Time Management Case StudyTime Management Case Study in a Time Challenged WorldIntroduction Time management is a decades old concept that has been taught in many different flavors by many different experts. It is also a topic taught by hundreds of organizations to their employees. Yet this continues to be one of the most challenged areas in people’s lives. How can something so well taught and so common be so misapplied? Many business professionals have significant challenges managing their time in an extremely busy and distraction filled world. Not only do they manage a work calendar, they often have family calendars as well. Family obligations may often occur during business hours or business obligations may occur during evening, non-traditional work hours. Finding a system that works for you is essential to managing your schedule and ensuring all priorities, both professional and personal, are addressed. I decided recently to take my own life as a case study into how challenging it can be to implement a time management system. I am hoping my challenges and lessons learned can be applied by others in shortening the learning curve to successful time management. I am a married man with 3 children. I am also an IT professional who travels often for my job. In fact, every billable hour I have works for 2 years has been worked in the road. I have taken almost every time management course throughout my 20 + year professional career. From Covey to off shoots to company tailored training, I have taken almost a dozen variations on Time Management techniques. I began using the Covey system – complete with the heavy, leather binder and the daily 2 page systems about 15 years ago. I practiced the prioritized task lists, copying each list forward daily, and even mapping the tasks to my value statements. I always wound up ‘falling off the wagon’ though. The effort required to follow the disciplined Franklin Covey system was just too much for me to follow on a daily basis. I am also a technical IT consultant – residing in a technical, mobile world. The techniques of 15 years ago don’t work well today. The purpose of this article is to covey some of the challenges and some of the lessons learned I have discovered through my journey. Thus, I found time management a significant challenge. In general, the challenges I felt were: · I lack an effective Time Management technical solution I have tried to apply a non-technology solution to a technology based life – it is doesn’t work too well. Mobile office – All billable work my company requires extensive travel. I no longer have the desk area and file area to help support an organized time management solution. Thus, there are several common themes that are challenges for me. These challenges include: Maintaining a valid and disciplined task list has been a challenge There are several changes I have made in my life to make the application of a time management solution easier and more effective. These changes include: Get into a routine. Stick to a routine that includes 30 minutes at the start of the day to plan the day. Review calendar the night before Being in a different time zone, meetings are often scheduled before 8 AM or over the typical lunch time. Active maintenance of Task List in MS Outlook Comparison between my mom and my wife. I was raised to be a multi-tasker. I was taught the human mind can handle many simultaneous tasks and can accomplish them with equal quality. Experience has taught me the folly of this theory. I am now much more of a linear thinker and doer. If I manage m task list one task at a time, I feel I am much more productive and much less stressed. Tools I have used in my life The changes described above carry with them some implicit tools that have also helped in my journey. The tools I have found most useful include: Implement a time management plan. I used to be a “messy desk is a sign of a hard worker” person. I now subscribe to the organized desk is a productive desk person. Find out where you’re wasting time. This activity was a challenge. I did find that I was wasting time when I would try to multi-task – as I was having to ‘shift gears’ more often. I do my best thinking during linear events. When I am able to focus on one activity and devote my entire energy towards that activity. Get in the habit of setting time limits for tasks. This was also a challenge to implement. It requires you to give more thought to each task on your to do list – as you need to understand the anticipated effort to complete a task. While I have applied many changes in my life, there are some changes that I still need to make. These changes include: · When I am billable, blocking out my calendar to reflect my lack of availability. Better organizing my systems I need to better implement a time management/task management system and properly apply the discipline of interacting with the system to help my time management. · Getting things done by putting them off till tomorrow This is an effective email management system that involves organizing your emails into a couple of different batches. Respond to today and respond to tomorrow. I have found that making too many changes to quickly only makes the likelihood for success lower. Small changes, properly and effectively applied help much more that drastic changes. There are many obvious benefits to using a disciplined, effective time management system. Some of these benefits include: · Peace of mind · Less stress · Better productivity · Appearance of competence – the more organized you are, the better (more affective) you look. Conclusion Time management is a must. Finding the right combination of tools and methods is key to keeping time management a reality in your professional and personal life. Sean Pritchard is a 40 year old business professional residing in Sacramento, California. Successful Time Management For Dummies
Do you need help with time management? Need to better manage your time at work or at home? Feel like there are never enough hours in the day? Successful Time Management For Dummies delivers practical solutions for getting organized, working better and faster, reducing stress, and getting rid of time-wasting distractions. You-ll find out how to eliminate late nights at the office and spend more time with your family, friends, or even just yourself! This authoritative, plain-English guide shows you how to set yourself up for success, overcome common time management obstacles, and focus your efforts on your most important tasks and objectives. It explains how to determine the value of your time, provides fantastic tips on streamlining your workspace to speed up the flow, and even helps you minimize or eliminate interruptions from your workday. You-ll discover how to:
At work or at play, don-t let time pass you by. Get Successful Time Management For Dummies and make the most of every precious minute! Rating:  List Price: $ 19.99 Price: Check out these organize time management images: Stream of Consciousness Image by jurvetson In preparation for the MLab Management 2.0 conference, Gary Hamel paraphrased a brainstorming interview we did in advance about how large organizations could become more innovative, adaptive and engaging (edit: to clarify, these were my inputs): Flaws Large group sizes working on any project and/or involved in most important decisions, and all sustaining the same business model (vs. competing to develop alternative concepts). Work organization patterns that systematically eliminate options more than a standard deviation away from the mean. Promotion and reward mechanisms that favor convergence to the mean and “playing well with others” over bold moves. Fixes Many (competing) small teams of 3-5, then reorient decision making to support selection of “winning” project ideas. Four tenets jump to mind if we consider the Wisdom of Crowds as an emergent phenomenon, operating at a higher level of abstraction: 1) team (thinking style) diversity is more important than individual ability 2) disagreement is more important than consensus 3) and the voting policies and selection mechanisms that you put in place are more important than the coherence or even the comprehensibility about what you do. 4) The role of upper management is to tune the parameters of communication Hire and build organizations to sustain group (hive) learning over individual learning, by consciously assembling teams of MIN 3 and MAX 7 with very diverse approaches. Number of teams you assign depends on the range of probability that you’ll get a very different, compelling answer out of one of them. Structure the organization for more failure and greater selection of non-normative choices through difference-seeking voting policies and more observation of – and experimentation with – “perturbations” (vs. predictive extrapolation). Other DFJ uses voting methods that allow a vocal minority to overrule a wishy-washy majority, if the goal is to advance a very different concept. (“Passion-weighted vote”; “Silver bullets”). You might improve a corporation’s ability to allocate resources across a more diverse portfolio of ideas if you can put those decisions in the hands of executives not vested in day-to-day execution of the initiatives (as the venture model – or Richard Branson – does). Firms need to cross the threshold of accepting that they’ll be wrong more than 50% of the time when pursuing disruptive innovation, and therefore need to swing for the fences more often to make up for more losers. Pen, Diary and Glasses Image by Generationbass.com roughly organized Image by lauren_pressley |
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