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Time Management Keeps You Sane

So often you hear people say, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” You won’t find that definition in the diagnostic manual for psychologists, but there’s still a lot of truth to it.

When you do the same thing over and over hoping that something better will happen, then you are fooling yourself.  For example, if you tend to oversleep in the mornings, rush out of the house, arrive at the office and spend an hour digging out the most important to-do tasks from a high paper pile, then you are doing the same ineffective things over and over. If you think that you will magically have a better start to your day without changing any time wasting behaviors, then you are definitely living in a fantasy.
Too often people balk at applying time management systems to their schedules claiming it would “be too much like a straight jacket” or “take too much time to learn to use a schedule.”

The opposite is true. Time management is the way to free yourself by knowing what you have to do and what time is open for personal or social choices. You also can tell at a glance of your calendar whether you can accept an invitation or plan to be part of a group activity.

As for taking too much time to learn, you don’t have to have a complex system. Start with a basic day planner and follow the suggestions for organization. As you use it for awhile, you can refine that system. Just make certain that you are consistent in applying your system.

If you have children then you absolutely must have a time management system to keep up with your activities and theirs. You need to know when to bring four dozen cupcakes for the class party, when it’s your turn to drive the car pool and what the dates are for the school play practices. The older children get, the more that you need to manage the time for the family so that there is time spent together as well as time attending school and after-school activities.

When you know how much time you have available, you can choose how to fill that time. If you want to go shopping, you can decide which day to go based on the amount of time available.

To find a day when you have enough time to cook a big dinner and invite friends over, look at your day planner and you’ll know in a glance. Before long you will say, ”let me check my day planner” instead of saying “yes” to an invitation only to realize later than you don’t really have time for it. That technique alone will save you from over-commitment and the frustration that goes with it.

A key reason that some people rebel against using a time management system is that it wipes out excuses. You can no longer claim that you ran out of time to complete the research for that report or help out with the children's holiday project. After all, if you don’t have a time management system, then you can continue to use the “no time” excuse.  The problem is that you also don’t know how to plan time to do the things that you actually want to do.

So if you keep running through your day without a time management plan, you can expect to be frustrated, late, confused and get far less accomplished. Starting the next day the same way will get the same result.

If you are tired of missing appointments, never having time to do the things you want to do or feeling overwhelmed, then you need to set up a time management system. By the end of the month, you’ll have established a new habit of time management and discover the freedom of knowing how you spend the time of your life.

Three Ds for Time Management

When the day seems to get out of your control early and steam roll over you for hours until you leave exhausted, you are probably missing the three “D’s”. These can be difficult to begin yet liberating once you make this part of your regular daily routine.

The three “D’s” are Do, Delegate and Defer. Do you look at a request for information or new project and think, “When do I have time to do this?”  A better question is; “Do I have to be the one to do this or do I simply need to arrange to have it done?” 

The next question is; “What would happens if this were moved to a later time or scheduled farther in advance? ”  Note that these are the essential Do, Delegate and Defer questions.

DO: Which tasks are your job and which are not? Just because something is dropped on your desk or passed along to you does not mean that you have to do it. Even if your boss sends something for your to do which will totally throw off the time planned for a client project, don’t sign and cram more into the day.

Show your boss the time management plan you have for the client project and the new item and ask which is more important to be done first. Make the boss prioritize your time use.

Chances are this “do” project was something that the boss didn’t want to do and just passed it off as part of the job. That’s not actual delegating, that’s avoidance. Stay focused on what you are hired to do because that’s what you will be evaluated on at each review.

DELEGATE: Delegating is not passing off unwanted projects or less important projects. That’s what has given delegating a bad name. Proper use of delegating is to transfer responsibility or a part of a project to another worker to give that worker more experience, challenge or acceptance within the team.

It’s not a “here, you do this” type of task. When you delegate a task, explain what it is and why you have chosen this person to receive this project. If you are a supervisor, this is a golden opportunity to build up your employee by treating delegating as a show of support not a dumping option.

