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That’s right, you can’t manage time. Despite all the workshops, software programs, PDAs and personal planners available today, you can’t really manage time. I say that what you do manage are people’s promises and commitments (your own as well) made in time. A co-worker promises to have a report to you by three o’clock on Tuesday, you make a commitment to attend your daughter’s soccer game on Saturday, and so on. We make promises and commitments to do something within a certain time frame, and that’s what we manage, not time itself. So if that’s true, how do we manage our promises? How do we organize ourselves to get more done in less time, and with less stress as well? Here are five general principles that I have found extremely useful in my life to help me be really productive and effective:
1. Have a planning system and use it religiously. And by system I mean something more that just post-it notes and scraps of paper. It can be a personal digital assistant, a computer based software program, or a pen and paper planner such as Day Timer or Franklin Covey. It needs to work for you, it needs to be relatively simple to use, and you should have only one system (just don’t lose it!). Having one planner at work and one at home is confusing, not to mention that we always forget to write down our promises in one or the other and wind up missing an important event (either business or personal. Oh, I forgot to ask: you do have a personal life, don’t you?).
2. Set goals, both short term (daily, weekly and monthly) and long term (quarterly, annually and beyond). The best goal setting formula I have seen is the SMART system: specific, measurable, attainable and action oriented, realistic and time bound. Non-jargony so that anyone can understand your goal, measurable so you can tell if you reached it or not, able to be accomplished by you (with possibly some assistance from others) and action oriented meaning sub-goals or milestones along the way, a stretch or challenge but not so unrealistic that you’ll fail, and a due date, a specific deadline, a by when. Your goals should also be written down, shared with supportive others, challenging and positively stated. Brain research shows that the mind would rather move towards a positive goal than run away from or avoid a negative one (“I put healthy, nutritious food into my body” is better than “I will stop eating jelly doughnuts.”).
3. Determine your priorities. You can’t do it all, no matter what they say. So what’s most important to you (not most urgent)? Some questions I use to help me sort this out are: “What’s the best use of my time right now?” or “If I could only do one of these things on my list today, which one would it be?” Then I work on that one until it’s done (completion frees up energy) and then begin on the next. In the words of Goethe, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” Or in the words of Dr. Steven Covey, ”Remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!”
4. Schedule a week at a time. Again quoting one of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Begin with the end in mind. Look at what you’ve got planned for Friday. How does that impact what you’ll do on Thursday? On Wednesday? Tuesday? Today? Look into the future and plan backwards to the present. And rather than prioritizing your schedule, try scheduling your priorities. Efficient is doing things right, but effective is doing the right things. The greatest leap in my productivity and effectiveness (and satisfaction, too) was when I went from daily, seat of the pants planning on the run to a very focused process every Sunday evening of planning the entire week. Try this weekly planning process for the next three weeks and if you don’t see a dramatic improvement in your productivity, I’ll refund your money.
5. Complete the day before you go to sleep. Look at your to do list. Check off all the things you accomplished and congratulate yourself for doing what you did, not lamenting what you didn’t. Re-schedule those things that need doing by transferring them to another day, see if there are any that can be delegated to someone else, and check to see if any of them can be dropped (maybe they’re no longer relevant). Then go to sleep with a clear mind, uncluttered by thoughts of all the things you have to do. They’ll still be there in the morning. You’ll be much more refreshed and capable of handling them after you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep.
There’s a lot more I could say about this subject (and in my half day and full day seminars I do!) but for now that should be sufficient to get you started. The key is to make and keep your promises and hold others accountable for theirs. I promise you a richer, more rewarding life if you do, and you will become a Master of Time Management in the process.
Brad Warren is a business coach and creator of custom designed training programs in a wide variety of people skills. He can be reached at Warren and Associates, 5320 Proctor Lane, Castro Valley, CA 94546, 510-537-0107, brad@bradwarren.com
