The new definition of irony is someone who has taught a time management course but has trouble maintaining their own calendar. Look that up in your dictionary and you will see a picture of me! I was guilty of no original thinking in conducting this training as it was a canned course my company purchased with the rights to reproduce the workbooks, slides and videos. It was actually a pretty good revelation of time wasters in the office and a solid set of tricks to make someone more efficient in managing their work, but time is one of those commodities we tend to take for granted until we run out of it and wonder where it went. I thought it was especially significant that in my first presentation of this workshop there was a pre-assignment to do a log of daily activities with the ultimate purpose of identifying bottlenecks and figuring out ways to overcome them. You guessed it…only a handful of people actually did the pre-work. Some joked that they had started doing the log and then “didn’t have time to finish it†but I suspect that this falls into the category of subjects in which we assume an intuitive knowledge or expertise and can intellectualize our way to understanding without much practice. Maybe some people can, but probably not most of us.
Observation of current work practices, as prescribed in the pre-work for that course, is only a mapping of how things are. If analysis of the situation determines that there are inefficiencies in the application of time or that improvements are needed, then we need to begin to define what success looks like and formulate alternatives to get there. Regardless of the change that is to be the end product of this analysis, one thing is certain: without a mindset change to adopt the improvements there will be no change. Bad habits are hard to break. Anyone who has tried to stop smoking or lose weight can attest to the fact that a change in behavior is the only way to insure success. The rut of bad time management is more of a canyon than the typical wagon wheel rut which spawned this analogy.
The most typical method of prioritizing time is the simple A-B-C Method. This is intuitive and built into some popular calendaring systems such as Microsoft Outlook® and others. Tasks are simply allocated a priority of High, Normal or Low depending on a subjective assignment when the task is assigned or accepted. Higher priority tasks are tackled first and others are given a secondary allocation of time. Obviously, there must be a consideration of the really important tasks and not just an implied or false sense of urgency. It sometimes requires some counter-intuitive application of logic to sort this out. For example, we have been conditioned that a ringing telephone is urgent, even though the message received when answering may not be important. It takes a split-second analysis of the possible importance of the phone call relative to the task currently being performed before responding. Engaging in an A-Level priority probably supersedes the interruption of thought processes by picking up the phone. One problem in this method of prioritizing can be sorting out between long-term and short-term time resources in completion of tasks. An A-Level priority can overshadow other A-Level tasks if the time to complete exceeds that available for all tasks. The untouched C-Level priority can become more urgent as time passes.
Managing complex processes requires more exacting time measuring and predicting techniques. A Gantt Chart, usually represented by a bar chart with tasks measured on a time axis, indicates the priority of the activity along with an indication of prerequisite tasks to be started prior to other tasks. Often complex projects require a determination of the critical path for activities in order to move toward completion without delay. A PERT Chart is one methodology for analysis of critical path which optimizes time estimates, but often the times can be relative and not an exact depiction of actual time to complete. These tools are useful to keep in mind since personal tasks can mushroom into projects involving other people’s time, but for most desktop prioritization this degree of complexity is overkill.
The simplest method of visualizing both the relative urgency and importance of an item is using the Eisenhower Matrix. This is a four quadrant representation of time allocations in which the highest Priority I tasks are those which are determined to be both Urgent and Important such as deadline driven jobs. The lowest Priority IV tasks are those which are Not Urgent and Not Important such as purely pleasurable activities.
It may be easier to measure other resources and most of us maintain some sort of budget of our money. It really is not any harder to budget time, but the problem is dealing with it as a precious commodity. Unlike our financial assets which can be recovered or replenished, time is a limited resource which we can spend only once and then it is gone forever.
Well, I would write more on the topic, but it looks like I am out of time.