DEFER:  Not everything on the desk, in the email or on the phone is urgent. Be clear about what must be done today and what is not necessary. Where you get stuck is with tasks that are nice to do or useful to do but are really not necessary to do. Or they are not necessary to do at this time.

For example, notice how easy it is to be looking up something business related online then get distracted by an intriguing news story or a banner ad for a product that interests you. In moments your focus is lost and you are off doing something that’s useful but not necessary at this time on this day.

Keep an index card with three D’s in bold print as your reminder to put tasks and requests thru the test. Ask those critical questions then decide whether you need to DO, DELEGATE or DEFER.  This simple approach will compliment any time management system.

Knowing How to Schedule Your Time

No matter how many time management books you read, one of the most difficult parts is knowing how to make your own schedule. In some workplaces, the time is structured for you. In others, you have more freedom to set your schedule. Either way, you make decisions about how you do what you do and the efficiency of your effort.

Basically, creating a schedule requires that you take a realistic look at the time available and know the tasks that need to be done in that time.  You have to allow enough time in your schedule to transition between tasks.

That may mean driving to a different location and dealing with traffic delays. For other tasks, you may have to gather additional research, calculate a budget or meet with a colleague. When you fail to build enough time into your schedule for transitions, then you’re likely to get behind and stay that way.

Another problem in many schedules is over-committing. You only have so many work hours available. Considering the time needed for transitions plus unexpected interruptions with real or perceived urgency, you can’t work too many critical projects back to back without over-commitment. When that happens, something is missed or everything is done half-way. That’s not good time management, that’s a train wreck happening right at your desk.

Remember to schedule time for yourself. You need a lunch break and a few minutes mid-morning and mid-afternoon to take a break. If possible, take a way outdoors or get away from your desk so refresh your mind as well as grab a coffee.  You also need to include meetings and community activities related to work.

If you are a manager, then your schedule must include time to coach and motivate your employees or team members. The much applauded “open door policy” can be an invitation to distractions as many visits to your office are more casual than business related. Your schedule may need a period each day for “closed door” work time. 

Unless you required to constantly monitor email, then you can schedule email checking two or three times during the work day, not every five minutes.  You can also sort email into folders and schedule time for different types of email; orders, client contact, questions, employee contact, personal, other.

You may have a habit that’s common in offices to check email as soon as the envelope notice pops up on your screen. That’s letting a distraction into your workspace. Turn off the automatic notice and schedule the times during the day when you will check email.

Taking charge of your schedule is the first step to effective time management. Your schedule is the framework that tells you where you want to use your time and by reviewing the schedule, you can see if your plan was effective.

Time Is a Four-Letter Word

Granted this states the obvious but it does capture the feeling about time. It’s not that you don’t like having time to get things done or time to spare. That’s not the problem. The reason that “time” evokes such strong feelings is when your calendar is so crowded that time feels more like a curse than a benefit.

The way to take away the frustration over time is to better use the hours that you have. Everyone works with the same 24 hours but some people seem to get more out of it. They certainly aren’t expanding time, that’s not possible. What they do is to use time efficiently and that’s the essence of time management.

The most challenging aspect of time management is to decide that you really do want to manage your time. If you are certain about that, then you have to decide if you are willing to make changes in your schedule and activities. 

There is no cosmic shoehorn that allows you to cram 35 hours of work into a 24-hour day. When you hear that someone wants to “make more time,” forget it. There is no way to expand the hours. You simply need to make choices about how to use the hours in each day.

When you think of ways to do more in the same time period, don’t even think about cutting back on sleep. That’s a common mistake.  You need seven to eight hours of sleep nightly for health, energy and to work at prime efficiency.

Working late and cutting back to five or six hours might be ok once in a week, but it’s not good to do all week then think you can catch up on the weekend. A sleep-deprived body and exhausted brain are not your best assets. You’ll get much more accomplished by getting a full night’s sleep and tackling that new client proposal or special project in the morning.

