TimeManagement
More Time, Less
Stress
Author Duncan HaugheyVersion 1.0, Issued July 2001
More Time, Less Stress1
Time Management
INTRODUCTION:....................................................................................................................................................................3TIME:............................................................................................................................................................................................3HOW AND WHY WE WASTE OUR TIME:....................................................................................................................3HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR TIME WASTERS:..........................................................................................................4CONTROLLING DEMANDS ON YOUR TIME:...........................................................................................................5DELEGATION..............................................................................................................................................................................5What to Delegate:...............................................................................................................................................................5How to Delegate:................................................................................................................................................................6INTERRUPTIONS IN YOUR WORKPLACE..................................................................................................................................6The Telephone:....................................................................................................................................................................7Internal Visitors:.................................................................................................................................................................7External Visitors:................................................................................................................................................................7EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND MEETINGS:..............................................................................................8COMMUNICATIONS:...................................................................................................................................................................8MEETINGS:..................................................................................................................................................................................8Steps to A Better Meeting:.................................................................................................................................................9GETTING STARTED ON YOUR PERSONAL PROGRAM:...................................................................................10
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Time Management
Introduction:
This document contains a selection of time management tips for anyone interested in improving theirproductivity and lowering stress in their workplace and personal lives. This is particularly important forproject managers who must be able to management their own time effectively if they hope to runsuccessful projects. This document highlights common areas of failing and suggests a simple techniqueto help you improve your time management.
Time:
Let's start by thinking about time. Here are twelve important characteristics of time: -1. It is an economic resource2. It cannot be expanded or contracted3. It is irrecoverable and irreplaceable4. It is expensive and precious5. It is highly perishable
6. Most of what is called 'cost' is the cost of time
7. It is a flow from past to present to future in the context of experience8. It is a flow from future to present to past in the context of planning9. The flow is one way and irreversible
10. It is quantifiable (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years)11. All processes that we manage are time processes12. Time is the dimension in which change takes place
How and Why we Waste Our Time:
You cannot really save time, you only buy it and spend it. Saved time is bought or spent by reinvestingit in other activities. Here are some examples of how we waste our time: -• We do our own photocopying and filing• Make our own flight and hotel reservations
• Find it easier to do things ourselves than train someone else to do repetitive tasks• Socialise instead of communicate
• Work at tasks for satisfaction of physical accomplishment• Haven't the courage to say no nicely and take on too much work• Don't distinguish between important and urgent• Procrastinate and/or are indecisive
• React to constant external impacts with no planned system to shield us to help get results
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Why we waste our time, our personality orientation: -• Task/Achievement - personally doing (working) versus managing and delegating• Leadership/Dominance/Decision - taking charge and doing (working)• Impulsive/Physically Energetic - doing (working) and not planned• Socially Warm/Gregarious - people not task oriented• Theoretical/Detail/Structure - paralyses by analysis
• Change/New Experience/Feeling - bored with routine, unstable, not team worker
• Fellowship/Defensive/Aggressive - to please others, bureaucrat, performance for accolade,
argue with others
How to Discover Your Time Wasters:
You'll discover that you waste time in the same way every day. You must discover for yourself wherethis waste occurs. Here is a simple technique that can help everyone to start improving his or her timemanagement.
It is not enough to learn from others. You need the amazing revelation of the great portions of time thatyou are working and wasting, but not achieving goals and results. Discovering them is very easy. Youneed to use a simple time log for a couple of weeks to make a major breakthrough in your timemanagement.
Take an A4 sheet of paper and organise it into columns. Photocopy a number pages of the blank formonce laid out for coming days. Take a page and write in your typical daily activities across the top andbreak up the horizontal rows into quarter hours from 06:00 hours until 00:00 hours, midnight. As youwork through the day from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, place a dot in each quarterhour of the relevant activity throughout the day. At the end of the day add up the quarter hours and enterthis total at the bottom of each column. Then add up all column totals across the bottom of the page. Ifyou covert each column total into a percentage you will factually and quickly discover where and howyou spent your day. Do this every day for one or two weeks and you will be amazed to discover thatwhat you actually do with your time is not what you believed. You then can start applying the tips andmethods coming up to greatly increase your productivity and relieve much of the stress in your dailyworking and personal life.
