One thing is certain as a manager…you will never have enough time to do everything you need to get done. At least, at the quality you would like to.

So, one of the best qualities you can develop as a manager is the ability to make the best possible choices with the time you have available.

Our studies of great managers has revealed a list of techniques they use when deciding how to get the best out of their time. Here are just five:

1) They carry out ‘audits’ of their time to ensure they are spending the right amount on priorities. They decide what their broad goals are, based on their manager’s expectations. They know what barriers and obstacles come up regularly to stop them achieving those goals. And they recognise what tasks will get them the best results in the long-term as well as short-term

2) They initiate action and facilitate action in others. They work within the ‘important’ framework every day, and are not driven by the ‘urgent’ at the expense of the ‘important’. Their to-do lists are manageable, they dump things that are unnecessary, and concentrate on delegating those things that will develop others’ skills, as well as freeling up time to do things only they can do.

3) They work to the 80/20 principle. Managers who master their time recognise that, of all the tasks they need to complete, only 20% are criticakl to the success of the business. They make sure these items get top priority.

4) They use 5 or 10 minute ‘blocks’ of time to get things done. Imagine you have a meeting in ten minute’s time. How would you spend those minutes? What you do in that time could make the meeting valuable or a distraction. Rather than thinking there’s too little time before the meeting to get anything done, time-masters recognise that these ‘blocks’ of time add up during the day and offer great opportunities for ticking off small items on their to-do lists. If you think that you might have four or five of these ‘blocks’ of time during the day, you could get nearly an hour’s work done, when others are just letting that time slip through their fingers.

5) Great time managers really plan effectively. They actually make plans to plan. Either just before they leave for the day, or at the beginning of each day, they plan the best way to spend their time. They have weekly plans that give them a good overview of what they need to accomplish in that period and they have long-term (montly, quarterly, annual) plans that help them think strategically, instead of being side tracked by the ‘urgency’ of tasks.

I suggest you analyse your time-wasters and time-stealers, and see if some of these tips can help you achieve great results as you master time.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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When you think about where your time goes, it becomes very evident very quickly that time is something that can’t be managed. But what can you do to make the best use of it? Indeed, how can you ensure you manage yourself and your tasks effectively?

1. Plan an hour per day for time for yourself. That still gives 23 hours to everything and everyone else. During this hour, add a new dimension to your life that is not there because you haven’t felt you have the time for it. Learn a hobby or foreign language, develop computer skills, start a business, spend time on health development, etc. By taking one hour per day of focused study, any of us can become a world-class expert in a topic of our choice. How would your future look if you became an expert in the subject of your choice?

2. Establish a regular reading program. It can be just 15 minutes a day. Even with that small investment, the average person will read 15 books in a year. Also, consider taking a speed-reading course. All leaders are readers, so get a reading habit going, and listen to CDs or MP3s on your commute.

3. Complete a ‘Will-do’ list from your ‘To-Do’ list. What this means is you create a definite list of items you absolutely, positively will do today. Don’t fill your day with ‘will-do’s'; make sure you leave some time for items that are out of your control. You can then fill quiet time with items of your choice, having prioritised your ‘to-do’ list.

4. Have the right mental attitude. When you are in a negative mood, you tend to repel the positive people who don’t want to be strained and drained and brought down by your negativity. And when you are in a negative mood, you naturally attract other negative people who want to share their stories of misery. Positive people bring us up. Negative people bring us down. You can decide and choose which one you will be. Time reflected on is better when you choose the positive option.

So take time to consider how you can be proactive with your most precious asset…your time.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

Follow us here on Twitter

One of the biggest complaints that managers have is the amount of work they have to do. Many feel simply overwhelmed, and stressed out.

But when we see surveys of how these managers actually use their time, we often find that the biggest culprit is the allowing of interruptions to fill their otherwise important time schedule.

Do you find this to be the case? Are you often interrupted by things or people that take you off track, and then find it difficult to get back on track again?

Here are some ideas that might help if you find yourself in this position:

* Allocate specific time to specific jobs and say that you are going to do this job excellently. It will keep you focused and concentrated. If an interruption occurs (the phone rings, a person knocks on your door or approaches your desk), spend a few seconds finishing off your key point, then give full attention to the phone call or person. If you find that the interruption is not as important as what your were concentrating on before, say that you will call back in xx minutes, or you will see the person in xx minutes, and go back to the specific thing that was more important.

When you have finished the important item, you can them proactively make that call or speak to that person on your terms.

* If part of your job involves frequent consultations with your colleagues, schedule a specific time on your calendar or in Outlook for those meetings. Then let it be known that you’re always available, say, from 11:00 to 12:30, or 3:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon. An open-door policy then becomes a time-saver instead of a time waster.