If you have more work, family and leisure activities than you can fit into a reasonable day, then you need to make some choices. Before you start to associate time management with giving up something, understand that this is not the point. You can’t manage your time until you decide what goes and what stays.

Even then it’s not about giving up something. You can alternate some activities. For example, if you like to play golf but rush through the course to take the children fishing, then play golf two weekends and set up an all day fishing adventure on the other two weekends. This way you can enjoy both leisure pursuits without being so frantic that the fun is taken out of having fun.

Time management isn’t just about finding more ways to cram in more work. Effective time management also helps you find time for leisure or even to sit around and do nothing. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Imagine if you had time to lounge by the pool, read a novel instead of a company report or ride your bike around the park.

That’s not a fantasy or something that you put off until retirement. Having time for yourself is possible, if you are willing to apply time management techniques to your busy life.

Just get out the eraser because you have to start by trimming back to a manageable amount of activity to fit into a 10-12 hour day with 8 hours to sleep. That leaves 4 to 6 hours to spend each day. If you take away worry time and zoning out in front of the television, you have just found time. Now it’s up to you to manage that time.

If Only You Had More Time

Be honest, how many times have you said that? Do you say it weekly, daily or several times a day? That’s a red flag indicating that you are either not using any time management strategies or the ones you are using are not working for you.

Either way, time is ticking away and you are running to catch up. At some point, you just can’t run any faster, work any longer or stay up any later. You have to get control of how you use your time each day.

You may insist that you don’t waste time but take a serious look at how you use your time. Do you stretch your lunch an extra half hour or stop and talk to co-workers several times a day on the way to the copy machine?

Add it all up and there’s a potential hour or more of wasted time. What about personal phone calls or personal emails? There goes another half hour. Do you “take a few minutes” to surf the net on work time? Chalk up another half hour to hour or more. 

You may be present at work, but you are not using work time efficiently. You are wasting anywhere from half hour to three hours of work time. Not only is that cheating your employer, but it’s putting you behind in your work. So you take work home and get angry about it.

Then you look at the co-worker sitting across from you. She’s taking online university classes gradually working toward her graduate degree. Plus she plays tennis twice weekly for exercise and volunteers one weekend a month with Habitat for Humanity. 

She leaves work on time most every day and her in-box is clear. She does it by consistently applying time management strategies. Yet she never appears rushed and you never hear her complain about not having enough time.

Chances are that your active, productive co-worker prefers to live life aligned to her goals rather than reacting to others. When you fail to make a plan for time use, then you’ll let other people fill our time.
“Hey, can you take me to the mall?” “Come on over and watch my new video.” “I’ll pick you up and we’ll just hang out for the day. You can do your work later, you have plenty of time.” 

Those are the ways that you allow other people to use your time because you have failed to plan your time. If you ask your co-worker to hang out after work, she is more likely to say, “I have a paper to write for my class, so let’s pick another evening that works for both of us.”  She isn’t ignoring you, but she isn’t willing to let your lack of planning change what she needs to do according to her time management plan.
If you are still saying, “I wish I had more time” at home, then look around for ways that you waste time. Do you spend half hour in the morning searching for a particular shirt, finding it in the dirty clothes basket then looking for something else to wear?

You need to plan your outfit the night before and put out all the pieces from shoes to shirt so you can dress quickly.  Place everything you need in one place near the door you exit each morning. You can also place your briefcase in your car the night before so you have less to think about in before leaving for work.

Once you know how long it takes you for morning basics, then you take the frantic feel out of mornings. Next you can start to streamline your work hours. Work productively at work and save the personal items for your own time.

When you get your job done within the eight hours, then you have the evening for yourself and don’t need to stay late at the office. Who knows - you might decide to join your colleagues’ tennis group.

