INSIGHT FOR TODAY

Time Management Tools and Techniques
There are five time management tools and techniques that you should practice for maximum productivity and good personal organization. Each of them takes a little time to learn and master, but pays you back in greater efficiency and effectiveness for the rest of your life.

1.  Use a time planner. The first time management tool that you need is a time planning system that contains everything you need to plan and organize your life. The best time planners, whether loose-leaf binders or electronic versions, enable you to plan for the year, the month, the week, and for each day. A good time planner will contain a master list where you can capture every task, goal, or required action as it comes up. This master list then becomes the core of your time-planning system. From this master list, you allocate individual tasks to various months, weeks, and days.

2.  Always work from a list. Every effective executive works from a daily list. It is the most powerful tool ever discovered for maximum productivity. When you create your daily list, you begin by writing down every single task that you intend to complete over the course of the day. The rule is that you will increase your efficiency by 25 percent the very first day that you start using a list. This means that you will get two extra hours of productive time in an eight hour day from the simple act of making a list before you start work, of everything you have to do that day. You can bring order out of chaos faster with a list than with any other time management tool.

3.  Organize your list by priority. Once you have a list for your day's activities, the next step is for you to organize this list in order of priority. Once your list is organized, it becomes a map to guide you from morning to evening in the most effective and efficient way. This guide tells you what you have to do and what is more or less important. You will soon develop the habit of using your list as a blueprint for the day.



4.  Use any time management system you like. The variety of personal digital assistants (PDA's) and computer-based time management systems available today is absolutely wonderful. No matter what you do, in whatever field, there are digital time management systems that you can tap into or load onto your personal computer or mobile device to help organize every part of your life.

5.  Set up a "45-file system." There is a simple method of organizing your time and your schedule for up to two years in advance. It is called the "45-file system." This is a tickler file that lets you plan and organize your activities and callbacks for the next twenty-four months. This is how it works. First you get a box of forty-five files with fourteen hanging files to put them in. The forty-five files are divided as follows: There are thirty-one files numbered one through thirty-one for the days of the month. There are twelve files for the months of the year. January through December. The last two files are for the next two years. This is a wonderful system that you can also use with hanging files in your desk drawer.

Action Exercise
Get a time planner of some kind, whichever format you are most comfortable using (eg digital or paper), and invest the time necessary to lean how to use it. The payoff in saved time and increased productivity will be enormous.

INSIGHT FOR TODAY

Four Ways to Test Your Idea
How to be sure that you have a great business idea before you put time and money into it.
There are four great ways for you to test any product or service idea before you start a business built upon it.
The Best Source of Advice
Number one, seek out people who are already in the same business and ask their opinions of the product or service. Many people have saved themselves an enormous amount of time and money by finding that people who are already in the business wish they weren't in the business and who wish they hadn't invested the time or money to get in the business in the first place. So go and talk to them. Ask them what they think about the business. Ask them if they would recommend that someone else get into the business. Don't be shy or secretive.

Ask for Feedback On Your Idea
Every so often, at seminars, I have people come up to me and ask me if I would give them some advice on their business, and I say, "Well, what is your idea?" And they won't tell me what their idea is because they're afraid somebody will steal their idea. The fact is that ideas are a dime a dozen. So be perfectly open. Tell people what you're thinking of doing. And get feedback from people who are already in the business. That alone has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars. It may even have saved my financial life on a couple of occasions.


Ask Your Bank Manager for Advice
Number two is to ask your bank manager for his opinion or advice. A bank manager, who deals with commercial accounts, very often has a tremendously accurate sense for what kind of businesses will succeed and what kind won't. One 5-minute interview with my bank manager a few years ago saved me $200,000 dollars in an investment. He pointed out to me the weaknesses in the particular business I was looking at getting into, and I had no answer for him. So I didn't go into the business and the people who did lost everything that they put into it. Ask your bank manager. Your bank manager can be one of the very best sources of business advice.

Check With Family and Friends
Number three, ask your friends, ask your family, ask your acquaintances for information. Family members are very good targets for market research. Ask your family and friends if they would buy the product or service that you're thinking of offering. How much would they pay for it? Listen to their questions. Listen to their criticisms. Listen to their concerns. Because if you can't answer their questions and concerns in a logical and believable way, it could be that there's something wrong with your idea.

Talk to a Potential Customer
The fourth way to do market research is to visit prospective customers for the product or service and ask if they would buy it. If you're thinking of selling something to a company, go to the type of company that you would sell it to and ask if they would buy it if you produced it. If you're thinking of selling something through retail, go to the retailer and ask them if they would buy it or sell it. Ask the customer. Customers are very open and very candid and sometimes they'll give you insights that will be worth their weight in gold. If you're going to sell through a retailer, ask the retailer if he or she could sell the product if they were carrying it. Why or why not?

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to test your ideas more thoroughly before you invest in them:

First, visit people who are in the same business and ask for their opinions. Call them on the telephone. A person already doing the business is the best source of advice in that business.

Second, ask your bank manager for advice. Lay out your business plan or idea to him or her and ask for his or her candid feedback. This could save you an enormous amount of time and money.

Recommended book

"21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business" by Brian Tracy

ABOUT US

         

Insight World Builders (IWB) is a non-governmental organisation in partnership with several corporations (as a network of change agents). The organisation received a mandate to help people develop their God-given innate potentials thereby proving a network of highly inspired professionals towards nation-building in African continent.

The organisation with a board of directors of five persons is presided by Mr Frank O. Alajiki as the founder and the chief executive officer in charge. The commissioning of the organisation will come up in October 2011(later in the year). The ceremony we feature keynote speakers around the world as it’s meant to foster young peoples’ education towards change and development in their lives and careers among other things.

IWB has momentum-based programmes for addressing peoples’ needs. These include

1.       Introduction of self-mastery and development training programme with latest audio-visual facilities as an innovative strategy to motivate secondary schools’ students towards building-up their self values in the competitive world.

The programme has been researched and evaluated from psychological, theological and physiological points of view and have secured endorsements from authorities in each of these disciplines.  It provides guidelines that an individual need to exchange the fears, guilt and anger of the past for a future built on a solid base and filled with hopeful expectancy. One interesting thing about this programme is that its people-oriented policy addresses core areas of life such as attitude and character where peoples’ progressive powers are evaluated and tested. 

2.       Career advancement programme for under graduate and young school graduate persons. This programme is designed to give individuals world class exposure in their choosing fields.

As it features annual summits with keynote speakers, life-coaches and top class professionals around the world for the purpose of fostering  peoples’ education towards adding values to their nations and continents.

3.       Scholarships award for less-privileged students at all levels.

4.       Introduction of community projects such as street cleaning among others.