Making Time
Ten Principles to give you more time to live your life the way you want to live it.
Have you fallen prey to any of these widespread time management myths?
• Tackle the difficult jobs first.
• Work long hours to show loyalty and commitment.
• I can remember what needs to be done.
• Doing things as they crop up is an efficient way to manage time.
• Deadlines add unnecessary pressure.
• Work on the most urgent matters first.
• Help people when they ask for it.
• If I do my best, things will work out for themselves.
These common myths actually prevent us from managing our time effectively and achieving the things we want to achieve.
These principles will free you from the tyranny of the above myths.
Principle 1: Know what you want to achieve
Do you know clearly what you want to achieve and by when you want to achieve it? Have you thought about what you want from each facet of your life and are you working steadily towards it? Do you know what lies over the next hurdle?
Unless you can answer ‘yes’ to these Questions, chances are you’re wandering aimlessly through life and your efforts are random, taking you closer towards your goals only by chance. When you run into difficulties you won’t have the drive to surmount them. You’ll lack a guidepost by which to assess your effectiveness and keep you traveling in the right direction.
It has been said: that if you don’t create your own future, someone else will.
Are you willing to leave your future in someone else’s hands?
One of the first things racing car drivers learn is what to do when they lose control of their car and go into a spin. People’s natural reaction is to focus on the trees they’re heading towards, but if that’s where we focus, that’s where we’ll go. Instead, racing car drivers learn to focus on where they want to end up: their destination.
Goals serve the same function for us. They give us something to focus on, guide our efforts, and, if they’re clear and compelling enough, draw us towards them like a magnet.
Success has less to do with speed than direction.
In the words of Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker and author, ‘Success is not a destination. It is a journey. The happiest people objectives. The most bored and miserable people no worthwhile objectives in mind.’
The objectives we choose set the tone for our lives and the way we live them. They direct our attention and our efforts and motivate us to look beyond problems. With our sights set firmly on our goals, we can more easily find ways around obstacles. Knowing what we want to achieve stops us from floundering in the sea of life. Remember these ten powerful two-letter words:
If it’s to be, it’s up to me.
Principle 2: Focus your attention on activities that add value
Are you ever tempted to work on the urgent problems immediately, in the mistaken belief that if you postpone them they will become increasingly difficult to handle?
Occasionally, we should grant something that is urgent the ‘right of way’ over more value-adding, non-urgent activities. Automatically attending to something simply because it’s urgent is a prescription for pandemonium. It almost guarantees that we will postpone value-adding activities so long that they eventually become urgent too, propelling us into a fruitless and stressful cycle of crisis management.
Some urgent matters should be done immediately, some should be delegated immediately, and some should be postponed or even ignored. It all depends on how much value doing them will add.
Whenever you’re confronted with an urgent matter, evaluate it in terms of both its urgency and importance. Will doing it help you achieve important results? How much value will it add if you attend to it now? Can it wait until later? Should you do it or is it in someone else’s province? What would happen if you didn’t do it?
Once you’ve evaluated it, follow the four Ds: deal with it now, delegate it, delay it or dump it.
Principle 3: Get a life!
Do you consistently put in considerably more time than others in similar positions? Your workload may be heavy for a short period of time, but if you regularly stay behind or take work home after your normal working day, this could indicate poor time management. It could also indicate that you are expecting too much of yourself and striving for exceptionally high achievement. If so, are your expectations realistic? Are they reasonable? Are they impinging unfairly of other areas of your life and causing it to fall out of balance?
Perhaps most of your colleagues put in long hours, and you fell pressured to do the same. This could indicate that you have bought into a toxic organization culture that expects people to show their loyalty and commitment by ‘putting in the hours’. Or is everybody around you overworked because the company is unrealistically expecting too much of everyone? Or perhaps it has downsized so much it has moved from ‘lean and mean’ to ‘anorexic and angry’. If any of these apply, perhaps it’s time to find a more reasonable employer and a healthier job!
Principle 4: Think it through, plan it out
Someone once said: ‘All things are created twice-first in the mind’.
Do you think you can remember everything you need to do? Perhaps you leave yourself little ‘reminder notes’ scattered around or peppered through your diary to keep you on track? Maybe you’re one of the many who leave work-to-done floating around on your desk, thinking you’ll remember to attend to it when it falls into your field of vision?
Busy people need a more organized plan of action than any of these approaches. This usually means a To Do list of some sort.
Whether on paper or electronic, To Do lists are one of the most effective tools we can use to make time. A list of things to be done helps us allocate priorities and structure our time so that we complete the most important things. It ensures we won’t overlook value-adding tasks.
Whether daily, weekly or even monthly, some type of plan is essential for effective time management. How often should you prepare a To Do list? This depends on how many things you have to do on any given day. A weekly plan may suffice if you have to remember relatively few things. If your life is more hectic, you may need to make or update your plan every day. Are you concerned that you’ll spend more time preparing your To Do list than getting things done? This can happen if you allow yourself to be caught up in layers of prioritizing and pointless subdivision of activities. It can happen if you become so caught up in technology that your electronic diary and taskmaster become ends in themselves.
If you think you’re the type of person who is vulnerable to this, use the simple To Do list suitable to your daily routine. This will help you priorities what needs to be done quickly and keep it updated with a minimum of fuss.
Principle 5: Stay focused!
Keep your personal vision and key result areas at the top of your mind and use them to focus on a big picture, a strategic view of what you need to do. Keep your attention and efforts focused on value-adding activities. To make tomorrow’s time management easier, give top priority to activities that will help you accomplish other value-adding tasks.
