Dealing with Time Robbers

We’re probably all familiar with our own version of this scenario: at your work space bright and early on a Monday morning, poised over your laptop, trusty to-do list positioned at your elbow. Then, as the day progresses, there is a meeting that actually we didn’t really need to go, which also over-ran; a normally routine query took 20 minutes; and your boss unexpectedly asked you to pull together data urgently for an important client meeting that’s just come up.

By that evening, as you prepare to leave the office your to-do list looks as tired as you feel and, while you’ve had another very busy day, you really don’t feel like you achieved anything much at all.

A little extreme? Perhaps but according to Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, her recent research found that 'overload is the standard condition in most organizations. People are doing what I'm calling "firefighting", resolving the latest crisis or deadline without ever getting ahead of the work flow.' Interesting observations and for many of us, it’s probably fair to say that time management is an increasingly elusive discipline that we can’t seem to master.

Having promised Corporatetraining.ie some time ago my own article on the subject, I decided to put myself through my own version of time management boot camp to see what I could learn, apply and leverage. So, what I intend to cover in this article is an overview of some of the best practice time management tools around and, where possible, relate my experience of applying them.

How good is your time management?

My first port of call was to get an overview of my time resource utilisation. What aspects of my time served me well? What were the main areas for development?

Mind Tools have fantastic resources to get you started(http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_00.htm).
The first thing I tried was their How Good is Your Time Management? quiz, designed to help you identify what aspects of time management you most need help with. It clarifies the main development areas, e.g. goal setting, prioritization, managing interruptions, procrastination or scheduling.

How are you spending your day?

I then undertook their highly recommended daily discipline over a period of two weeks of completing an activity sheet every day. This meant noting down each activity and how long it took. I got into the habit of writing down at the end of each hour what I’d been doing. Prior to doing this I had created (another Mind Tools resource) my priority to do list and ranked each day’s items in order of importance. I found this practice incredibly insightful as it really focused my attention on where my time resource went each day. It also highlighted the reality of busyness vs actual achievement. 

What are the time robbers?

Completion of the daily activity sheet provided an additional benefit: it identified some of my time robbers; those sneaky self-generated and external factors that prevent you being really productive and optimising the time available to you.

Typically external time robbers might include: meetings - was there an agenda? Did you need to be there?; e-mail/phone interruptions; and other people’s deadlines and responding to crises. Self-generated time robbers tend to cover those habits that impede our productivity such as over-commitment (saying yes to everything), lack of organisation and planning, procrastination, confused responsibilities, and no system of self-accountability.

While these lists are not exclusive and, no doubt, you’ll have your own specific factors, one tip I found worthwhile was to note down your top three most common time wasters. And which one will you get the most benefit from eliminating?

Prioritise work that is 'important but not urgent'

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey classifies work tasks according to whether they are important or urgent. He notes that many of us spend the majority of our time on tasks that are urgent and important i.e. fire fighting, responding to crises, and responding to others’ demands at short notice. Sometimes this is necessary (e.g. a deadline brought forward). However, the best way to ensure that we’re using our time resource (which, after all, is finite) wisely is to concentrate on those work tasks that are important but not urgent. This means that our attention is focused on achieving those tasks and projects that are most important to us (rather than our attention being given over to reacting continually to other people’s demands). And the more you focus on dealing with important tasks before they become urgent the fewer 'urgent and important' tasks you will have to deal with.

The best way of doing this is to work on the most important tasks first thing ever day; then, regardless of what distractions and interruptions will come along, you will have made some progress.

Pareto Principle

Named after Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, the Pareto Principle (aka the 80-20 Rule) concludes that 80% of effect or output comes from 20% of the effort. What this means for time management is that to optimise your efforts you should focus your time and energy as much possible on the high payoff tasks. This means that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you. A quick way of doing this is to ask with each task - 'is this task in the top 20% of my activities or bottom 80%?' This helps you to favour the higher value tasks.

From multi-tasking to mono-tasking

While we may believe we are effectively doing two things at once, the reality is we’re actually switching between tasks. It’s estimated that it can take our brains up to twenty minutes to re-focus on the original task after being interrupted. Instead of trying to respond to everything it makes sense (and is more enjoyable) to fully absorb yourself in one task for a period of time.

Batching Tasks

One quick way of making it easier to focus on one job at a time is batching tasks of a similar nature together and doing them all at once.

To-do lists

Instead of having a lengthy to-do list, keep tasks to a daily maximum of three tasks; focus completely on those and only those. While initially it may seem strange to exclude other tasks, the reality is that focusing completely on three tasks makes it more likely you will complete them, and you will have achieved something at the end of your day.

In summary, the main learning points for me were as follows:

• Time is a finite resource and if you don’t plan how you want to use it other people will.
• Optimise your time by identifying your important tasks and progressing these each day.
• Identify and reduce the impact of your own time robber.


Click here to read more of Isobel Tynan's Brilliant at the Basics series.