Did my usual Half-day Executive Time Management Workshop at the fifteen day MDP conducted by L&T ECC at MGM Resorts on ECR. It is a pleasant half-an-hour drive. The executives are extremely interactive and the learning is highly practical and experiential. Here is what I generally share with participants at my Executive Time Management Programmes:
What is Time Management?
If you were to ask me to define Time Management in a single phrase I would give you the phrase, “Making Every Minute Count.” All of us would agree with the statement, “Time is Money.” But, do we treat Time like money? Do we carefully record and allocate our time the way we handle money? Isn’t it a fact that most of the time the answer would be in the negative?
All of us know the metric value of two meters or two liters. But how long is two minutes? Try this experiment. You would need a stopwatch. If you are doing this on your own you need a buzzer to ring at the end of two minutes. Or you can ask someone to time you with the stopwatch. Set the stopwatch for exactly two minutes. Now close your eyes and keep them closed till you think the period of two minutes is over. Now look at the stopwatch. You would be surprised. Most people open their eyes around one and a half minutes. Of course there would be those who open at forty five seconds and others who cross the limit. Irrespective of when you opened your eyes, if you go through the entire duration of two minutes, you will discover that two minutes is a very long time. Go ahead, try this experiment and discover the ocean of time that you have at your disposal.
In fact you can squeeze in a lot of work into two minutes! But this needs an approach that I will now discuss.
Let us look at another metaphor now. You are leaving for Bangalore for a two-day business trip. You have a standard size suitcase that you normally use for this purpose. You have a small mountain of things that need to be packed.
The box is dimensionally limited. A day in our life is a 24X60 box i.e. it has exactly 1440 minutes. But the ‘luggage’ or the things we need to do are numerous. Time Management is a lot like packing this box. How do we go about packing a box?
Doing things for the Right Reason:
You are right! You will first sort the items on the basis of their link with your ultimate objective or reason for going to Bangalore. Time Management, too, begins with the objective or goal.
Eliyahu M. Goldrat, the author of the international best seller, “The Goal” says, “Productivity is the act of bringing us closer to our goal. Every action that brings us closer to our goal is productive. Every action that does not bring us closer to our goals is not productive.”
So we ask these questions before we do something:
How will this activity take me closer to my goal?
Will I move away from my goal if I do not do this activity.
At the end of the day we ask, “How many things did I do today that brought me closer to our goal?
Thus linking our daily schedule to a clear long term vision is important. So Time Management is not only about running faster. It is running faster in the right direction. Goal clarity and Clear Vision can provide the right direction.
Doing Things at the Right Time:
Continuing the metaphor of the box, what goes into the box would be based on its relative importance. Things that are important and/or absolutely necessary for the trip go in first. Relatively unimportant items go in last or not at all.
Similarly we need to rank tasks based on importance and urgency. This is called Prioritization. In fact, if you wanted me to define Time Management in one word I would say that word is “Prioritization”.
Good managers of Time have a clear plan for the day. Activities are scheduled based on their priority. When you do something important but not urgent, you are in the Second Quadrant. Second Quadrant activities focus on Prevention, Building Production Capability, Relationship Building, Recognizing new opportunities and Planning.
Here comes the catch! While planning our day, we sometimes lose focus and start doing things that appear to be urgent but that are not important. These are called Third Quadrant activities, which are urgent but not important. We become Reactive and focus on the short term.
The high pay-off activities are not those that give immediate result. They are long term focused and yield rich dividend later. The secret is to move away from things and time to relationships and results.
When the focus is on the Second Quadrant, there will be a slow disappearance of the First Quadrant activities like Crises in our life. Similarly, we would avoid time wasters which would take us into the Fourth Quadrant. When you have a clear daily plan with you, you are focused on doing the activities that you’ve planned. But, where there is no plan that is linked to long term vision it is quite possible that you will end up reacting to trivial issues. This is why Stephen Covey says, “Don’t just Prioritize your Schedule, Schedule your Priorities”.
Doing Things in the Right Way
I am now going to describe the Quadrant II approach to Time Management.
Identifying Roles
An average person has to perform on various roles in his daily life. Examples are practicing Chartered Accountant, Manager, Team Leader, spouse, child, parent, Rotarian, musician and so on. An effective person performs exceedingly well in all these roles. Therefore, it is necessary to have clear Goals for each role. These goals can pertain to the next one week.
Scheduling
Ideally you should do your weekly planning on Sunday. Identify the Important things you need to do in the coming week. Put these activities in first! This is the essence of the Third Habit, “Put First Things First”.
If you set a goal to become physically fit through exercise, you may want to set aside some time for this or possibly every day during that week, to accomplish that goal. When you do weekly planning, it is possible to fit everything in. Daily planning would only shuffle the urgent work around and we end up postponing the important.
Daily Review
Within the broad framework of the weekly plan, there is a daily review or “adapting.” Man proposes but God may dispose. So, Daily Planning becomes more a function of daily adapting, of prioritizing activities and responding to unanticipated events, relationships, and experiences in a meaningful way.
All of us have heard the popular adage, “If you want to get something done fast, ask someone who is busy to do it!” This is true of all Seven Habits Practitioners. The Quadrant II focus gives the flexibility to include an important activity in our daily schedule and as it were, take it in your stride.
Let me quote Stephen R. Covey on the efficacy of Quadrant II Time Management,
“Having experienced the power of principle-centered Quadrant II organizing in my own life and having seen it transform the lives of hundreds of other people, I am persuaded it makes a difference—a quantum positive difference. And the more completely weekly goals are tied into a wider framework of correct principles and into a personal mission statement, the greater the increase in effectiveness will be.”
When you have expectations about people and things, you become frustrated that there is no time to achieve everything. Frustration is a function of our expectations. When we let go of expectations and work with a set of higher values and long term goals, we can subordinate our schedule to those values with integrity. You can adapt; you can be flexible. You don’t feel guilty when you don’t meet your schedule or when you have to change it.
At the same time, we should have the courage and conviction in our goals to say “No!” gently and firmly when we are asked to do something which has no link with our value system or goals.
