Of all the challenges we hear managers facing these days, the aspect of being able to manage their own time is very often top of the list. It’s not because we have less time; it’s that the demands on us these days are so great, we have difficulty in identifying the best use of our time, and often submit to the ‘busy’ rather than the ‘effective’.

Of course, the best way to determine where your time is going is to record what’s happening each day. If you find some of these problems are affecting your day-to-day management of your time, think of what could be done to overcome them. Here are some suggestions:

* Work Piling Up – You need to set priorities, and determine the difference between urgent and important. How many times have you gone home from work and realised you’ve been really busy, but not actually accomplished very much? That shows you’ve been working on the urgent at the expense of the important. Set yourself realistic deadlines and see if you can keep to them. And delegate more often!

* Trying to do too much – As stated before, you must set priorities. If it’s impossible to get everything done, ask which deadlines could be changed. Learn to say no, because if you take on more work, everything else will suffer, especially your stress levels.

* Procrastination – Break tasks down into manageable chunks. Approach it from a different angle. If the task will take 3 hours, do 20 minutes now, 30 minutes later, and so on. You need to control it, rather than it controlling you.

* People interrupting you – Make appointments and ask people to stick to them. If people just drop in, tell them you will get back to them when you can give them 100% attention.

* Phone calls interrupting you – Tell them you will call them back. Use voicemail, if practical. Batch phone calls you need to make all together, so you control the timings.

* Too many emails – Divide them into ‘act now, act later’. Have a special file to put the mails you will be dealing with later. Don’t let you inbox pile up, and try not to use it as your ‘pending’ file. Things will drop out of your view and you will forget them. Create rules for emails coming in. Try not to keep your email server open all the time; emails will rule your time. Devote specific times of the day that you control to deal with emails.

* Too many meetings – Ah, the bugbear of many managers! Review all the meetings you attend and eliminate any that are unnecessary. Set limits to the time meetings take and stick to them. Have an agenda and stick to it. Be prepared for each meeting and identify how you can add value to them.

Naturally, there are many other time management situations you will have to deal with, but if you have the correct mindset to how you view time, you will concentrate on the solutions rather than the problems lack of time causes you.

Thanks again

Nick

Nick Hill

Training Director

MTD Management Training Course

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Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

How many times are you in the middle of something important and you get interrupted by a person, an email, a phone call, or some other request for information?

It breaks our momentum and mental focus. It causes us frustration. And it tests our resolve when it comes to sticking to something more important.

Here are some solutions to this never-ending concern that you face every day.

Interruptions from others:

• Explain you’re busy and set a time to meet later
• Accept the interruption and state the time you have available now. At the end of that time period, tell them you really do have to get on
• Don’t have chairs right next to your desk. If you have room, put two or three chairs in another area of your office. This means people can’t just drop in. They have to interrupt your flow and get you to move away physically form your desk. If it really isn’t that important now, people will wait until it is convenient for you
• Set open and closed-door times, and make them known
• Meet in someone else’s office, so you can control your exit time
• If it’s really important for you to work without interruptions, consider working from home, a conference room or a spare office where it’s obvious you are there for a specific purpose and can’t be interrupted.

Email or instant messaging:

• Don’t keep compulsively checking email. Turn off the audio signal that tells you an email has come through. Allocate times in the day where you deal with email, timed so YOU control it.
• Go offline if you have to. If you’re uninterruptable, prove it.

Information Requests:

• Give people who work for you enough authority and information to deal with these matters for you. Don’t be a hoarder of information so that people have to come to you and only you
• Let your team know you are incommunicado for a time period
• If you make promises, keep them. Then people won’t have to chase you up when you don’t want them to

Phone:

• If you’re in the middle of something, don’t take unscheduled calls. Have set times when people can reach you
• Make a list of calls you are going to make and bunch them together, so you control the time it takes
• Call people at lunch time or before closing time, so conversations are short and to the point
• Ask people who call you what specifically you can do for them, and say ‘I only have ten minutes. Can we get this done in that time?’
• Leave your phone off in the evenings. Interruptions while you’re away from work should be seen as interfering with the rest of your life with people who deserve better. If it’s that important, they will leave a message and you can get back to them when you are free. That way, you control your time

Interruptions are a natural part of your working day, but using these ideas should minimise the effects and help build your productivity.

Thanks again

Sean

Many people think the best way to get things done and produce more is to muti-task. Laura Stack thinks we have bought into what she calls the myths of multi-tasking; that is, we are doing more than one thing at a time, and we’re increasing our efficiency and productivity by working more quickly.

What we really mean is that we are switching between tasks. When we do that, none of the tasks gets our full attention. In the Journal of Experimental Attention (August 2001), research has shown that multi-tasking actually reduced productivity.