* When someone comes into your office uninvited, stand up to talk. If you let your visitor arrange himself comfortably in a chair, you’re in for a long interruption. If you control the length of the interruption, you can get back to your more important things more quickly.

* If your visitor has something really important to talk about, ask him to give you a few minutes to complete what you’re doing, and then go to his office. That way you can control the length of the conversation.

* Check if you can schedule quick, short meetings with team members instead of enduring ad-hoc interruptions. That way, you maintain control.

* Schedule specific times when you will devote complete concentrated effort in dealing with emails. If, like me, you receive hundreds of emails a day, that will assist you in getting rid of meaningless interruptions during your busy day.

Remember, the interrupter will not know they are causing you problems. It is up to you to gain that time back so you can control the nature of your work. It’s impossible to manage or control time, as it does what it wants to do. But you can manage yourself and the tasks you have to accomplish. Be aware of how much time interruptions take in your day and see if you can at least reduce the time they waste for you.

That way, you start to maintain control and become less stressed.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

Follow us here on Twitter

Daniel Simons, author of the book ‘The Invisible Gorilla‘, wrote something interesting recently.

Simons looked at the evidence that demonstrates multitasking is not all it’s cracked up to be. He quotes that every productivity study in every industry published in the last 100 years has come to the same conclusion: after about 40 hours of work in a week, the quality of your work starts to go down. You start making mistakes.

That’s why working 60 hours may not save you time or money: you’ll spend too much of that time fixing the mistakes you shouldn’t have made in the first place. That may be the reason why software companies that limit work to 35 hours a week need to employ fewer QA engineers: there isn’t as much mess to clean up.

In today’s economy, where management thinking and creativity are seen as the main differentiators in business, brains are assets. They need to be looked after. Managers need to take the evidence seriously that too much work doesn’t make us all productive; it actually causes undue stress and downtime.

Problems are best dealt with when we spend some time away from them and let our brains simmer before solving them. Also, the only thing that happens when people are asked to work in ways that interfere with other parts of their lives is burnout.

As I mentioned in the blog on multi-tasking, it doesn’t make us more productive. Simons mentioned that checking emails while in a meeting does not enhance our efficiency. He was asked whether there was anything we could do to enlarge the capacity of our minds. The answer was simple; “no.” There are hard limits to what our brains will do. Practice, Simons says, will improve specific skills but not general abilities. Carrying out crossword puzzles will enable you to be better at crossword puzzles; it won’t improve your IQ.

Is there anything that managers can do that can help themselves? Yes, says Simons: exercise. His colleague Arthur Kramer showed that walking for a few hours a week led to large improvements on cognitive tasks. Stretching and toning exercises had no cognitive benefits, but aerobic exercise, which increases blood flow to the brain, did.

Older managers who walked for just 45 minutes a day for three days a week showed better preservation of their brains in MRI scans, says Kramer. Exercise, Simons concludes, improves cognition broadly by increasing the fitness of your brain.

That’s an interesting thought for this week. If you want to improve your emotional intelligence or feel better at doing your job, maybe take that 45 minute break at lunch time and actually do some walking or more strenuous exercise.

Build it up during the next few months and see what effect it has. And if you want to get the best out of your team, remember that overwork will not add much benefit to the company. In fact, it will just cause more problems. So avoid burnout at work; your team members are your greatest asset!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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

Procrastination is a symptom. It’s your body and mind telling you there is some area of stress that you are focusing on. By relieving the feeling of pain associated with actually doing the task you are putting off, you are reducing your anxiety by focusing on something more pleasurable or less demanding.

Remember, procrastination is an end result, so you might want to diagnose what’s causing it first, before you dive into these tips and techniques:

Break any projects you’re working on down into more manageable chunks

Time management guru Alan Lakein suggests using the Swiss cheese method. By knocking holes into projects (doing small tasks associated with it) you don’t see it as a massive mountain, just small journeys to the next base camp.

Aim for a short period of interrupted, quality time that you can devote to the task. Even 20 minutes of focused effort can break the back of many big tasks. At the end of this time, make sure you give yourself a quick reward…a cup of coffee, a walk in the fresh air, a piece of fruit…anything that tells the brain it gets rewarded for completing that bit of the task. It then looks forward to the next 20 minute slot!

Remember your own needs…plan for and carry out some recreation time…but only when you have kept your promise of doing what you said you would with the task.

Use appropriate self-talk to keep momentum going. Words like ‘I choose to’ and ‘I want to’ are better than ‘I must’ or ‘I should’.

Don’t aim for perfection. Excellence is usually good enough for 99% of your stakeholders.

Reward those small wins and share successes with others.

Remember, procrastination is just a matter of thought processes. By concentrating on the benefits of finishing the task instead of the pain of doing it, you should soon see a change in your motivation to overcome procrastination.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

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