Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Staging Tip #1

For many years, I've been on the Executive Board of the Midwest Chapter of a group called the 7x24 Exchange. This is a group concerned with maximizing the uptime at critical facilities. Such facilities include data centers, power plants, banks, hospitals, and credit card processing companies.

Most of the folks involved are facilities engineers, facilities technicians, or their vendors. These are the people who keep the physical plant running. Their work is extremely complicated, and they have to do detailed work within small "windows" of time. They can't stop in the middle of a project and run to the hardware store. If you have ever done that, this tip will strike a chord with you.

One of the "cool tricks" these folks use to minimize the amount of time actually needed to do a job is called "staging." For example, they will do a mockup of the item they are working on and walk through the procedure. When they are done, they know every tool and part they will possibly need. When they start the job, they are then able to go right through it.

I use this same trick to pack a suitcase. I set the case on the floor, and then decide what I need for each day. I lay this stuff out next to the suitcase. When I think I have everything, I just "walk through" the items sitting out right in front of me. This is a vast improvement over my old way (just start filling the suitcase). Since I began using this method, I have been able to bring less and never forget one item.

You can apply this technique to any project. While it may seem like an extra step, it's really not. How many times have you wasted time questioning what you did? Or reworking what you did? In the suitcase example, have you ever packed, only to unpack and repack?

Whenever you are doing a job that has many steps or is new to you, you will most likely save time by staging.

 

 
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.