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Business Consulting

2003-09-01 15:15:00

Making the most of your time

: We live in an age of greater productivity than we have ever experienced before, yet so much time is wasted.  You would wonder where we would be as a society if people learned to manage their time.  What is the best cure for wasting time?  

ANSWER: It seems that many of us are trying to figure out how to do more with less. Here are three things I would suggest you consider when learning how to manage time.    First, identify what's most important to you! In a recent national survey, Americans were asked to list the three things in life that meant the most to them. The three top vote getters were (in order):  family life, spiritual life and health. Take a moment and make your own list.    Now take a look at that list. Does your list include building a world-class business? Or perhaps improving your community. What about your family life? Most likely your list is a balance of several items (work, home, church, etc.). Are you spending your time in the same order? Could you be wrong about your priorities? Make sure your list reflects your priorities, not what you think you are supposed to list. You can go back and change it now, but chances are you got it right the first time.    If that's true, now use your list to say "no" to the things that aren't high priorities. It's hard to say no to someone. Or positively stated, saying "yes" to what's most important to you enables you to politely decline all those good activities that keep you from your best activities.    Second, set goals based on what's most important to you. For many of us, our first goal is to make sure we meet the basic requirements of our job. We find it harder to establish goals for things that are important to us but never seem urgent - calling on a new customer, designing a new product, taking your children to the zoo.  Many times these activities are things we would like to do but never seem to find the time.  Remember, unless you take conscious control of your decision making, you will usually react to the urgent (important or not) and shun the important (unless it carries a sense of urgency).    Third, schedule activities that will allow you to meet your goals. A newly prioritized sample schedule might include some of the following: 7:30-8:30am (sales calls), 8:30am (new product design meeting), Wednesday PM (dinner with your spouse), Saturday PM (trip to the zoo). I'm sure you get the idea.    Scheduling an activity means three things: 1) write it down, 2) preserve it in your memory, and 3) protect it from conflicts! You'll find protecting activities from conflicts will be the most difficult part of your new time management plan. Does the following example sound familiar? You plan to focus on critical areas today at work. Then you oversleep, your child is sick, the phone won't stop ringing and your best employee is on vacation. Now what do you do?   First, I suggest you handle the important items and not the urgent ones. It seems all phone calls and e-mails imply urgency. However, not all are urgent or important. Schedule a time to review, save, or delete e-mails. Do not view an e-mail each time it pops up on your computer. Our high-tech world seems to imply that we must always take every phone call, answer every e-mail, and read every news flash. This is not the case. Don't forget - just say "no" to the things that aren't high priorities. Say "yes" to what's most important to you. You do not have to explain every time you say no. Simply offer your thanks for the invitation - saying you have a very important commitment to keep.   I recommend you handle each request or incoming item in one of the four following ways: 1) do it, 2) delegate it, 3) schedule it for later, or 4) trash it.  Do it when it's important and urgent. Delegate it whenever possible, making sure you teach others your time management skills. Schedule it for later by actually scheduling items to be handled. Finally, trash it when you can honestly say it's not important and will distract you from being your best.   I believe there are two common risks when learning to manage time. The first risk is avoiding important activities that are just plain "not fun". Sales calls might fall in this category as well as fixing the leaky sink or confronting a poor performer at work. Weigh the time spent today addressing these activities compared to allowing them to fester. Will you cause them to become urgent crises tomorrow by avoiding them today?   The second risk you probably face is getting involved in fun and/or good activities. These activities are best characterized as ones that are not ultimately essential to achieving your goals. The following list of activities might be included in this category: reading trade periodicals, serving on a community board, or participating on the club's social committee. Ask yourself, will serving on the social committee prevent me from being my best for those pursuits that need my focus?   Time management is not doing more things in less time. It is doing more important things in the time that we have. You determine what is important. It's your time and it's your life.