Multi-Tasking as Time Mis-Management

The idea that multi-tasking is the answer to squeezing more work into the same eight hours is actually creating habits that cause you to mismanage time. Granted, some people can juggle a phone call and typing a report at the same time.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that if you could just do three things at once instead of two, then you would better manage your time. Actually, you create more potential for making mistakes because your attention is divide in several ways. Nothing muddles time management worse than the time necessary to correct mistakes.

Rather than depend on multi-tasking as your time use strategy, look again at some of the tried and true time management principles:

Keep an updated daily calendar. Whether you buy a sophisticated day planning system, an electronic calendar system or a small notebook, none of these systems work unless you make daily updates. If you rely of yellow sticky notes or writing on the margin of your checkbook, then you are not using your calendar to full advantage. 

Also, use only one calendar system. If you have a work calendar and a personal or family calendar, you’ll double the chances for forgetting something important. Take a few minutes to transfer all meeting notes, new items or added appointments promptly to your calendar so you don’t forget to do it later.

Divide project or jobs into smaller tasks and list each task. You can use an outline format or a tree format; just find a way to separate out each step in a process. That allows you to check off each item when done. You may also discover items that you can delegate to others. 

The project planning approach also gives you an idea of how much time each task requires so you know what time to estimate for completion of the project. This is also useful in determining what times and amounts of materials are needed for the project.

If you have to order any items, move up ordering to the top of the list so that the necessary materials are available when you get to that stage of the project. Having to wait for materials or run around time to find them is a definite time waster.

Work on one project at a time. In the construction or creative process, your attention must be on one thing at a time. Some tasks are less suitable for multitasking than others. Knowing what is needed for that developing stage also helps you choose the best time for this work.

You may prefer a block of time with fewer interruptions as you do the next phase. To get enough uninterrupted time, you may decide to work at home or at another location so minimize those drop-in visitors or ringing phones in the office.

Team projects need high level of coordination and time management. When you are working with a group, you must divide and assign each task. You also need a mutually agreed upon timetable for delivery of each segment. Working in a team can make a project go faster and easier or longer and slower, it all depends on the coordination of the project. 

Each team member needs to be accountable for his or her time so that the entire project stays on schedule. Trying to do your work and catch up on the work that another team member didn’t finish on schedule is a multitasking that rarely works and leaves frustration as well as bitterness among coworkers.

The 80/20 Factor

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto discovered that 80% of Italy’s wealth was in the hands of 20% of the population. This may not have been a revelation to the poorer class of Italians in the late 1800’s, but it did become a concept that has been widely applied in all types of business.

The Pareto Principle basically says that 80% of the outcome is from 20% of the input. In a time management context, you can say that 80% of your time is used by 20% of your clients.

Chances are you could easily name (and recall the phone numbers) for the 10 -20 most demanding clients that you serve. Those might be your 20%. The other 80% of clients are far less demanding and create little time demands.

Of course if 80% of your income is derived from the sales or service fees of that 20%, then you are less concerned about spending the extra time. Unfortunately, you may be overwhelmed by the demands of the 20% which do not generate the majority of your income.

Using your client contact time well is extremely important to increase your business. While you might think that continuing to provide a high level of service to existing clients is the way to go, you’ll quickly run out of time and fail to generate any new clients.

That’s there Pareto’s Principle works against you. As you bring in new clients to your business, you want to transition them to the 80% that require less service demands as soon as reasonable so that you have time to add new clients.

The first step is to analyze your client contact time for several days, preferably for one week. Just keep a notepad by your desk or an open file on your computer. Log your time with each client and a brief note about the conversation.

This will cause you to be more aware of time wasted in conversations with clients. Sure you want to be friendly and ask about their family, business, etc, but keep it short. As you get to know your clients better, it’s easier to spend too much time chatting about non-business matters.

You need to find a balance between being too curt and distant v. too much talk about trivial things.  If you reduced each of these conversations by 10 minutes, you could reclaim another hour easily, maybe more.

