Time Management: Analysis is the Key to Mastery

By Burt Carlson

If you’re like most people, you want to get better at managing your time, whether at work or at home. The question is, do you know where to start?

Unless you have a clear idea of where you are right now, no road map is going to help you get to your destination. That’s why, before you can think about managing your time well, you need to analyze how you’re using your time today.

Let’s backtrack a bit. Have you ever made statements like these?

"I’ll come over in a minute."

"Just give me a couple of minutes to get dressed and finish breakfast."

"I’m on my way; I’ll be there in two minutes."

If you think about it, all the above statements are probably false. There’s no way most folks will get dressed and finish breakfast in two minutes. And arriving at your destination in a minute or two is usually quite unlikely.

Yet we make such statements regularly. That’s because we often do not realize the amount of time we actually take to finish certain tasks.

To get a better grip on your time usage patterns, try and estimate the time you take for the following activities.

* Draft a letter to a customer

* Look through a file and sign it

* Have a cup of coffee

* Hold a meeting to brief your team

* Confer with your boss

* Prepare a presentation to senior management

* Lead a seminar

* Chat with colleagues

* Read emails

* Respond to emails

* Read through a one page letter

Feel free to add to the list above. Include activities you do regularly.

Have your time estimates ready? Here’s what to do next.

Pick out the three fairly time consuming activities you do repeatedly. Get a stopwatch and time yourself when you do those activities. Take care not to try to speed up those tasks while you’re timing them. Just work as usual.

Now compare the results with your estimates. Surprised? Most people are, when they discover that doing certain tasks takes much longer than they imagined.

The previous exercise had one goal -- to convince you that you need to take some effort and find out how you actually use your time.

Your next step is to maintain a running log of all your activities and the start and end times of each. Do this for a full week. Don’t stop and analyze your performance in between.

You can get your secretary to help you do this. But it works just as well if you keep the records yourself.

It’s not important to get your timing down to the microsecond! Just note down the approximate start and end-times of each activity, in serial order as you do them. The objective is to get a snapshot of what you do and how long it takes you to do them.

At the end of one full working week, sit down with your logs. Make a list of each of the tasks you do. Jot down the amounts of time you took to do them, for each day of the week.

Which are the repetitive activities? Which ones consume the most time? Are the tasks that consume the maximum time also the tasks that contribute the most to your performance? If not, is there any way you can eliminate those tasks -- perhaps by delegating them?

Are you taking on work that is not yours to being with? If so, perhaps you need to say no more often.

Take the time to think through what your log reveals about your work habits -- and about you. By doing so, you’ve taken a big step towards managing your time excellently. Repeat this process every few months and you’ll get far better results that others whose notion of time management is limited to writing a to-do list.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on time management and work, motivation, getting organized for better results and many other topics.

Time Management: How to Stay Motivated and Get More Done

By Burt Carlson

If you can motivate yourself at will to get any task done, you’ll have taken a huge step towards managing your time better. There are several practical ways to increase your motivation.

There are a couple of facts to remember about human beings in general. One, newness is a great spur to motivation. Think about when you took up a new job. Everything was fresh and you applied yourself to your work with great enthusiasm.

But that wore out after a few weeks or months. You settled down into a routine and work become dull and uninteresting again. That’s because you lost your sense of newness.

The second thing to remember is that while the human mind can accomplish a stunning range of tasks, the same mind is also easily distracted. Some studies show that the average person’s attention span does not exceed 35 minutes or so. Others claim it’s even less.

This tendency to get distracted easily is a key reason why we often have a hard time motivating ourselves to do a task.

With that in mind, here are 8 things you can do to get and stay motivated.

#1. Recognize your penchant for getting distracted. Take short breaks every half an hour or so; walk away from your workstation. Experiment and find out the optimum length of time you can work before you need a break. You’ll find your motivation goes up during the time you stay at the task.

#2. To satisfy your need for freshness and change, alternate between two tasks. If you keep at a single task for too long, you’re almost certain to lose motivation.

You can even exchange specific tasks with another colleague, if your work situation permits it.

#3. It has been shown that soft music, especially baroque music, is a great aid to work. If possible, arrange for background music at your workplace.

#4. Make your work environment more appealing by using humorous posters (like those ‘Dennis the Menace’ posters) to make you smile. Have several available and once in a while, change the posters.

#5. On a related note, potted plants can be great stress relievers. Place one or two around your workstation. Do water them as needed; wilted plants are no good!

# 6. Create a list of the most important tasks you need to do the next day. Prioritize the list. And keep working in the order of your priorities. Being able to check off the most important items for each day is in itself a terrific motivator.

#7. Anytime you feel the stress getting to you or if you feel particularly distracted, just lean back in your chair and close your eyes for a minute or two. Hum a favorite tune softly. If you can’t relax in your chair, go to the restroom and do so.

#8. Implement a reward system for yourself. Decide in advance what you’ll reward yourself with when you complete certain tasks. It could be as small as an inexpensive trinket from a gift shop or a chocolate bar. It could even be a stroll in a nearby park.

Don’t neglect the reward routine. It’s one of the best motivators there is.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on time management skills, overcoming procrastination, time management at the workplace and many other topics.

Time Management: How to Make Your Meetings More Productive

By Burt Carlson

In most organizations, meetings are often the biggest time-wasters. With a bit of planning, it’s possible to both shorten the time spent in meetings and to make that time more productive. Here’s how.

* Let all participants know why you’re holding the meeting, what’s to be accomplished and what each participant is being called upon to contribute. This should be communicated well before the meeting.

* If any of the participants need to do preparatory work before the meeting, mention that fact. Don’t take it for granted that such preparation will be taken care of automatically.

* If the meeting is a follow-up to an earlier meeting, circulate a copy of the minutes of the latter, even if it has been done before. This is especially true if there’s been a significant time gap between the first meeting and the follow-up.

* Try to see that everyone arrives in time and is already seated when the meeting is due to begin. Someone walking in midway through a meeting can be a great distraction.

* Serving refreshments while a meeting is in progress is also a distraction. Set out refreshments before the meeting starts. Schedule breaks for refreshments if the meeting is to go on for several hours or a day.

* Make copies of all necessary papers. Passing around a single set of documents for everyone to read is highly unproductive. Yet, it’s surprising how often something as simple as this is not taken care of.

* Stick to the point. Whoever is presiding over the meeting should be ready to intervene if someone is digressing from the topic. Beating around the bush is a huge time-waster.

* Minimize interruptions from other participants when someone is speaking. Others can respond when the person has finished speaking.

* All cell phones must be switched off. Calls on land lines should be deferred as far as possible.

* The meeting should end with a summary of the main points covered and the conclusions reached. You should also spell out who is responsible for each specific action to be taken, along with a timeframe. Later, a written communication covering all these points should go out to all participants.

Making meetings more useful is all about using a commonsense approach. Stick to the above guidelines and watch your meetings become far more productive.

Burt Carlson is a top corporate executive whose passion is helping people get more out of life by managing their time better. He has written on developing time management skills, organizing your workday, eliminating procrastination plus many other topics.