Dan Erwin

The Two Absolutely Most Useful Skills for Managing Your Time

I have had numerous consulting experiences with executive clients in which after getting feedback--that most valuable commodity that execs never get--they tell me that their number one issue is help with managing their time.

Sometimes the issue is very serious.  The boss has put more on their plate than they can possible handle within any sensible timeline.  But one common situation is even more serious.  A senior exec at an internationally known organization put it to me very directly and candidly.  “My wife said she’d divorce me if I didn’t change my schedule and stop this crazy merry-go-round of working six or seven days a week.  Can you help me?”

Most lists of time-saving skills have 25 or 30 different ways to manage your time.  But the truth of the matter is that two stick out.  And I’ve found that both my clients and myself manage far better by paying attention to them.

First.  Dammit.  Learn how to prioritize and do it.  Here’s the best way I’ve seen over the years.  Reduce your priorities to three in number.  That may be difficult.  But effective business people don’t have to serve more than three masters.  Situations that seem completely random and meaningless are really only situations in which you lack a way to disclose the order inherent to the many and differing change events.  As Bill Bridges has written, “it’s like those connect-the-dots diagrams in kids’ magazines; once you find out how to ‘connect’ the changes, the chaos disappears and an intelligible pattern emerges.”

The three big umbrellas may be as straightforward as building my network, completing my projects and upgrading my skills.  Each of those objectives should be broken out into three intermediate goals.  That means you’ve got nine issues on your plate.  Then break each out into monthly, weekly and daily objectives.  Always leave time for interruptions and admin issues.  That’s a quick summary of what most managers take a month or more to complete.

Again and again I've seen executives become very effective by figuring out their three big priorities.  One client regularly sends out his priorities toward the end of the fiscal year, asking for his subordinates' input.  On occasion the input forced him to make changes to his priorities.  Now that's guts!  But it's also smarts.

However, once that’s done, it’s much easier to lay out your specific measures for assessing your success.

As I said, this is just a quick summary of the process.  And most need much more input and help to work through their prioritizing process.  But at least that’ll get you thinking.

The second big time-saving skill is unbelievably important.  It’s very small, but it’s the kind that most of us struggle with much of our lives until we take it to heart.  Think about it this way.  The first skill was primarily thinking and planning.  The second skill is pure action.

Do the one thing you hate the most first in the morning.  It’ll stop the emotional pain, the self-concern, the spinning and everything else.  After all my years of planning and setting priorities, I can just about do the thinking with my eyes closed and a couple sheets of paper.  But the action skill is another animal.

Again.  Do the one thing from your daily priorities that you hate the most.  And do it first thing in the morning.  As I suggested, there are just as many psychological as strategic reasons for this. Try it on for a month, and let me know what you think.

Need to Be More Productive? Take Some Time Off

Do you work on a 24/7 schedule?  Always on?  People in professional services like IT, consultants, investment bankers, accountants, etc. usually make work their top priority.  If they're going to succeed, the rule is they need to be on--all the time.  At least that's what most believe.

Blackberry own you?  Work more than 50 hours a week, maybe 65?  And even more time on the Blackberry?  And respond to messages within an hour?  Those are the people that really need to see this research.

Counter-intuitive findings reported in the October Harvard Business Review challenge all those beliefs.  Jessica Porter and Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School studied service professionals in the Boston Consulting Group and found that "it is perfectly possible for consultants and other professionals to meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off."

Of course, the researchers' notion was a case of rethinking the unthinkable, and a challenge to conventional wisdom.  Here's how they carried out the research.  They selected a group of four consultants who were working with a new client that the firm really wanted to add to their portfolio.  The project involved daily interaction with the client, leading the consultants to believe that they had to be at the client site four days a week.  The research required everyone to take a full day off a week--unusual for BCG and major consulting firms.  The researchers talked the firm into adding an additional person so that the total time invested in the client wasn't changed, but every member of the team had to take off a day a week. . . on one of the days he/she would normally be with the client.  Over the four years the researchers added 10 more teams to the research base.

A lot of nervousness and resistance was inevitable.

