Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Saying No

Say "No" and say it the right way.

For example, your boss gives you 96 hours of tasks to accomplish in one working week. You can choose to try to do all of them, thus probably doing none of them well. This is a good way to feel stressed out. And undermine your career.

Or, you can choose to do the most important ones and leave the others undone. This is a good way to feel like you actually accomplished something. Because you can actually do so.

Making this second choice is much easier and more career-positive than many people think. Rather than let your boss walk all over you only to make you ultimately fail, manage your boss so you succeed.

Here are the steps:

  1. Identify which of the tasks you feel competent doing.
  2. Ask your boss which tasks are most important. What is it your boss really wants done? Focus on those things.
  3. Let your boss know what you will be doing and not doing.

Be sure you lead your boss in the right direction. For example, "Jane, I see you would like to have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H done this week. So would I. However, we have constraints of time and  other resources so some of these won't get done. I think B, E, and G are quite important, and I'd like to get A well under way. Which of these do you want done?"

This opens a dialogue with your boss. Your boss will identify which items need to be done and which can be deferred. At this time, you can bring up outsourcing, obtaining additional resources, changing the scope, and so on.

If your boss simply snarls back that everything is top priority, then you must do the following:

  1. Choose which tasks you think are most important and that you can realistically accomplish.
  2. Forget the rest.
  3. Make a dedicated effort to find a different boss within your company and a different job outside it.
  4. Document your boss' stupidity. When it comes time to scapegoat you, pull out your notes. If these include dates and times, as well as specific details, they can be very powerful. Of course, this denying your boss the ability to put the blame on you effectively may put you on borrowed time. Plug your network heavily and look for other work.

In this case, your boss is a failure waiting to happen. But notice this is your boss--a person who has risen farther in the organization than you have. Thus, this is a person who has proven skill at scapegoating or other nefarious methods of benefiting from incompetence. You may do everything right, and still get blamed for what your boss does or fails to do. Don't be deluded into thinking there is always justice in the corporate world. Your boss could make a royal mess of things, but effectively pin the blame on you. Your boss gets a raise, and you get canned. This happens all the time.

On the other hand, if your boss values you and simply didn't know s/he was overloading you, your boss will be very glad to have your input so problems can be averted. If you have a boss like that, be as supportive as possible. This doesn't mean you should make unrealistic promises or work yourself into a heart attack. It means you help your boss make the smart decisions your boss is willing to make.

Remember to agree with your boss in public, and disagree in private (assuming there is something to disagree about). Your boss will be more amenable to your views if you do this.

What this "Say no" tip boils down to is identifying the right things to do, and then doing them. If you try to do more than you have time for, you fail to allow enough time for what you really need to be doing. This is an example of where less is more.

 

 
A great way many businesses are managing time is using software. There are many forms of time and attendance software which allows managers to track and monitor employees time usage.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.