The idea of time management is actually something of a misnomer. Save for building our own modified DeLorean, none of us can actually control time, so it’s all about how we manage ourselves against time.
According to the well-known self-development author, Brian Tracy, this is a key skill, as it results in a number of very important benefits, including improved quality of work, more opportunities, greater recognition in our careers and less stress.
A University of California study* shows that it takes 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption and modern life is full of such time stealers, such as email and news alerts, phone notifications, colleagues stopping to ask a quick question or, for home workers, pets, children or home deliveries.
So, what can we do to help manage ourselves more effectively within our working week?
Know yourself and how you prioritise
A good place to start is understanding how you currently manage yourself in relation to time and how you prioritise tasks in terms of being urgent or otherwise. Map out a schedule of a single working day and how much time is spent on shallow and deep tasks. Shallow tasks are quick tasks, such as emails or phone calls, whereas deep tasks are more involved work, such as report writing or creating a presentation. Note how long you take to complete tasks and how you feel once they are done. If you prefer to do this online, then there are a number of useful apps, including Rescue Time, Focus Keeper and Daily Planner. This self-knowledge is important in terms of being able to see how your time is spent and if you are prioritising the things you need to do, or are procrastinating with non-urgent or non-essential tasks.
Eat that frog
Eat that frog is a metaphor coined by Brian Tracy for tackling the most challenging and off-putting task of your day or week and getting it out of the way. Knowledge of the way you prioritise will help you to identify your frog, or your biggest and ugliest frog if you have a number of them! Completing this task is also likely to give you the biggest sense of accomplishment and will hopefully encourage you to embrace this change going forward.
Work around energy levels
Are you a morning person or are you at your most productive later in the day? Learn to schedule tasks in relation to this, with deep work for when your energy levels are at their peak and shallow tasks when you are running low. This thinking can also be applied in relation to your week – I tend to schedule lots of calls on a Monday, easing myself in with more shallow tasks and Friday tends to be reserved for learning, topical or educational work, that involves more reflective and deeper thinking, so schedule your week to tie in with your own energy patterns.
Time chunk
Underpinning time chunking is the fact that the brain cannot truly multi-task. We may believe we can, but if you saw a surgeon about to go into theatre whilst on their phone, for example, you would probably have concerns! There are a variety of ways you can time chunk, but what is called the ‘Pomodoro’ technique worked well for me. This involves working for 25-45 minutes sessions, with no distractions, punctuated with a five or ten-minute break.
If you work in an office environment, wearing headphones, even if you are not listening to anything, is an effective way to deter people from interrupting you during your periods of concentrated work.
Plan your week in advance
Make use of your online diary to schedule your entire week as far as possible in advance, even down to your lunch break. This is in the knowledge that things will ultimately move around but it’s primarily an exercise in mapping time. My top tip is to then assign each task more time than you actually think it requires, so you will hopefully end up gaining time each day. Colour coding tasks can also be helpful, enabling you to see at a glance which areas you are spending time on and if this seems in line or at odds with your job role. The danger of leaving your diary empty is that people will assume that time in your day is free and can add in meetings, where in actual fact you might be on a deadline that day.
To summarise, identify how and when you work most effectively, understand what steals your time and how to defend against this and then try various techniques, to see what works best for you. All techniques will take a bit of time to embed and so you need to persist to start realising the benefits. If you know that you historically managed yourself poorly in relation to time, this won’t magically change overnight but self-knowledge and finding the right technique(s) for you will definitely help create positive change and give you more time to work with.
Darren Mead is Head of Risk and Audit at Progeny
*The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress
