Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Manage Your Attention Span Tip #1

A writer for Women's Day Magazine interviewed me as a subject matter expert on time management. Here is a tip I shared with the readers of Women's Day: Pay attention to your attention span.

Too often, we set out to do a difficult task, and we don't stop until it's done. Many times, that's because we procrastinate until the last possible moment. As a result, we make mistakes or simply lose energy and the whole thing takes longer than it should.

The wrong approach is that of trying to stretch a 20-minute attention span to an hour. In a fight against nature, your odds of winning aren't very good. Instead of that approach, work with what you've got.

The correct approach is this:

  • Break large tasks up into manageable blocks, rather than trying to do them all at once from start to finish. Start early, and you won't have to do too much at one time.
     

  • Arrange the blocks into your schedule.
     

  • Mix blocks up by their demand on the brain. For example, if you have four blocks that require processing visual information (doing your taxes, reading your e-mail, writing a complaint letter, paying your bills) break them up by injecting blocks that don't require processing visual information (call a friend, walk the dog, clean the kitchen up).

As an example, I don't sit down and do my taxes all at once. Starting in early February, I do about half an hour of work, then stop. I can easily pick up where I left off.

Maybe on the first session, I import data from the previous year and go through the setup. On the second session, I start entering the current year's data. And on it goes. When I'm done, it doesn't feel like I've really worked very hard. And I'm done way before the normal "stand in line at the Post Office" timewaster that so many people engage in each year.

 

 
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.