a life of impact and purpose! So it's kind

of a sad joke in the nonprofit world that people who work for our nonprofits

are spread notoriously thin. We have a lot on our plates. We are working 50, 60,

sometimes 70, or more hour weeks and we are just really overwhelmed a lot of the

time. So time management is a crucial skill to not only help us meet the needs

of our mission and our cause effectively but also to make sure that we're taking

care of ourselves in the process. About two years ago, I decided that I needed to

get myself on track to be more mentally emotionally and physically healthy so

that I could sustain my mission and the work that I was doing for the cause that

I loved longer. Like so many others in my field, I had been working 60+ hour

weeks and it was just getting to a point where I was exhausted all the time and

not being an effective manager, fundraiser, leader, and other things for

my cause. So I spent some time over the past couple years carefully crafting an

environment around myself that would help me to be more effective with my

time management, and now I'm able to keep those 60 plus hour work weeks down to a

bare minimum - only when they're absolutely necessary. And I'm a lot

better off for it and so is my cause. Now, I work in the nonprofit field, but the

strategies that I'm going to share can apply to anyone

from any walk of life - whether you work for a large corporation, are running your

own business, or just want to become a more effective time manager of your

personal life. Okay, so let's get right into it! My first

strategy is something I started doing about a year ago, and that is combating

decision fatigue - yes, that's a real thing - by preparing some things from my day the

night before. Usually these are really simple things. I will lay out my clothes.

I will prepare my lunch. I'm also thinking about the next day and what

tasks I'm going to be planning to prioritize that day. If I prepare all of

these things the night before, then the next morning I don't have to think about

them and I could just get right into the most important things that I need to do

that day without too much worry. If I'm feeling really organized

I might even lay out my whole week's worth of clothes on the Sunday before

the Week starts by looking at my calendar, seeing what kinds of meetings

and activities I have going on that week so I know how to dress appropriately for

each day. This is also great for food preparation for lunches. If you are that

organized, you can certainly prepare your lunches in advance too, and just be able

to grab and go out the door. My second time management strategy that really

really has been helping me out especially as of late is what I alluded

to before, and that is choosing my most important tasks for the next day the

night before. Then the next morning I kind of have a little competition with

myself! I challenge myself to see how quickly I can do that very important

tasks first thing in the morning - before checking email, before anything else,

because if I can do that then I've already had a major victory for the day,

and I'm feeling pretty good the rest of the day. If you're struggling to think

through what your most important tasks the next day should be, then a great tool

that I've used before is the time management matrix developed by Stephen

Covey. The time management matrix basically helps you think through all of

the possible tasks you could be doing that day and breaks it down into

sections based on four criteria so we're talking about a matrix so think of it

if on one side you're looking at comparing things that are urgent and on

the other side it's things that are important and your goal is to find the

tasks that are both urgent and important so if you practice drawing this matrix

and then you have urgent and important or urgent and unimportant or not

important but urgent and you basically break down your tasks and write them in

the different quadrants of the matrix you can start to see which ones you need

to be prioritizing and those are of course as I said the ones that are both

urgent and important I'll leave a link to this resource below so you can check

it out and practice drawing the matrix for yourself if that's of interest to

you so what are some examples of what some

of these tasks might be well for tasks that might be both urgent and important

you might be thinking of meeting with a top supporter or getting your business's

website launched by the deadline that you promised your followers tasks that

might be maybe not urgent but are still important might be things like personal

or professional development or exercise these things are definitely things that

you want to fit into your day in your life but maybe you don't have to do them

in the next five minutes urgently examples of tasks that are not important

but urgent might be responding to an email from someone who needs an answer

very quickly or perhaps an interruption from a co-worker and then for those

tasks that fall in the quadrant of both not important and not urgent so maybe

things like checking social media these are the things you want to generally

just avoid doing completely if you can and then like I said for me personally

my goal is always to wake up and start on that most important important and

urgent task first thing in the morning knock it out and feel like super

accomplished the whole rest of the day okay so another time management strategy

that has just been completely life-changing for me was prioritizing my

tasks on a calendar so I personally use Google Calendar it syncs up really

nicely with my phone and my email but there are a lot of other tools out there

in terms of calendars what I mean by prioritizing

is that I'm not only putting everything that I need to do from events and

meetings personal and business on my calendar but I'm also prioritizing them

I like to use the tasks function in Google Calendar and make a note of which

ones are the most important by numbering them or putting a little asterisk next

to the most important tasks so that those tend to float up to the top of my

task list on Google Calendar and I know that that's what I need to be focusing

on first the next time management strategy that has been really helpful to

me and of course this one depends a lot on what type of business or field you're

in and what your role is but for me as a non-profit executive director I often

have a lot of meetings with different types of people all over my region so

something that I've been doing to help be more efficient is by batching those

meetings that are in similar geographic areas back-to-back this of course helps

cut down drive time and makes my day a lot more effective I like to personally

get all of my meetings done at the same chunk of time and then be able to focus

on the other tasks that I have to do that day the next time management

strategy that is actually taken me quite a while to work on for myself and I'm

still working on it is delegating now being able to delegate in a business

setting or in a non-profit setting in my world obviously depends on having people

to delegate to but with the proper structuring of your tasks and your team

and your day you can get a lot done by delegating tasks that other people are

better at such as video editing or developing a marketing campaign while

you focus on the things that you are best at so for me in my life I might be

wanting to clear some things off of my plate and out of my schedule to other

people on my team so that I can spend more of my time fundraising going out

and meeting with donors or supporters or sponsors which is something that is more

my core competency then perhaps other

members of my team but other members of my team might be excellent at accounting

or social media so I let those people handle those tasks and then we're all

using our time the most efficient efficiently and effectively as possible

for our cause delegating or in some cases you might

call this outsourcing is also strategy I hear a lot about when you're running

your own business and it can also be helpful for your personal life if you

have the ability to outsource or get some help with writing content for your

business or getting some help with housework even those things can help you

clear up time so you can focus on things that are a bigger priority to you the

final time management strategy that has really helped me out and I believe will

really help others out is going ahead and blocking out the time on your

schedule and even putting it on your calendar if you have to for things that

are outside of your work family time time with friends making sure that you

are curating and blocking out that time from the very GetGo the very beginning

of your week will make sure that you have that on your schedule to look

forward to to make sure that it's part of your life because relationships are

really important that keep you happy and healthy and sane that's all I've got for

now I'd love to hear from you what are some your time management tips and

strategies that have worked for you leave them in the comments below and

that's whether you work in a social change social work social impact field

or some other industry we are all in this together we have a lot of advice

that we can share across sectors so please leave those comments below and

share with the rest of the world I really hope you liked this video don't

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making a difference in the world and I'd love to hear what you have to say thanks

again for watching