and rules protect your time and allow you to use it to your best advantage. These skills are applicable whether you’re the company CEO, a salesperson, a midlevel manager, an executive, or an administrative assistant. No matter your work or your work environment, time management is of universal value.
Scheduling your time and creating a routine
Sticking to a time‐scheduling system can’t guarantee the return of your long‐lost vacation days, but by regularly tracking your meetings, appointments, and obligations, you reduce your odds of double‐booking and scheduling appointments too close. And by planning ahead, you make sure to make time for all the important things first.
For years, I’ve followed the time‐blocking system, which I detail in Chapter 5. The system ensures that you put your priorities first (starting with routines and then moving to individual tasks/activities) before scheduling in commitments and activities of lesser importance.
Such time‐management techniques are just as applicable to the other spheres of your life. There’s a reason why I advise you to plug in your personal commitments first when filling in your time‐blocking schedule: Your personal time is worthy of protection, and you can further enhance that time by applying time‐management principles.
Too many people feel that all this structure is too restrictive. They think the freedom they seek with their schedules and their lives is contained in a more flexible environment. They’re afraid establishing a routine will keep them wrapped in the chains of time.
However, most people waste too much time figuring out each individual day on the fly. They react to the day rather than respond. Reacting is a reflex action that turns over your agenda to others, and that can’t possibly lead to freedom. Responding is a disciplined act of planning that determines where and how you’ll invest your time.
For example, suppose you have a set place in your schedule to respond to phone calls and problems. You’ve established the routine of dealing with these issues in predetermined time slots. You can hold off on your response until later – when you’re calmer, more focused, and in a problem‐solving mentality – instead of reacting because you’re dealing with the issue now.
Planning how to spend your time, which at first glance seems opposed to freedom, is the only pathway to the true mastery of time. With the right routine come simplicity, productivity, and freedom. The “what am I going to work on today?” or “what’s my schedule today?” never happens. And when you get the important work out of the way, you free yourself to do what you really enjoy.
If you’re a free spirit and what I’m suggesting just fried your circuits, start with a small amount of routine. Ask yourself, “Can I establish a daily routine to try it out? What can I do without having it send me into withdrawal?” Then implement a new routine every week. You’ll add more than 50 new pieces of structure to your schedule in a normal work year and see a significant improvement in your freedom.
Organizing your surroundings
A good system of time management requires order and organization. Creating order in your world saves time wasted searching for stuff, from important phone numbers to your shoes. But even more, physical order creates mental order and helps you perform more efficiently.
Yes, your workspace should be clean and orderly, with papers and folders arranged in some sort of sequence that makes items easy and quick to find. Your desk should be cleared off, providing space to work. Your important tools – phone, computer, calculator – ought to be within reach. And your day planner, of course, should be at your fingertips. Your briefcase, your meeting planner, even your closet has an impact on your time‐management success.
Anyone can conquer time management, but it’s not always easy. If your experience is anything like mine, sometimes your days feel like a video game, where you’re in constant threat of being gobbled up on your course to the finish line. But instead of cartoon threats, your obstacles are your own shortcomings (poor communication skills, procrastination, and the inability to make wise and quick decisions), time‐wasting co‐workers and bosses, phone and people interruptions, and unproductive meetings.
Communicating effectively
Communicating effectively is one of the best ways to maximize your time. One of the biggest time‐wasters on company time is, no surprise, talking with co‐workers. But what may be a surprise is that the abuse isn’t a function of weekend catch‐up discussions that take place at the water cooler or the gossip circle at the copy machine. Rather, it’s the banter at the weekly staff status reports, the drawn‐out updates of projects that never seem to conclude, the sales presentations that get off track. It’s all the meetings that could be as brief as ten minutes but somehow take an hour or more.
At your disposal, however, is an amazing weapon for taming these misbehaving encounters: your words. With a few deft remarks, you have the power to bring these meetings to a productive close.
In Chapter 14, I provide specific insight on which types of situations are most appropriate for each of the primary communication methods – face‐to‐face, verbal only, and written – and I present plenty of ideas for communicating your message and posing questions strategically, succinctly, and successfully so your communication ends in results, action, and decisions – whether you’re leading a meeting or simply attending it.
Circumventing interruptions
Interruptions creep into your workday in all sorts of insidious manners. Besides the pesky co‐worker stepping into your office with “Got a sec?” interruptions come in the form of unproductive meetings, phone calls, hall conversations that drift into your office and distract you, even the “you’ve got mail” icon that creeps onto the lower corner of your computer monitor. You now have more of these interruptions than ever before. You get sidetracked by instant messaging and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The list of five‐minute‐here‐and‐there interruptions is endless.
Additionally, most poor time managers interrupt themselves by trying to do too much at once. Study after study supports that multitasking isn’t the most effective work style. The constant stops and starts disrupt a project, requiring startup time each time you turn back to the task. I truly believe being a good time manager at work depends on how you create, craft, and implement your interruption system and strategy. Each day, interruptions cost hours of lost productivity for businesses.
Getting procrastination under control
Sometimes, it’s tempting to use interruptions as an excuse to postpone a project or a task. How nice to have someone else to blame for not getting started! And before you know it, you’ve found so many good reasons not to do something that you’ve backed yourself into a really tight 11th‐hour corner, and the pressure’s on.
Say you’re writing a 400‐page book and you have ten months to complete the project. You have almost a year to put this thing together. Looking forward, your task requires you to complete 40 pages per month – little more than a page a day. That’s too easy! You can afford to put it off for a while. Wait for a couple of months, and then you’ll need to produce 50 pages a month. Still doable. But at some point, doable starts to morph into impossible. But when? When you’re down to four months and pressured to crank out 100 pages per month? Or do you wait until the last minute and find yourself struggling to complete nearly 15 pages per day?
Procrastination has a lot of causes, but most