Results?  In contrast to teams that did not take part in the study, the research revealed the following:

• higher satisfaction with work/life balance
• higher job satisfaction
• more open communication
• increased learning and development
• better product delivered to the client
• increased work efficiencies
• greater likelihood of long term career at the firm (consulting has huge burnout rate)

Intriguing insight:

Exaggerated responsiveness to the client "perpetuates a vicious cycle."  24/7 responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness, both in the client and in the consultant. 

Better Time Management: Make Room for Think Time

This recession has had a seriously negative impact on those who’ve been laid off—that’s obvious-- but also upon those who’ve been retained.  Recent statistics report a high level of fear among workers today.  That means that employees will be putting their best foot forward, and working hard and long to show their bosses that they are worthy of retention.     

Fears of potential job loss often reinforce the need to work faster and faster and take on more and more work.   That can jeopardize our ability to perform at a high level.  Fears keep us from what Thomas Eriksen calls “slow time.”  Slow time, what I call “think time,” is the kind of time and space that gives you an opportunity to consider your tasks and projects in the detailed, focused and unhurried ways that make possible high performance.

On numerous occasions, execs have complained to me that they don’t have the time to think about strategic issues, and that they need to create that opportunity for themselves.  That’s been true for execs over the past 20 years, although it’s exacerbated in this environment.  Senior execs, who have been forced to lay-off people are often in deep pain, with little to no think time available.  This economy is not just about the people who’ve gotten laid off.

But many workers, with only two or three years in the workforce, also face the loss of think time—a loss that shows up in their performance and negatively in the performance of the organization. 

FYI:  Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, one of the most knowledgeable persons on business creativity, has studied the impact of downsizing on performance.  She finds that project creativity often takes a heavy hit in an environment decimated by lay-offs and fear.

Triage your tasks

You’re going to have to be clear about your objectives in order to get needed think time.  In other words, put the key things you want to accomplish into your schedule first, so that everything else falls in line.  One of the important tasks for an overloaded employee is figuring out what you can say no to.  Of course, you’ll want to talk over your schedule with your manager to gain his/her support.  But don’t go to that meeting half-cocked.  Be clear about your reasoning, and ready to answer your manager’s questions.

Change your work rhythm

Many experts suggest a simple two-by-two matrix to identify your priority tasks. 

1. Urgent and important tasks.
2. Not urgent, but important tasks.
3. Urgent, but not important tasks.
4. Not urgent and not important tasks.

The more time you give to important, but not urgent work, the more control you have over your schedule.   Specifically, it means you’ll be giving less time to putting out fires.  But why do so many of us have difficulty reducing the time we spend on urgent, but unimportant tasks?  Stephen Rechtschaffen’s book, Timeshifting, has a unique response to that question.  He suggests the answer has to do with entrainment.

FYI:  Christian Huygens, a Dutch scientist, found back in 1665, that when two pendulum clocks are placed side by side on the wall, they influence each other.  Even though he swung the pendulums at a different rate, they would eventually end up swinging at the same rate, what he called entrainment.

Once you’re in a rhythm, you’ll tend to stay in synchronization with that rhythm.  The result is that 1, 3, and 4 activities (see above), which we manage at a high level of speed, continues into other tasks that need think time—slow time.  If we’re working really fast in 1, 3, and 4, then when we get to 2—the important, but not urgent tasks—we have difficulty focusing on those tasks. 

Initially, I though Rechtschaffen was nuts.  However, as I observed myself I found that when I should be using think time to great advantage, or maybe needed to get creative, I was attempting to work at the same speed as I had in most settings.  That dog wouldn't hunt. 

When I slowed down, I reminded myself that time is of the essence, that I need to keep up my fast pace, so I don’t succumb to guilt.  As a result, it was difficult to slow down and my creative work suffered.   My feelings hijacked me.  In Rechtschaffen’s terms, my feelings created a perpetual motion machine.  There are just some situations in which we need to deal with those feelings.

What I’ve learned is that different tasks require different rhythms.  So when, for example, I’ve got some creative work to do, I gear down to a different rhythm.  Sometimes, I merely get up from my desk and take a walk, head for the coffee shop to talk to some of my cronies, or listen to Mozart.  It’s still difficult to switch from my lightning pace to think time pace, but I’ve made serious headway in the process.  

For Managers:

The all-time most popular Harvard Business Review Article:  Who's Got The Monkey     Available free on the web