Switching takes time, even if we aren’t aware of what our minds need to do. It was interesting that when experiments were done with people who were carrying out multiple tasks, it was found that performance was detrimentally affected. When people in their twenties were talking on their mobile phones, they had reactions of 70-year-olds. And they were using hands-free phones! In fact, the studies showed their reactions were worse than drunk drivers who exceeded the drink limit by one-and-a-half times! (Human Factors, Winter 2005)

If your job entails you doing lots of different things, concentrate fully on each one as it comes up. This technique is known as ‘spotlighting’. Give whatever you are doing 100% attention, even if it’s for a brief time.

If you remember something you need to get done while you are doing something else, make a note of it, and come back to it later.

Think results, not activity. Focusing on the outcome you want means saying ‘I’ll finish two sections of this report by lunch’ rather than ‘I’ll work on this report for a while’.

Giving yourself deadlines also encourages you to stay focused.Having too much time to accomplish something means you may become wavering and demotivated to complete it.

Make plans but don’t try to make everything perfect. If something isn’t working, try something else. As the Chinese proverb goes “No matter how far down the wrong road you have gone, stop!”

Doing one thing at a time is a good starting point to cut down on stress. Focus and see what happens to your productivity.

So, how good are your multi-tasking skills? That might not be the right question. Instead, ask ‘What should I do to be the most productive?’ Focusing on one task at a time may well be the answer.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

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One of the many things we hear on our management courses is the whining that ‘I’m not a good time manager’. This mindset always creates problems for managers and does not allow us to tap into the potential to create a high performance culture within ourselves, department and organisation.

The truth is that anyone can be a great time manager, if we choose to go from potential to performance.

So, how do we do this? Here is a simple process we can follow that will allow us to see performance building quickly and effectively:

• Determine exactly where our time is going at the moment. Too many managers confuse busy with effective. If we continually work on the urgent, we won’t have time for the important. Make time to identify where your time goes every day, as this awareness will help you see what is really happening

• Determine what your values are – what do you view as important and what do you want to accomplish? You simply cannot do everything that’s expected of you, so you have to apply the four levels of productivity: With a task, either decide to Do it now, Delegate it, Delay it or Dump it. There really isn’t much else you can do with it.

• Set time priorities that will move you toward living out your values. Now’s the time to plan and prioritise. If you are continually taken away from your plan, become aware of how this is happening. Are you saying ‘yes’ too often? Is the important at the mercy of the urgent? Are you shunning importnat stuff because urgency is getting a grip on you? You simply can’t afford to let your values slip by because of poor prioritisation.

• Develop a system of scheduling that works best for you; don’t be led by a time management guru. There are many ideas out there on how to manage your time. Find a system that works for you, personally. Don’t try to fit in with things that cause more work for you. A system should help you, not add pressure and take more time than it’s worth.

• Stick to your schedule. If you find yourself changing things continuously, the environment might be too blame. See if you are working efficiently and effectively.

These simple steps, if you apply them, will take you from having the potential to be a good time manager to true time management performance. Will you be able to make it work and get the results? Only time will tell!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

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You’ve heard me talk before about how we need to spend more time on the improtant rather than the urgent stuff at work.

One of the most important areas in a manager’s life that often gets neglected because of the urgent items getting priority is that of strategic thinking. You may feel that you don’t have time to devote to something that is a nice to do rather than a need to do.

The challenge is that if you don’t proactively deal with thinking things through strategically, you will find your vision deminishes and your direction starts to waver. So how do you find time to put strategy at the top of your list? Here are some ideas:

1.Decide what you actually want to think about. When you’re on the way to work, or at your weekend, decide which areas of your job or projects are the most important. Choose an item that is most important to you.

2.Decide on the materials you’ll need to work with. If you’ve got several (hundred) emails to get through, plan your time in the day when they will be covered, then determine that the materials you’ll need for your strategic thinking time.

3.Plan your time. You have to be proactive. Close the door if you can. Plan a day at home if you can. Go to an empty conference room. Turn your phone off. Be unavailable to everyone, except in emergencies. You need this time to yourself, even if it’s just 15 minutes.

4.Be very specific with what you want to achieve. Specificity is the key to results in this area. If you allow your mind to wander, you will not get the results you potentially could achieve. Concentrate for as much time as you can without wavering. You need to get results and they can’t be achieved without full concentration.

5.Plan to do this regularly. If possible, 15-20 minutes a day. You’ll find that if you do this regularly, it will become a habit that you look forward to and won’t be a chore. If you can’t manage every day, plan for 30 minutes, 3 days a week. The point is regularity and specificity. Without this, it will become hard work, you won’t look forward to it, and you’ll find excuses to miss it.

Strategic thinking should become a necessary part of your working week. Plan to achieve these goals and you’ll reap the rewards big time.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

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