Effective Time Management

Time management is a hot topic of discussion with my reportees. If you are wondering whether if there's anything new to add to this topic, having already been beaten to death - by so many people so often, I wish to share my personal experience with time management - one that works for me. I hope it will be useful for you as well. I have been very influenced, and so is this blog, by Steven Covey's principles of 7 habits, of which time management is one.


Time Management, defined as managing time, is a very narrow definition in my opinion. Time management should also help in prioritising activities and this is where Steven Covey's definition hits the bulls-eye. These days multi-tasking is the need of the day. You need to resolve the priorities between the multiple tasks. These tasks can be classified as urgent and/or important. Given these two variables, there are four possible combinations that have been lucidly captured by Steven Covey, in the four-quadrant model. Without proper planning, you would be spending all your time on addressing urgent tasks(and this need not be important) resulting in low sense of accomplishments and high stress levels.



So how would you define a task as important ? The tasks which, when accomplished, take you closer to your goals are the important tasks. So before you get down to scheduling tasks, you need to define your short term goal. Define the activities that help you realise this goal. Depending on the level of responsibility you have - individual contributor, team leader, manager, general manager, you have many roles to take up, beyond the tasks of executing the project. For example if you are a team leader then you may have roles like mentoring people, architecture definition, project execution, managing the outsourcing vendors etc.



One of the critical roles for everyone, again taking a leaf from Steven Covey's book, is the "Sharpening of the Saw ". All of us, irrespective of our designation, always has some skill or other to sharpen. This is what helps us to do our current job well, or prepares us for a bigger role in the future.



So before we start scheduling the tasks, we have to define the roles we play. For each of the roles, define the tasks to accomplish in the week or weeks to come. One of the roles easily forgotten is the personal/family role. It could be to pursue a hobby or take care of the kids or do some community service.



I find weekly planning very useful and meaningful, as there is enough clarity of what's in store for the next week. I usually spend 15 minutes on a Monday morning, filling the tasks under each role. Once this is done, I start populating my weekly calendar with these tasks. A suggestion I have is to not pack the calendar, end to end. Leave some wiggle room to address any unplanned activities or interruptions. Make sure you spread the tasks under each role uniformly across the week - this will ensure that important but not urgent tasks also get equal attention. Again leave more wiggle room in the later part of the week. This is to address tasks that spill-over from the early part of the week. For the tasks under the "Sharpening of the Saw" plan, save it at that part of the day when you are at your best. The first hour of the morning works best for me, when there is minimal interruption and I am mentally fresh.



One of the advantages of doing time-management is that you get to control another persons schedule (assuming that the other person does not plan). For example if you schedule a meeting based on your plan, the other person who does not plan has little choice but to accept your meeting-invite.



The success of time management lies in discipline. Stick to the planned schedule. There is always a tendency to continue with the task beyond the planned schedule. Resist it. If the task was incomplete, because of underestimation or due to other distractions, then schedule to continue this task next day. By doing this you ensure that you are sticking to the plan, as much as possible and that you are accomplishing tasks under all the roles you have.



For the first few weeks you may feel a slave to time-management and that you have lost your freedom. DO NOT GIVE UP and go back to the old ways of not planning. When you continue to practise time management, I assure you,you will feel you have accomplished a lot more because you are not only doing the urgent tasks but also the important tasks that matter. Imagine the happiness you get when you see a smile in your kid's face because you promised to take her for a bicycle ride and you kept your promise.



Beware that you may not complete all the planned tasks. Even if you have finished only some percentage of the planned tasks, you would have completed some of the important tasks in it. This would not have been accomplished without time management. Keep practising it and once it becomes a habit the success rate of accomplishing the planned tasks gets closer and closer to 100%.



Before I sign-off I thought I will share an example to supplement the theory I talked about in the above paragraphs.



Roles - Manager, Supervisor, Technical Lead, Family Member, sharpening the saw.



Activities for the week

Manager - Finance forecast, Vendor feedback, Setting Priorities for the team

Supervisor - DPM sessions, One-On-One

Technical Lead - Design review, Datasheet creation, weekly meetings, conference calls

Family - Taking the daughter for badminton class, Attending birthday party, Disposing newspaper

Sharpening the saw - Reading Ethernet systems, Reading "Keep them on your side", Write blogs.



Now I can fill the calendar with these tasks and work on them over the week.



Before I end the blog, let me leave with you a fine quote on time

" Time is like a grain of sand in your palm. If it slips through, then you cannot recover it"



So practise effect time management ....







-Ram