Following these principles will benefit you in another way: it will keep you out of the trap of attending to small, simple, easy tasks that you can ‘knock off’ quickly, while leaving value-adding matters undone.
Principle 6: Remember Parkinson’s Law
Named after Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993), Parkinson’s Law states:
‘Work expands to fill the time available as we all make work for one another.’
This suggests two things. First, that setting deadlines is a good idea provided they don’t lead to excessive pressure, which actually prevents you from working well, or to superficial treatment of tasks.
If you’re one of those people who do not work well under pressure, make sure the timetable you set for yourself is realistic. If you’re one of those people who think you work best under pressure, avoid the temptation to wait until the last minute before beginning. This will actually reduce your effectiveness. Instead, set yourself a tight and challenging timetable.
The second thing Parkinson’s Law suggests is that we can all too easily fall into the trap of foisting work on others. Because of the first half of the law and because of the 80:20 rules, this work is usually non-value-adding or marginal work that contributes little or nothing to anyone’s vision or goals. How much meaningless work goes on in your place of employment or personal life?
The 80:20 rule
Developed by Vilfredo Pareto, a 19 th century Italian economist and sociologist, the 80:20 rule as it applies to make time indicates that we get 80 percent of our results from 20 percent of our efforts. Conversely, it means that 80 percent of our efforts result in little added value.
What a waste! How much time could you save and how much more could you achieve if you could expand those 20 per cents?
Principle 7: Do like tasks together
Do you attend to matters as they stream across your desk or capture your attention? This surely dissipates your energy and effectiveness. Hopping from one activity to another adds pressure, reduces our efficiency and effectiveness, and increase the likelihood that outside forces, not us, control the way we spend our time.
Two things will help you prevent this from happening:
• Do like tasks together. Try to make your phone calls in one block of time, correspondence in another, and so on. This stops your brain having to chop and change and play mental catch up.
• Do one thing at a time and try to finish it before moving on to something else. Admittedly, it is seldom possible to complete big jobs all in one go. However, this is a good way to get things done, particularly those tasks that do not require considerable time.
Principle 8: Say ‘no’ to monkeys
Are you that obliging soul everyone relies on to help them out of tight spots? Are you the ‘cheerful worker’ who lends a hand wherever it’s needed? Do you rush around attending to everyone else’s affairs and not your own?
If so, you need to learn to say ‘No’ to tasks that don’t belong to you. You need to learn to ignore, postpone, or delegate matters that you need not handle yourself. You need to learn to become comfortable with completing your own value-adding activities first, before lending a helping hand to others.
Does that sound like the dreaded ‘That’s not my job’ syndrome? Nothing could be further from the truth. ‘That not my job’ is about failure to take responsibility, buck passing and laziness. Saying ‘No’ to monkeys is about focusing your attention and efforts on activities that you are paid to do or are responsible for doing. Saying ‘No’ to monkeys is about placing responsibility squarely where it belongs. It is about helping other take responsibility for completing tasks that belong to them. It is about achieving what you set out to achieve and, at work, what you are paid to achieve.
Does it sound uncharitable? Charity begins at home.
Once your own important activities are completed, you will be able to help others wholeheartedly, with no feelings of guilt or remorse about your own chores languishing, waiting to be completed. You will also feel better about achieving your own important goals and leading a more balanced life. You will be less likely to pulled in all directions, harassed and stressed, and constantly under pressure to do a million things at once. You will probably feel more energetic and encouraged to achieve even more, and be a nice person for others, and yourself, to be around.
Failure to apply principle 8 is likely to result in doing everyone’s work except your own and continual frustration resulting from failing to achieve your own goals.
Principle 9: Work in your ‘prime time’
We each have our own ‘best’ time during the day when we should tackle our most difficult tasks. For some it’s early in the morning. For others’ it’s the afternoon. Others work best in the evenings. What did your fifth analysis of your time log tell you about your energy levels? Take maximum advantage of your own periods of peak energy when you plan out your day.
If you’re a morning person who wilts in the afternoon, make sure you schedule important activities early in the morning when you’re at your best. Schedule important presentations, critical meetings, projects and decisions that need careful thought for the early part of the day. If you must schedule an important meeting or presentation later in the day, have a high protein lunch, eat a piece of fruit, and get some fresh air to energise your body.
Do you hit your stride later in the day? That’s when you should schedule your important activities. If you need to have an early start to the day, make sure you can hit the decks running by organizing everything thoroughly the night before. Make time to eat a high protein breakfast or some fruit and get some fresh air.
Principle 10: Prioritise, Prioritise, Prioritise!
All time management decisions boil down to decisions about priorities. Should you decide to give high priority to small tasks that can be accomplished quickly? To whatever is at the top of your in-tray? To the ‘squeaky wheel’ or whatever interrupts you? No!
Consciously decide what to do and what not to do based on your priorities. Decide which interruptions to accept and which to reject, what to do now and what to postpone until later, based on your priorities. What should you accord the highest priority? Give high priority to task that will add the most value based on your personal vision and key result areas.
Arrange your decisions, tasks and projects into priority order and, as far as possible, work through them in that order. Realistically, of course, interruptions, delays etc. will prevent you from working your way straight through your priority list. Nevertheless, principle 10 is good to follow because it helps you concentrate on results, not on being busy. It also means that anything you don’t complete will have a low priority.
Director, Research and Development Jamb Technologies
(All the concepts and ideas are gathered from Drucker Peter The Effective Executive, Cole Krish Crystal Clear Communication)
