Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: No Size Fits All

One of the services I offer is personal executive time coaching. This personal coaching involves my following an executive around for most of a day, observing and taking notes. Then, I provide exact (and sometimes brutal) feedback on where that executive is losing time and what to do about that. This means no canned "one size fits all," but a laser-tuned solution.

I also follow up with an interview that goes beyond the workday we experienced. Time management starts from the moment you get up--many people just start their day behind and get more so as it goes on.

This service isn't cheap. But, an executive who blows a performance appraisal due to a preventable time management issue finds my fee a bargain in hindsight. One who gets a handle on his or her time can easily make that money back in a salary increase, due to the improvement in attitude and performance that others see on the job.

The reason I am telling you all of this is to make the point that there is no single system of time management that works for everyone. Cookie cutter formulas, paint by numbers, copycat "best practices" and rigid adherence to someone else's system--all of these lead you down the same road of frustration and failure. That's because we are individuals. What works for another person may not work for you, though you can probably apply the principle behind what works. An example is the ubiquitous Day Planner. These work great for many people, but for many others these systems are worse than useless. However, the principle of planning blocks of time will work for just about everyone.

You have to follow some key concepts (e.g., setting goals, eliminating waste, focusing, etc.), but you must consciously develop your own time management strategies and religiously maintain your system.

This is much easier than many people seem to think. It just takes some conscious effort to understand and apply one principle at a time--consistently and on a continual basis. Make a constant effort at managing your time, and you'll be surprised at how much more you get done than someone who makes occasional effort.

 

 
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.