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Time Management
Controlling Demands on Your Time:
Delegation
Our inability to delegate creates the biggest bottleneck in our work and personal lives. Try to achieveresults through others. The do-it-myself syndrome may result from: -• • • • •
Preference for operating not managingDemand to know every detail
Refusal to allow mistakes, know as perfection syndromeDisinclination to develop subordinatesLack of organisational skill
Delegation can produce major benefits such as: -• • • •
Extending results from what a person can do, to what a person can controlReleases your time for more important work
Develops subordinates initiative, skill, knowledge, and competenceMaintains the decision level
What to Delegate:
1. Duties that can be assigned on a temporary basis2. Fact-finding assignments
3. Preparation of rough drafts of written material, such as reports, resumes, policies, procedures4. Problem analysis and possible solutions5. Routine tasks
6. Collection of data for reports and/or presentations7. Tasks that will challenge the subordinate
8. Tasks to test your subordinate's ability in specific areas of responsibility9. Small units of work, assignments from your responsibilities and functions
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How to Delegate:
1. Consider gradually increasing authority and responsibility.2. Set clear, realistic goals for the task to be delegated.3. Communicate the assignment clearly.
4. Give your support person complete information on organisational policy and procedure as it
relates to the assignment.5. Define the limits of responsibility as it relates to the assignment. After the delegatee thoroughly
understands the limits of authority, allow him/her to go ahead.6. When a subordinate has the responsibility for a decision, allow him/her to make it.7. Resist making decisions for your support staff
8. Take enough time to help a delegate solve an emergency problem, so when it comes up again
he or she can go ahead without interrupting you.9. When a support person comes to you with a question concerning a delegated task do not answer
the question but help him or her to think it through.10. Set up a system that requires interim reports or checkpoints so you can review progress.11. Establish a realistic completion date.
12. Delegate to the lowest level that can do the task, within your jurisdiction. If the subordinate of
your subordinate could do the task, then say so, but delegate to your own subordinate. Let yoursubordinate re-delegate the task if he or she so chooses.13. If a subordinate's decision must be reversed, permit him or her to reverse it. Never openly
countermand your subordinate's orders. Back up your support person in their relations withtheir subordinates.14. Give the delegatee the authority needed for carrying out the assignment, and inform others that
he or she has this authority. This will lessen the resistance of co-workers when the delegateeseeks information and/or help from them in carrying out the assignment.
Interruptions in your workplace
Interruptions probably rate next to poor delegation practices as major time wasters. They are thenumber one stress generators. Not only do other people cause interruptions, we frequently interruptourselves: -• • •
By losing concentration
Going to find out what's going on in the officeInbox curiosity
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The three major interrupters are: -The Telephone:
• • • • •
To get results and relief you must control the telephone.Use your support person to buffer you.
Return calls in batches when you plan to do so after initial preparation.Don't be a slave to the telephone.
Regarding long distance calls. A long distance call is just another telephone call. Where is thepriority in being in another city or country? There could be exceptions but most people areslaves to the apparent urgency of long distance calls.Learn the difference between the important and the urgent.
•
Internal Visitors:
• •
To get results and relief you must control access to your office or workspace.
Closed door technique; you can't manage anything with open access to your office orworkspace. At certain periods close the door or close off the entrance area to your workspace.A chair with a sign hung on it or a plant into the entrance space with a partition mounted notice.Learn to say no nicely. You're busy, sorry, come back after a specified time.
If you are interrupted and must meet with a person, go to their office or workspace, this willgive you better control over when you can leave.
• •
External Visitors:
• • • •
Again, to get results and relief you must control access to your office or workspace.
Don't meet unknown visitors who don't have an appointment. Get the receptionist or supportperson's perception of the individual if you're in doubt.
If the person is known and no appointment, meet them in the reception area..
If they manage to get into your office/workspace, hold a stand-up meeting. Don't ever sit down.
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Effective Communications and Meetings:
Communications:
The communication process embraces five basic elements thinking, acting, observing, talking andlistening. Of these elements there are four primary communication skills: -• Reading• Writing• Speaking• Listening
Behavioural and human resource specialists clearly state that the most important skill of these four islistening. Most of us are poor listeners. If a reasonable communication time distribution for one personin a two person typical conversation/discussion is 50% talking and 50% listening time, what percentagedistribution would you estimate for yourself? How would your closest associates rate you as a listener?The ten rules for good listening are: -1. Stop talking2. Put the talker at ease3. Show you want to listen4. Remove distractions5. Empathise with the talker6. Be patient7. Hold your temper
8. Avoid interruptions and don't argue9. Ask some questions as encouragement10. Stop talking
Meetings:
Many of us spend up to 50% of our time in various kinds of meetings. Mastering knowledge of thefunction, structure and process of a meeting is essential to improving time management skills. There arethree major elements: -• • •
How many are attending?What is the process?What is the content?
