Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Keeping Others from Wasting Your Time Tip #5

In my time management seminars, I talk about the fact that you can't manage time in a vacuum. We all interact with others. We can choose to interact efficiently or inefficiently. Many people falsely assume efficient interaction is rude. Quite the opposite. The more you respect other people's time, the more they will feel appreciated.

If you are finding yourself pressed for time, you can probably identify one or two people who seem to "suck up" your time. Maybe you are frequently on the phone with a particular friend for an hour, or maybe your boss or coworker likes to stop by your office and chat with you for half an hour each day.

Do you start telling these people you don't have time to talk with them anymore? No, you can't bring yourself to do that. Saying such a thing may convey the message you don't like that person. So, what can you do? You actually have many options. I'll provide some here, and you can think up more just by determining the principle behind each of these:

  • Put the time restriction in a positive light. You can say, "It's really great talking to you, but I'm going to have to cut this short." Most people remember that first part long after you've said the second part.
     
  • Be an advocate of that person's time. Sure, you feel like your time is evaporating, due to those discussions. But, maybe the other person feels the same way. Your boss, for example, sees a positive response from those half-hour chats so assumes you need those chats. But you can say, "I appreciate that you take so much time from your busy schedule to talk to me. Don't feel obligated to humor, me though. If you've got other things to do, just let me know." Notice the hidden messages, here.
     
  • Reschedule. You may need to do this for the frequent caller or the person who decides to take up squatting rights in your office. Give that person a positive comment on something s/he said, then say you're out of time and ask something like, "Can you call me next week so we can continue this conversation?"
     
  • Simply end it. "Well, it's getting late here" is often effective. So is, "This has been a great conversation, but I have to go now." If all else fails, "I have to pee" works every time.

Other related tips for managing how others affect your time include how to prevent phone tag, how to properly decline invitations to endless meetings, how to get others to focus on the issue at hand, and how to handle various forms of communication (including e-mail).

 

 
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.