Time Management

Plan holidays in advance. A colleague plans a weekend away every six weeks, to have something to look forward to.

Allow time to be with your partner and family. Schedule family time into the diary if need be!

Take up a new hobby. Or volunteer to help a local charity. Working with others will take you out of yourself.

Spend time with friends. Old friends and new friends.

Develop a sense of humour. It’s one of the best antidotes for stress.

Engage in physical exercise. For example, jogging, cycling, swimming, walking or dancing.

Absorb yourself with the arts or music. Make time to go to an art gallery, the theatre or a concert.

Attend to your spiritual side. Spend time in a form of prayer or meditation to help connect you with more than the physical world.

Think of practical ways to reduce the stress in your life.

1.6 Prepare to change (#ulink_040b999a-d2e1-597c-be7a-37689305a28a)

An important part of this book is to help you identify what you need to change in order to manage time more effectively. But do you lack the motivation to change? Here are eight ideas to help you become more familiar with the idea of change in your life.

1 Try new ways of doing things. Move beyond the “I’ve always done it this way” mentality. You can begin with something relatively small, like driving a different way to work. Set realistic goals to make a small noticeable adjustment. Don’t get off at the closest bus stop to your work, for example, but the stop before and walk the rest of the way. If you can do that a couple of times a week, it’s a start.

2 Admit you don’t know everything. I have been helped by the saying, “It’s a strong person who admits their weaknesses”. This means you will listen more, acknowledge errors and be willing to receive feedback and learn from mistakes.

3 Ask more questions. Remember your underlying aims and goals, and think creatively about new ways to reach them.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”

Victor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor

4 Move on from past experiences. Learn from your past, but don’t worry about specific events unduly.

5 Don’t be afraid of failure. The American inventor Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

6 Build in regular reviews. These could be in advance of your regular appraisal.

7 Evaluate your goals. An aspect of setting goals is so that you can see if you are reaching them or not.

8 Use friends to help you change. Gather friends around you with whom you can share your goals and frustrations. Allow them to help you and guide you where necessary.

Mentally prepare yourself for new ways of doing things.

Know your work (#ulink_823c8014-db35-5e9d-9394-16921a59b005)

Alongside knowing what kind of a person you are, it is important to think specifically about your job. You need to be clear about your role and the responsibilities that you are expected to fulfil. We all need help at times to maintain concentration on all aspects of our work: to stop putting off doing routine or difficult tasks, to overcome poor motivation, to keep focused and make good decisions. This chapter has techniques to help you do that.

2.1 Clarify your job (#ulink_3d835896-1287-5559-a8de-ecec0fda962f)

We all spend a lot of time being busy, but it is important to stop and be clear about what our job is all about. We can then think how effective we are at actually carrying out our job.

1 Write down what you think is the general purpose of your job. For example, to lead a team in providing excellent customer service over the telephone.

2 Now write down the main areas that together make up the general purpose of your job. For example: leadership; monitoring statistics; providing customer service; training and developing staff; time management; and monitoring staff performance by holding appraisals and one-to-one meetings.

3 Now write down the activities that you need to do to actually fulfil the work in the main areas you listed in the previous point. For example, training and developing staff: maintaining a training rota and booking time out for the team to do individual training and booking staff on any compulsory training.

one minute wonder Think about your team, if you have one. Are you sure that you are clear about how your job, areas and activities fit in with those of your colleagues? Are you vague about what your colleagues do themselves?

4 Now think about how you actually spend your time. Using what you have written in the first three points, how much of your time is spent fulfilling the general purpose, the main areas you listed and the actual activities? What would you like to do less of? What would you like to do more of? Hopefully, you are spending most of your time in this way, rather than in general administration, for example (unless this is your job).

5 If you work as part of a team, be clear about how your job, areas and activities fit in with those of your colleagues, your boss and any subordinate people working for you.

6 Review the first four points regularly with your boss and at your appraisals. Such meetings can be useful occasions for you to consider, for example, what is preventing you from fulfilling your main purpose and discover where you are getting sidetracked into other areas or activities.

Make sure that you actually spend most of your time on the main part of your job.

2.2 Stop putting things off (#ulink_b207bfa3-6574-50bf-819a-d4758c75abf5)

You may be the kind of person who constantly puts off doing tasks that are boring or difficult. The longer you delay getting round to the tasks, the greater will be your resistance to them and, therefore, the harder it will be to actually complete them.

You may avoid doing a task for various reasons: the job is boring or routine; the task is too difficult; the work has no deadline; the goals are unclear; or you simply have so many things to do that you don’t know where to start. Or you may be afraid of failure or rejection if you perform badly.

In certain circumstances, it is right to make a decision not to undertake a task: when you need to collect all the information or when you need time to think. But, on many other occasions, it simply boils down to delaying doing something.

Here are some ways to help you break through the barrier of extended procrastination:

“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again”

Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American statesman and polymath

1 Break a large task down into more manageable sections (see Secret 4.5). Tackle one part, not necessarily the first part. The fact that you have completed a small section will then make you feel better about the whole.

2 Start on the hardest part. Do this in your most productive, high-energy time (see 1.3).

3 Give yourself a reward, but only after you have actually completed a task.

4 Work on routine tasks in your least productive time or as a break from periods of concentrated activity.

Procrastination ultimately makes a job more difficult.

2.3 Keep your concentration (#ulink_dc816372-0d81-5596-967d-82d6fc13cba7)

We’ve all known times when our energy levels have decreased and we’ve lost motivation to complete a task. You need to set yourself realistic targets that use your skills and help you work well. Use rewards, if you like, to emphasize a sense of achievement.

Set yourself a goal. “By coffee break, I want to have achieved…”. The goal should be challenging and should stretch you slightly, but it shouldn’t be too demanding or unrealistic. Plan to have a break after you have met your target and completed the task; resist the urge to take sudden unplanned breaks.

case study My aim in writing this book was to complete four units each day. In this unit, for example, I wrote rough notes for the area I wanted to cover and then wrote this case study – I found it’s easier to work from a specific example back to general principles – and finally the main text and intro. I tried not to interrupt myself by checking emails and, after finishing, read through the unit and looked at its place in the sequence. Writing took different amounts of time, depending on the subject of the unit, but I found setting a specific target helpful. I gave myself a break after writing two units and then after the day’s final two. The target was challenging, but realistic and achievable.