Being On-time and Prepared

The IT Industry places great emphasis on the habits of being on time and prepared. This can be demonstrated in virtually any context, which involves the time factor, for example, attending meetings. In the present times, when the value of time is perhaps appreciated more than ever before, being on time and and delivering results on schedule, every time, assumes greater significance. In this context, planning and scheduling skills are important. You must be realistic in planning for activities, prioritizing and scheduling them and also set aside some buffer time for meeting any contingencies. For example, if you have to deliver part of a project at the end of the day, you must identify the activities to be completed, say making calls to clients, testing your application for errors and generating reports, prioritize these in terms of importance and allocate time for each. Remember Do First Things First.

Apart from the fact that you that you must be on time for any meetings or commitments, you must also be prepared for the occasion. For example, you may have to do your homework, compile data, or go through related materials, before attending a meeting, so that the time spent is most fruitful an utilized.

The following checklist would help you go prepared for meetings:

- Go through the agenda
- Confirm the venue, room, etc.
- Know the chairperson
- Familiarize yourself with the topic
- Compile all the papers to take to take along
- Complete any preparatory work required
- Prepare for any presentations
- Organize copies of presentation for distribution
- Have all the stationary ready (papers, pen, calculators, etc.)

Tracking Urgent vs. Important

Often you might be in a situation to decide on which tasks to accomplish first. Examples of urgent tasks could be, say, catching a bus, pacifying a client, putting out a fire, while important tasks would be, say, learning to drive, looking into customer's problems, or making a place fire-proof. The important but not urgent things involve planing, diagnosing, training, delegating and investing. Therefore they often take a large amount of time and the results may not be shown immediately.