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This expands to:
• How many are attending? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.
• What is the process? Typically attendees do one or more of the following: -- - - -
Feed forward (information/reports/ideas)Feedback (evaluative/reactive)
Creative/brainstorming (planning/proposals)Decision (decision-making)
• What is the content? (This is the meeting agenda)
If you consider the above permutations and combinations that escalate with the number of meetingattendees, it is obvious that the meeting function and process must be well understood, planned andexecuted.
Steps to A Better Meeting:
1. Plan the meeting carefully, who, what, when, where, why and how many.2. Prepare and send out the standard agenda, fully completed, in advance.3. Come early and checkout or set up the meeting room, as you want it organised.4. Start on time. Begin the moment you have a quorum.
5. Get participants to introduce themselves, if they do not already know each other and state the
expectations for the meeting. What are you there to accomplish?6. Clearly define roles.
7. Review, revise, and order the agenda, if required.8. Set clear time limits in the agenda, if necessary, revise.9. Review action items only from previous meeting.
10. Focus on the same problem in the same way at the same time. Do not evaluate when you are
brainstorming, or fall into further reporting information when you are decision-making.11. Establish action items, who, what, when.
12. Review meeting notes to see if anything has been overlooked.
13. Set the date, place and time of next meeting, if required, and develop a preliminary agenda.14. Evaluate progress of the meeting just completed.15. Close the meeting on time crisply and positively.16. Clean up and if required, rearrange the room.
17. Prepare the meeting minutes. Most meetings can be written up in a simple memo form, long
detailed minutes are not required. What was the point considered, what was the outcome, ideas,information reviewed, decisions taken, what action by whom, required when.
18. Follow-up actions item before the next meeting, and begin to plan the next meeting agenda. Get
input from probable attendees on agenda items before the next meeting.
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Getting Started on Your Personal Program:
Follow these fourteen steps for a less stressful, more productive working and personal life.
1. Become aware of time. We only have time and skill to manage and offer clients.2. Accept that you cannot beat the clock. Work smarter not longer and harder.
3. Start to manage yourself and thereby your time. You will accomplish more in the workplace
and have more time for your family and leisure.4. Use the time log to discover your unproductive and unprofitable time wasters. Keep using it
and watch the weekly hour totals increase for productive priority type tasks. Allocate timeperiods into workable do-able portions.5. Start or improve your \"to-do\" list by planning and use it every day. Use a priority 1, 2, 3, or A,
B, C system and reschedule tasks as necessary.6. Identify your priorities by tasks that offer the highest return on invested time, not by their
reported or apparent urgency.7. Finish a task before you start another. If interrupted, return to finish it.
8. After one to two months set a goal to double your productivity. Block out more time to do
things like delegate more to others. Plan longer periods of uninterrupted time. Hold shortermore productive meetings. Work in the car, plane and train.9. Maintain as much of a controlled daily schedule as possible. Make use of your to-do list,
calendar, PDA, PC alarm and support person.10. Try to cut down on interruptions both internal and external. Close your door or obstruct the
entrance to your workspace for privacy. Call forward your telephone for at least 2 hours duringeach day. Organise and persuade those around you of the critical importance of time planning.Control your environment, don’t let it control you.11. Plan and allow short periods of time for crises and external interruptions. As you improve your
time planning and control techniques you will discover that there will be fewer of both. Wefrequently generate our own crises, sometimes without realising.12. Do not schedule junk work or volunteer organisational involvement. Give it to your support
person or do it at home.13. Delegate as much as possible to others. Use delegation as a primary training technique for
yourself and your subordinates. Most routine work is delegable. Delegate the right to be wrong.Experience is a series of mistakes, hopefully made not more than once.14. When you feel bogged down and your time management techniques do not seem to be working
don't despair. Review these 14 points to see where you may be slipping back. Progress in timemanagement is a series of wins and losses remember you can't win if you don't buy a ticket.
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