Time management

I feel a bit of a fraud writing about time management as I have neither found the perfect solution nor believe the perfect solution exists.  That said, I do have a system and I have found some tools that support me.  I also know what doesn’t work and from that there are some common threads that can help us all improve.  No blog on workplace effectiveness would be complete without some coverage of this vexed subject.  Hopefully this post will be useful if you feel out of control.  If you have any alternative suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Let’s start by posing the problem.  We all receive requests for support, information, decisions, analysis, presentations and a myriad of other things that make up our job description.  When you become a manager, you are often fielding these for your team too.  These requests come through different channels (i.e. Meetings, emails, messages).  The requests usually have a range of delivery dates and sometimes dependencies on each other or other teams.  Time is scarce, which requires us to prioritize requests and manage the expectations of those who have made the requests.  If we are only equipped with a diary/calendar, a notepad, and no significant training, it is difficult to argue that we have been set-up for success. 

That said, if optimized, the diary and a notepad can be the cornerstone of an effective time management system.  But before we go further, let’s shed the last vestiges of the analogue world.  I think most people now use the online calendar provided by their approved workplace software.  I have seen millennials make use of large desktop paper tear-away monthly planners and attractively decorated portable paper diaries.  I am not going to pull anyone away from the tactile enjoyment they receive from using these relics of the past, but if these are your sole method of organizing time this comes with plenty of risk and a few downsides.  For a start, they aren’t backed up anywhere and available on multiple devices.  If you forget to bring your paper diary with you, or worse lose it or spill coffee over it, then you are left with only what you can remember.   If your diary is subject to multiple changes as meetings are rearranged, interpreting what you are meant to be doing becomes harder.  These paper diaries are redundant the moment you reach the level where you get admin support and they don’t work at all with arranging and scheduling video conferences. 

Paper notepads in contrast to the humble diary are still ubiquitous.  I love the idea that a weakness can simultaneously be a strength because it forces you to adapt your approach to a specific problem.  My handwriting is appalling.  The speed with which we need to take notes and the requirement to maintain some sort of eye contact with the person who is speaking means that I usually can’t decipher my writing unless the memory of the interaction is fresh in my mind.  I have known for a long time that writing in endless notepads is a waste of my time and is similar in its effectiveness to not taking notes at all.  There is zero indexing available without considerable additional time and effort and this usually means that most people have a stack of notebooks stored in various locations, without a clue what is included within each.  Even disposing of these items is tricky.  Being security conscious, I prefer to shred these rather than recycle whole or worse throw in the garbage.  I’m not sure who I think would be able to decipher and use my notes when I can’t, but the act of pulling paper from its metal binding and shoving through a shredder is not a fun use of time.  I now use one of the many note-making tools on my laptop that then sync to my mobile devices.  I still occasionally use paper if carrying a laptop is not appropriate in a particular meeting, but my notes are short and clear and transferred to a digital file as soon as possible.  I have tried the digital note taking devices, but this still does not solve for my poor handwriting.

With the digital versions of these tools, it is possible to come up with a time management system that can work more effectively.  The two problems to solve are how to allocate your time and how to keep track of what you need to do.  My approach to these problems come from two different training sources.  Time boxing is at the heart of Nir Eyal’s book “Indistractable” that formed part of my reading stack in this earlier post.  Separately a method of task management using Microsoft Outlook was given to me in a work-based course about 12 years ago called Timesmart.  This second one can only be used as described below on a PC as Outlook for Mac is missing vital functionality.  I’m sure that a similar approach can be configured using other tools.

Time-boxing is very simple.  You need to go through your diary and box up all the available space into activities.  I don’t do this approach as actively as I used to, but my diary still has sections blocked out for meetings, time blocked for sleep (to encourage consistency) and time reserved for checking emails.  This last one is probably the most important because the constant alerts from digital communications can destroy our concentration and our efficiency at performing certain tasks.  By making specific time to read and respond to emails, we ensure that the rest of our day is dedicated to being present with whatever task is at hand.

The overlap between the advice in Indistractable and Timesmart is that both advise to turn off all visual and audible alerts.  If you can’t see or hear it, you will be less likely to break away from you are doing to check it.  I am also becoming far more militant regarding unnecessary noise in general.  When my parents visited a couple of years ago, I marveled at how they could live with their personal devices making so many noises through the day.  My Dad, a steam-train enthusiast, had his phone make the sound of a train whistle every time an email arrived.  I confiscated both of their phones and permanently disabled the noises as a service to them, our family, their community and my sanity. 

Timesmart gives a digital solution to the old: do, delay, delegate and discard approach.  During the time dedicated to reviewing emails, you need to decide the appropriate response to each.  If you can or are expected to action (do) the email immediately, then you should respond and then file the email away in a sensible location.  If the request is less urgent or you need more time to respond (delay), then you right-click on the email and move to tasks.  You then rename the task and set a start date for when you want to action it.  If you want someone else to do something (delegate) then you have two actions.  Firstly, forward the note with the instruction and when you expect the work to be done.  Secondly, move the email to the tasks and rename it in a way that clearly denotes you are waiting on a response and set the start date for when you need that response (or an agreed earlier follow-up time).  Finally, if the email is junk or no action needed (discard) either delete or file away.  The idea is that during your scheduled email review your inbox should be emptied.

The beauty of the old style outlook on a PC is that you can arrange your calendar view with a horizontal split screen.  On the top half is your calendar with time-boxes for different activities.  On the bottom half are your tasks aligned by start date.  Working together with these two views, you can allocate time in your calendar to a particular task that falls due.  Alternatively, you can drag and drop tasks to later in the week when you may have less scheduled meetings.  You have a list of follow-up tasks from your team and can use your tasks panel to chase them up as they fall due.  Finally at the end of each day, any tasks not marked as complete automatically get moved to the following day.

The final tool that I use is an online notebook that supports folders and pages.  For each regular meeting I set up a folder and add a page each time I need to take notes.  I am left with a complete set of organized notes that are easy to review.  Any tasks that come out of a meeting are then set up as manual tasks in Outlook so that they can be prioritized and actioned.  I like to set up the page for each meeting in advance and then when I have ideas or items I need to discuss during the meeting, I note them down as I think of them.  This ensures I cover off everything I need to in the meeting, I can proactively extend the duration of the meeting if there is too much to cover in the original slot and I keep both the discussion points and the responses in the same note.

There are plenty of careers where the system above will not be sufficient.  The most common are roles that include project management.  For those roles, ideally the project manager will have some sort of system they have been trained in and a favorite tool that they like to track their projects in.  Other careers that rely on appointments will have bespoke customized apps and tools that will help with time management. 

If you are like me and work in an office environment that uses email, meetings and some sort of work-based messaging service to communicate, then a version of what I have outlined above is streets ahead of trying to manage your to-do list from your inbox, on notes on your phone or via paper notebooks.  I have tried using this manual system many times, but it tends to fall apart as soon as I get busy.  I then revert to time boxing and Timesmart because the alternative is a significant anchor on my effectiveness.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.  If you have advice or solutions that work (particularly if they work on a Mac) then let me know.  This is an area that I would happily try new ideas and continue to make improvements.

Next week the blog is going to change a little.  I have realized that I have now covered the bigger topics that I drafted in December last year.  I have some ideas that are smaller thoughts and rather than wrapping these ideas into a handful of posts and finishing the blog early, I have decided to continue the weekly cadence with shorter entries around a specific idea or learning.