MANY LEADERS AND EMPLOYEES subscribe to the notion that “staying busy” equates to working harder. While this belief may be true to an extent, it often leads to mindless “productivity”, a constant need to do something and a tendency to waste time on menial tasks.
Instead of being robotic in approaching tasks, try to be thoughtful and always ask if something can be done more efficiently or eliminated altogether. Managing time isn’t about squeezing as many tasks into a day as possible. It’s about doing things faster, and relieving stress.
There really are enough hours in a day for everything you’d like to do, but it may take a bit of rearranging and re-imagining to find them. Re-training minds and bodies to tackle tasks differently may take time; however, creating the right habit and ridding onself of the wrong one can catapul personal and organisational productivity. The key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the planned time. People who say that they have no time do not plan, or fail to protect planned time. If you plan what to do and when, and then stick to it, then you will have time. This involves conditioning, or reconditioning your environment.
For people who have demands placed on them by others, particularly other departments, managers, customers etc. time management requires diplomatically managing the expectations of others. Time management is chiefly about conditioning your environment, rather than allowing your environment to condition you. If you tolerate and accept without question the interruptions and demands of others then you effectively encourage these time management pressures to continue.
It may seem very cliché to offer steps to improving time management and, by extension, productivity, but as the process is a practical one; steps are well suited in this instance: created a daily plan. Plan your day before it unfolds. Do it in the morning or even better, the night before you sleep. The plans gives you a good overview of how the day will pan out. That way, you don’t get caught off guard. Your job for the day is to stick to the plan as best as possible.
Attach a time limit to each task. Be clear that you need to finish X task by 10 a.m., Y task by 3 p.m., and Z item by 5:30 p.m. This prevents your work from dragging on and eating into time reserved for other activities. Delegate if there are things that can be better done by others or things that are not so important, considering delegating. This takes a load off and you can focus on the important tasks.
Don’t take on more than you can handle. For the distractions that come in when you’re doing other things, give a firm no. Or defer it to a later period. Target to be early. When you target to be on time, you’ll either be on time or late. Most of the times you’ll be late. However, if you target to be early, you’ll most likely be on time. For appointments, strive to be early. For your deadlines, submit them earlier than required.
The above can be applied by any employee, nonetheless it would be unjust to fail to acknowledge that supervisors, managers and executives may have additional challenges in managing their time. The time pressures on senior leaders are continuously intensifying, and the vast majority of them are frustrated by the difficulty of responding effectively. While executives cannot easily combat the external forces at work, they can treat time as a precious and increasingly scarce resource and tackle the institutional barriers to managing it well.
The starting point is to get clear on organisational priorities to approach the challenge of aligning them with the way executives spend their time as a systemic organisational problem, not merely a personal one. For most of us, time is the least considered, worst managed and yet most valuable resource we have. Others suggest it’s the way we treat or think about it. Time is the only currency we have, so spend it well.