Time Management

We all live terribly busy lives juggling multiple responsibilities and potentially worried, either implicitly or explicitly, that we do not have the time to do the things we want to and ought to be doing.

Also, each of us have arrived at our own way to manage time,potentially the most important of resources that we possess, more important than money and more important than power.

Two quotes about time before I get going on the topic:

Bernard Shaw said (and I paraphrase): "Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on the young. "

Another mentor once said, "quit complaining about being bored. If you can't stand yourself, why are you imposing yourself on others?!"

On that note, let us discuss time management. I would appreciate it if you can also use the comments section below to edit/add/challenge my thoughts listed below. The way to manage time, in my opinion is to think and act upon the following principles:

1. Distinguish between the Urgent and the Important:

If you ask yourself what you are working on at any given time, surely it is 'urgent' things that your boss needs or the govt needs Taxes, water bill etc) or your kid's school needs - some deadline that you are forced to deal with (perhaps, more often than not, because one has been procrastinating).

It might be useful to list the things that you need to get done and separate out what is truly important to get done (that may not be urgent) and those that are urgent (but perhaps not important) and make sure that in a given day or week that you do spend time on what you consider are the important things.

What I have found is that it is easy to spend the time on the urgent things and before you know it the week has passed and you have not attended to what is important to you, your family, your friends or your community.

2. Long Term vs Short Term

A variation of the urgent vs important discussion is short term vs long term. Both long term and short term priorites could be urgent or important. But more often than not, long term aspirations are not easy to visualize or have faith in, whereas the short term items can occupy your mind-space.

As a strategist in my professional life, I am trained to think about the long term in my business. However, that does not mean that I apply that in my personal life.

A series of short term actions do not add to long term priorities (necessarily). Nor do acting on long term priorities put bread on the table today.

So it seems to me that it is important to think about finding the balance between these two priorites during the course of the week/month.

3. Minding your A, B. Cs

I try to think of the tasks for the week in front of me - it is difficult to think of tasks beyond one week. One can think of priorities and goals over a longer time frame. But tasks stale rather quickly.

I sort them in to A, B and C items. I used to do them manually in the beginning 20 years ago. Now I instinctively know what is an A, B or C priority item.

I personally take care of the As (or closely supervise them). I try to delegate the B items (or want to know about them. I RUTHLESSLY drop the C items and actively seek the pain of not doing it.

I think the point this last point is worth explaining. Let us say my colleague has asked me to do something and I think it is a C item. I actually won't do it! I will seek the consequence of not doing it - the penalty. Or do it in a window where I am idle (but I am seldom idle since I am doing A or supervising B items!)

The fear of not doing a task, or the fear of not taking on the penalty for not doing a C task is in my opinion the biggest time-sink.

As a rational person you must judge that the net benefit of doing A and B priorities vastly outweigh C priority penalties (if it does not, then the prioritization is wrong!)

4. Delegation

Part of growing up and maturing, I believe is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses. Part of maturing also is learning to let go.

When I was promoted to manager for the first time all those years ago, I would feel shy about assigning tasks to my administrative assistant (why am I giving her these menial tasks? I would ask myself).

It takes a while to figure out that your time is valued by your organization and by your family (and by yourself) to doing i) important ii) A priority and iii) long term actions.

Ask yourself, how many hours in a week you spend doing the above three vs their opposites.

You will be both shocked and at the same time not surprised by your discovery.

The trick to gaining back your time is know when to delegate, what to delegate, how to delegate and how to manage once what you have delegated.

By the way, I do not mean anything derogatory when I use the word delegate. It simply means that the combined time of you and the delegatee is better spent if the task is delegated.

I will convey a quote of my favorite mentor on this topic, "Delegation is not abdication!"

You are not giving up your responsibility or accountability when you delegate, rather you have taken back time but not given up your commitment to the task.

5. Roles and Responsibilties

I have simply not seen a more huge waste of time than not assigning the right people to the right roles for the right reason at the right time in the right way.

The more time spent upfront planning out the sequence of events with the right assignment of roles and responsibilities, the less time you personally have to spend in damage control, edits, corrections etc.

Production Engineers are familiar with the term 'yield loss'. The worst yield loss is loss of time....so we must do our utmost to plan well and avoid 'yield loss'.

6. Call Blocking

The bane of any professional's existence in the modern world is meetings. I mean, good God! How many useless meetings are held everywhere!

I actually block of my calendar for certain parts of the week and it takes a very important request (or person) to break into that blocked time.

I use this to take back time and work on A priority items. I also try to do it in such a way that it does not inconvenience anyone.

For example I am an early morning person. So by the time 10 am comes around, I am done with most of my 'personal' activities be they professional or personal.

There might be others who are evening/night birds - who might try blocking time towards the end of the day.

7. Mixing it up

The biggest detriment to productivity or engagement or creativity is monotony. So I try to ask myself how can I introduce variety into my life, how can I prevent myself from falling into a rut - week after week and month after month.

At any given time I try to juggle 3-4 interests, 3-4 activities, 3-4 projects, 3-4 priorities so that I am always working or engaged in something different and then I try to shift it quarter to quarter.

Of course mixing it up does not mean that you let those pesky 'C' priorities sneak back in to steal your time!

8. Life and Career

When I talk to friends, colleagues, team mates and family members, I find that there is a great deal of stress around balancing family life and work life.

I face the same travail every day. Should I leave early to attend the kid's play at school? Should I not travel but rather take the meeting over the phone? etc etc

I think this is a true prioritization question. People use the term 'work / life balance'. I think this is not correct. I agree with former CEO of GE, Jack Welch - he calls is 'work/ life choice'

You choose which one you want more on the margin and deal with the benefits and penalty of that choice.

9. Personal vs Private

I think we do not give ourselves enough 'alone' time. We think if we can have time for work and time for family (and find the right priorities between the two), we are done.

I think one must actively pursue alone time. This I suspect clears the head and allows one to set the internal compass to find true north.

10. Routines

The final thought on time management is establishing routines. This might sound contradictory to the idea of 'mixing it up' and not falling into a rut that I had mentioned above.  However, having a routine allows one to slot the important, long term things into managed time slots such that you get them done, and you KNOW you have time to get them done. These time slots should be guarded fiercely and jealously and when you establish a routine around these time slots, the benefit builds upon each lap and soon you are humming along on spending time on important things not just urgent things

Postscript:

All above 10 points are my own subjective conclusions. So these could be based on my own experience and my personality - so perhaps these are not universal. So I share them with you for what they are worth. However there is one point worth noting in the postscript.

The above 10 points might lend the perspective of dry-structured- potentially suffocating existence. I have learned from others, the value of spontaneity.  While structure and prioritization is important to manage time and take it back from working on low priority useless things that can sap energy; it is equally important to smell the roses along the way and as John Lennon sang, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans"

I learned Time Management from a Charlie Hobbs program, as I indicated at the beginning, many years ago. More recently Stephen Covey and the author of Act Now have become more popular.