The Clock is Ticking with Every Click

Written by Shannon Van Kirk

One of the most highly discussed topics when it comes to skills in business is time management. Everywhere you turn there is another book, app, planner, etc. to help you manage your time effectively and for good reason. When reaching to attain a goal, planning can only get you so far. You have to be able to execute the actions necessary in order to reach that goal. While all of these tools are wonderful, you can’t magically become a master in time management by downloading an app or buying a planner. To be truly effective and make these tools powerful, you have to be able to understand the different aspects of time management and how they affect you and your daily routine. So let’s dive in.

 

What is Time Management?

The ability to manage one’s time effectively and productively is a great skill in any aspect of one’s life, especially at work. What makes it so challenging for most people is that there are several different characteristics involved in “time management”.

• Awareness – Assess your time as a limited resource.
• Arrangement – Design and organize your tasks, plans, goals, and schedules.
• Adaptation – Implement performance monitoring, review and assess priorities, and change when necessary.

Given all of the apps out there for scheduling and organizing, arrangement is unsurprisingly the skill that most people are successful with of the three “A”s, or at least are familiar with. The more challenging, also unsurprisingly, are awareness and adaptation. Let’s be honest, it’s easy to put something on a calendar or a “to-do” list, but actually recognizing your own role and patterns in the activity and following it through to completion is more difficult to do.

The Harvard Business Review did a study that showed that people underestimated their abilities in awareness and adaptation by an average of 24%. This is important because awareness drives the avoidance of procrastination and adaptation drives productivity. These skills are imperative in addition to arrangement, which is probably why that app you paid for hasn’t produced the results you were looking for. You have to understand how you work best and then you can use those apps with that knowledge to make them work for you.

 

Building Awareness

Becoming aware of your own habits and processes is the first step in building awareness. Here are some ideas:

• Break your day into 4 slots, then monitor the activities that you do in those slots for a week.

• Identify the urgent and the not urgent as they relate to important and not important (see examples above).
• Also look at what time of day you get the most done and when you get the least.

Doing this will help you identify what time of day you do your best work and vice versa. Once you know this, you can schedule your day so that you complete your most important tasks or schedule your most important meetings during that time of day and arrange the others accordingly.

• Add up how much time you spend on each task. Is it more or less than you thought it would be? If more, is it something that you could delegate to someone else?
• Does the completion of your task affect someone else on your team? Outside of your organization?
• Identify potential bottlenecks or roadblocks that could come up in the process and plan ahead. How can they be prevented? If they can’t, who can you enlist to help to ensure things keep moving along?

 

Building Adaptation

Now that you are aware of how you work best, how do you implement it? There are many methods and theories out there to choose from, but here are a few that are widely recognized:

• Habit Stacking – This is a method developed by author James Clear in which you attach the new habit that you are trying to implement to a habit that you already do. The brain then, after time, associates the new thing with the thing that you already do as a “habit”.
  • After/Before [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]
    >> READ MORE: Habit Stacking.
• Pomodoro Technique – Break your day into 25-minute sprints and focus on one task at a time. Dedicating your attention to solely one task or event at a time will keep you “in the zone” and increase, not only the likelihood that it gets completed, but also the quality of the work that you produce. You can set specific 25-minute intervals and dedicate them to returning emails and phone calls as well. Setting a simple kitchen timer helps with keeping you on track with timing.
  >> READ MORE: The Pomodoro Technique.

• Add Detail – Add specifics about the task that you are setting instead of just a line item. When is it due? What should be included? Who needs to be included in the project?

 

Let’s Review

Most can agree that time management is a necessary skill in the workplace and one that can really help you propel your career forward. To do so effectively though, you must be able to apply all three of the key aspects: Awareness, Arrangement, and Adaptation. Look at the big picture of the task that needs to be completed and who needs to be involved, put it on the calendar, and then find a strategy to take action that will align with how you work best. If you’re interested in more ways to improve your time management, contact EAZ Creative today to see how we can elevate your business.

 

Further Reading:

How to Improve Your Time Management Skills and Succeed in the Workplace

Important Time Management Skills For Workplace Success