Over the holiday period I went out with friends for a drink at a local pub. The bar was very busy and the young barman rushed off his feet. I noticed that there were two large bottles of vodka side by side at the optics. When someone ordered double vodka he put the first one into the glass at one optic and then immediately poured the second measure from the other optic. This saved the time of waiting for the first optic to refill and the whole action would have saved him only a few seconds, but when you have a lot of customers waiting to be served, every second counts.

I made a mental not that the barman's actions were an example of time management (writers are never off duty). It may have been on a small scale but it was a demonstration of how to maximise the use of whatever time is available, and that if it is possible to cut corners even to save a only few seconds, then it is worth the effort.

We have around us many time saving features built in to all kinds of products, from the microwave oven to packet soups. The world of today is geared towards allowing us to cut out those chores that take up unnecessary time. It wasn't always like this, however, as this trip into the office of the past shows.

You have to make an urgent phone call to chase up an expected delivery that hasn't arrived (for the mental image of your phone, think Deal Or No Deal). You pick up the receiver and dial by inserting your index finger into the dial and turning it clockwise to its full extent and then removing your finger and waiting for the dial to return to its original position. Now you re-insert the digit and dial the next number, and so on until finally, you have dialled the whole thing. The ring tone goes on and on but there is no answer, and no answering machine to take a message. Finally you give up for now, but when you try again later you must redial the number from scratch, as there is no redial function.

The world of modern telecommunications is unrecognisable from those days. As a matter of course anyone involved in work that requires communicating with others should take full advantage of every time saving function that is available. Keeping an up-to-date list of contact details and using such features as voicemail, redial, text messaging and hands free calling on a daily basis will save a lot of time over the course of a month. And here are some other time trimmers that you should be using as a matter of course.

General
Familiarise yourself with as many keyboard shortcuts as possible and use them.

Organise your system so that you know where files and folders are kept and are easily accessible.

Email
Keep an up-to-date address book so that new mails can be started with a click rather than typing out an address.

Use your calendar to maximum effect. Log all of your appointments and give yourself an early alert so as that you are not making a mad dash to get there. Back up any important appointments with an alert on your mobile phone in case you are away from your desk when you need to be reminded.

When you are going to be away from the office for long periods, on holiday for example, set up an auto response giving details of when you will be back. This is not just an act of courtesy; it also allows those with urgent matters to discuss to know exactly when you will be back at your desk.

Word Processing
When you open a Word document you have been working on previously, your cursor will be at the top of the page. Press Shift + F5 and your cursor will jump directly to the point you were last typing before you closed the document.

To select a whole sentence in Word without the sometimes tricky manoeuvring of the mouse, hold down Ctrl and click anywhere in the sentence you want to highlight and the whole piece will be selected.

Excel
Use AutoFill too. Instead of typing in predictable lists, such as numbers, days of the week, months of the year, etc, type the first one (or more than one if you are entering numbers, so that Excel can pick up the increment) and drag the bottom right corner down to where you want it.

Use the AutoComplete function. Data-entry clerks across the globe are eternally grateful for the advent of this time saver, and here's a quick example of why: The city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne uses 19 characters. If you are entering details of a lot of Geordies, and 500 of them have Newcastle-upon-Tyne in their address, then using AutoComplete will take 518 keystrokes to fill the entire 500 cells with that data: 19 to type the original and 499 to type the letter N and let AutoComplete do the rest. With AutoComplete switched off, the same task would take 9,500 keystrokes.

This last example shows that by adopting time saving features as part of your everyday routine, you can free up quite a bit of time to deal with more important matters. And the beauty of it is that it is all done with minimum effort from you. These time saving features are there to be used so take advantage of them.







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