The second step is to structure your day for client contact. Even if your job is to be on the phone all day, make the effort to group your calls. Plan to make new client calls in the morning when you are fresh and enthusiastic. Set aside the afternoon for current client follow-up calls.

If you have any problem client calls to make, group those in a one hour block and get it over with at one time period. Decide in advance how much time you want to spend on each type of call, and then time yourself. As you get accustom to the flow of each type of call, you will begin to stay within the scheduled time naturally.

Finally, if 80% of your revenue or income consistently comes from 20% of your clients, consider hiring an assistant to work on some of the less important details in serving the other 80% of your clients.

That frees your time to spend with the 20% of clients who are supporting most of your lifestyle.  If you can make more money by working with fewer, qualified clients, then your time spent with them, no matter what you chat about, is time well spent.

10 Time Management Tips to Use Daily

Once again, it's the first of the year and people are looking at ways they can get more done.

Time management isn’t a seminar you attend or a book you read. Time management is a process that must be engaged every day to be effective. Some of the most frustrated, disorganized people in any office are the ones with the most time management books on their shelves.

It’s not that these books were ineffective. Rather in their frantic workday, these people “didn’t have time” to read the time management books! In the interest of keeping it simple, these tips could set you on the way to getting serious about time management as you see the value unfold:

1.    Get a day planner and use it faithfully. No more sticky notes with reminders and appointments scattered around your desk, car and refrigerator at home. Keep all appointments and reminder in just one place, your day planner.

2.    Create a daily “to do” list. If you do this on your computer, you can easily move around items as you prioritize the day. If on paper, you can code the items with numbers or letters for: Urgent, Need to Do Today, Can Do This Week.

3.    Read your To-Do list first thing in the morning. Don’t touch newspaper, open email or answer the phone until you see the road map for your day.

4.    Review your To-Do list at mid-day and end of day to see what was accomplished and what remains to be completed.

5.    At the end of the day, transfer the items remaining to tomorrow’s or Monday’s list. If possible, remove any items that are not significant.

6.    Delegate as much as possible to an assistant, colleague or associate. If you work independently, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant for a few hours per week. The price is right and there’s no obligation as with hiring an employee. This is particularly effective if you travel or spend much time outside the office.

7.    Attend only the meetings that are absolutely necessary to do your job. Avoid any meetings that you can. Unless a meeting is run well with an agenda, there is usually wasted time chatting.

8.    Close your door when you are focusing on a task or put up a sign on your cubicle asking people to stop by later when you are finished with this work.

9.    Let voice mail answer your phone while you are focusing on an important task.

10.  Say “no” as often as possible when you have reached your work limits. That means saying no to overtime or taking work home. When you are mentally or physically exhausted you don’t do your best work and you need to say so.

It’s easy to stay on track with time management once you commit to changing your daily habits. Just put the above tips into action and you should see more free time throughout your day.

The 3 Ps of Time Management

Albert Einstein cleverly explained that “the only reason for time is so that things don’t happen all at once.”  You may be thinking, “Clearly he didn’t know how things go at my office.”

Actually, Einstein’s genius for creating universal theories does work in that comment as well. While you may think that by multi-tasking you can extend your time, what often happens is that you make careless errors and forget important tasks. The brain can only manage so much, no matter how many minutes pass on the clock. You can use time, plan time and manage time but you can’t stretch time.

That’s why you need to deal with the 3 P’s: procrastination, planning, prioritizing.
You might think it odd to begin with procrastination, what can that have to do with time management.

Actually, nothing destroys time management faster than procrastination. The typical procrastinator isn’t lazy, that’s a common misconception. Many highly intelligent and capable people procrastinate because they want to get everything just right.

If you wait until all things are perfectly aligned, then you may wait a long time. File that pile on your desk, sure you’ll do it when you have time to color code the files. Set up the client email list, yes, you’ll do it when you learn the newest software. That’s the sound of procrastination. When these simple tasks are not done, it’s the foundation for a train wreck of work left incomplete.

