Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Phone Tip#2

The telephone is a powerful potential time trap. In a previous article, we talked about preparing a short list of the topics you want to discuss and we also talked about ending a call when things have petered out.

Another aspect of saving time when using the phone is to clean up that list before calling. And I don't mean pare it down for the sole purpose of limiting how much there is to discuss. What you discuss and what points you raise are even more critical.

Here's a short case history. I had a problem with something another person was doing. So, I wrote up a list of my key points and fleshed them out a bit. Then I read through these and asked myself these questions:

  • How important is each of these points to address?
  • Which are about my venting and which are actually helpful?
  • What outcome do I desire?
  • What suggestions might I have to improve the other person's act?
  • What am I missing that reflects a sympathetic perspective?
  • Which items are telling this person something she already knows?

Then, I reviewed the message to see how well I would be talking with this person, rather than talking at her. The goal was to make her feel the call was valuable to her, rather than having it come across as an attack or a push to conform to my view of how things should be. I wanted to focus on a positive outcome, not on being right.

The final result was vastly different from what I had originally intended to say, and the call itself was very pleasurable for both of us. Which made me sweat over how many times I had not gone through this process and just made a total ass out of myself. Oh, well.

I think when you take the time to properly prepare your message, you can reduce the time wasted apologizing for things you didn't mean to communicate but communicated nonetheless. And, you can reduce the time lost to missing out on the valuable resource that other people can be. Most of all, you use your own time much better. It's never a waste of time to make another person feel good. If you can do that while also helping someone improve, then you have made very good use of everyone's time.

 

 
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.