Taking time to plan helps overcome procrastination. Instead of the need to do all the work at once, create a plan that tackles those delayed jobs in thirty-minute intervals each day.

Then set up a plan to avoid starting the same problems over again. Not every task needs to be done every day. Set up lists of daily, weekly and monthly work tasks with an assigned day to do the weekly or monthly tasks.

Having a work plan is a sense of security that methods are in place to complete the necessary tasks. With each complete task, the sense of accomplishment pushes procrastination farther away.

Learning to prioritize time use is vital to get the most important tasks done even if everything does not get finished. Unless you have a small “to do” list, don’t expect all the items to be crossed off each day. 

The best-structured work plan can be changed when new situations arise. If you don’t have practice in prioritizing regular work tasks, then you will be unable to make the fast break necessary to change the priority of today’s schedule when something more lucrative or imperative happens. 

In simple terms, you prioritize anytime you decide that one task is now more important to do than the other one. Of course you have to set up some basics for making this choice. What is the priority in your business?

If you are a firefighter, then dropping everything and racing to the emergency is the priority. If you are a real estate agent, you may have to give up a Saturday afternoon out with friends when a good prospect wants to see a house.

Whatever type of work you do, you know which tasks are the genuine priorities and which can be done at another time. Be careful not to make everything a priority because then nothing is the priority and your time use is so crowded that nothing gets done well.

Einstein was right, don’t try to make everything happen at once. You’ll get frustrated, make mistakes and start to feel that time is your enemy when as the Pogo cartoon character told us, “We have met the enemy and it is us!”

Get Your To-Do List Under Control

Is your to-do list almost too long to read every day? Or have you simply given up trying to keep a current to-do list. Don’t give up; get your to-do list under control to compliment your time management strategies.

To begin, you need to understand that a to-do list is a “hot list” not a planning pad, wish list or long term idea starter. Your to-do list is for tasks that must be accomplished in 48 hours or less. For anything further ahead, use advance planning list or add the items to your day planner for the appropriate due date.

Start by writing down every task you need to complete on individual index cards. Arrange the cards in three piles: Must Do, Need to Do, Want to Do. The “Must Do” pile is the tasks that have to be completed in 24 hours.

Take any “Must Do” items that could wait an extra day and place them on the next day’s to-do list. These are what some time management systems call the “A” level tasks.  Next sort the “Need to Do” or “B” level tasks. These are important to do in the next day or two but not as imperative as showing up for a presentation or catching a plane.

Finally, deal with the “Want to Do” or “C” level tasks that could be done any time in the next several days.  Some time management systems suggest that you toss out the “C” tasks or add them to a “Someday” list for when you have extra time.

Of course, that’s humorous since you need a time management system because you are already overscheduled.  If you want to include these, just make sure they don’t serve as a distraction from necessary items. For example, you might enjoy surfing the net for collectible books but you don’t need to do that “C” item when you have an “A” list report due in four hours.

How many items can you manage on a daily to-do list? It depends on whether each item is a one step process or multi-step process.  With complex tasks, you may only be able to reasonably complete 3 or 4 “Must Do” items in a day. As you are adjusting to this time management technique, make a note by each item about how much time you expect to spend on this task.

You can create a paper to-do list or one on your computer, just as long as it’s easily accessible during the day. When an item is done, cross it off, make a checkmark beside it or in some way be able to see what’s done from what needs to be done.

If you use an electronic to-do list, you can add color background for each level. The advantage of color-coding items is that you can quickly see how many yellow highlighted Must Do items are left compared with the green highlighted Need to Do items.

At the end of the day, transfer any remaining important items to the proper category on the next day’s to-do list. When you finish the day and see most or all of the “Must Do” items finished and crossed off your list, it’s a great sense of relief and motivation to keep your time management system working for you.