Time Management

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Learning Objectives

• When you have completed this module you

will be able to define the key concepts
associated with Time Management and you
will be able to:

• Identify the main obstacles to effective Time

Management in your daily role

• Understand the nature of Time Management

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Learning Objectives

• Understand a range of tools, techniques and

concepts for Time Management

• Use these techniques to build an effective

Time Management process that will enhance
your productivity and lower your stress

• Explain the benefits of having an effective

Time Management process

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Introduction

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Time Management & The Organization

• Looking at time management from the perspective of

the organization what are the benefits:

– Improved productivity through improved use of time by the

personnel

– Better performance in terms of on time delivery to customers

– Increased profitability through better use of the human and

non-human resources

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Time Management & The Organization

– Improved planning and control of business

systems through time based management

– Better alignment of activities by

incorporating a time bound system for co-
ordination of tasks and projects in the
business

– Reduction of stress that arises due to crisis

management by reducing the incidence of
crises by better planning
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Introduction

What is Time
Management?
Time as a
Commodity

Essential Habits

Types of Time

Over & Under

Estimation of Time
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What is Time Management?

• Time management has five main aspects:

– Planning & Goal Setting

– Managing Yourself
– Dealing with Other People
– Your Time
– Getting Results

– The first 4 all interconnect and interact to generate

the fifth - results

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Time as a Commodity

• Time is the most precious thing we have

• Time is ultimately the most valuable resource

• Time and how we spend it within the

organization must be managed effectively

• Time is totally perishable

• Time cannot be stored up for use later

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Essential Habits

• Essential habits for good time management

are:
– Know where the hours are going
– Keep focused on the end result
– Work to defined priorities
– Schedule time for important issues
– Delegate routine tasks and responsibility for them
– Confront your own indecision and delay
– Take the stress out of work
– Keep applying the essential habits!

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Types of Time
• Time can be categorized into two types:

– Fast time
• when absorbed in, or enjoying an activity

– Slow time
• when bored with an activity or having a bad
time
• when scared
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Over- & Under-estimating Time

• Time for tasks or activities can be over-

or under-estimated due to

– Intensity of activity
– Level of brain function
– Length of gaps between enjoyments
– Fear or ecstasy

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Effects of Estimating Time Incorrectly

• Under-estimation of time
• Stress due to committing to too many tasks
• Poor quality output
• Deadlines may be missed

• Over-estimation of time
• Stress due to people pressing to have
activities completed
• Poor quality output
• Deadlines set may not match requirements
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Time Management Principles

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Time Management Principles

Time Management Principles

Spent Time Matrix

Quadrant 2

Time-Based
Management

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 Time Management
• Covey identified 4 waves in time
management

– 1 Notes and Checklists

– Recognition of the demands on energy & time
– 2 Calendars and appointment books
– Scheduling with some focus on the future
– 3 Prioritization
– Comparison of the relative worth of activities
– 4 Self management
– Realization that time cannot be managed - it is ourselves
that we have to manage!
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Covey,1989 16
Spent Time Matrix

Urgent Not Urgent

Q1 Crises Q2 Prevention
Important Deadlines Relationship Building
Planning
Recreation

Q3 Interruptions Q4 Pleasant Activities

Not Some Meetings Busy Work
Important Popular Activities Time Wasters
Trivia

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Quadrant 1
• Being in Quadrant 1 brings

– Stress

– Burnout

– Crises management

– Firefighting

– Focus on the immediate

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Quadrant 3
• Being in Quadrant 3 brings

– Short term focus

– Crises management

– Low value on goals

– Feeling of victimization / lack of control

– Shallow relationships

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Quadrants 3 & 4

• Cycling between Quadrants 3 & 4

brings:

– Total irresponsibility

– High dependency on others for basics

– Short career path in the organization

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 Quadrant 2

• Being in Quadrant 2 brings:

– Vision

– Perspective

– Balance

– Discipline

– Control
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Covey,1989

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Characteristics of a Quadrant 2 Person

• There are six basic criteria to allow a

person to function in Quadrant 2:

– Coherence
– Balance
– Focus
– An ability to get on with people
– Flexibility
– Portability
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Quadrant 2 Requirements
The basic requirements to reach Quadrant 2 are:

• Clear definition of organizational roles and specifically

your own role

• Selection of and focus on SMART goals

• Development and utilization of schedules

• The practice of daily adapting in work role

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Saying No and Quadrant 2

• To stay within Quadrant 2, there is a

requirement that you must say no:

– In a professional manner

– When items are associated with Quadrant 3 or

Quadrant 4 activities
• Not important not urgent
• Not important but urgent
• Will not deliver competitive advantage

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Time-Based Management

• Fundamentals:
– Focus is on time and resources

– Pre-analysis of performance

– Analysis of goals and objectives

– Systemization of processes

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Focus on Time & Resources
• For effective management of time there needs to be a reasonable
attempt made to look at the time and resources required to
complete a task:
Quality

Resources Time

• The quality of the outcome is directly influenced by the resources

and time constraints involved

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Pre-Analysis Of Performance
• The ability to learn from past experience allows time
management to improve performance

• The discipline of reviewing past performance allows

the organization to:
– Debug projects before initiation and subsequent waste of
resources
– Define critical points in processes which need to have
particular attention paid to them
– Improve the overall utilization of resources by capturing and
implementing best practice

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Analysis of Goals & Objectives

• By setting goals that relate to business

performance and conform to SMART criteria
the organization will improve productivity:

– S -- specific and well defined objectives

– M -- measurable outputs and inputs
– A -- achievable in terms of resources available
and expectations
– R -- relevant to the overall business strategy
– T -- time bound with an operational schedule
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Systemization of Processes
• The ability to design and implement
processes that allow consistency of

– Input
– Output
– Training and skill transfer

– Consistency allows for time to be gauged

accurately for activities which assists in the
scheduling aspect of capacity planning in the
organization
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Time-based Management

• Need to look at

– Is the allotted time for completion of plans realistic

for the person / team?
– In the effort to achieve results, is efficient use
made of the available time?
– For teams - how can the time available be used to
generate the optimal results?
– Is task-related time management appropriate and
realistic in the situation?

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Productive Work

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Productive Work

Busy V’s Productive

Indecision & Delay

Overwork

Urgency V Importance

Prioritization

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Busy Work

• Just because you are busy does not

mean that you are productive

• Differentiate between

– Effectiveness -- doing the right things

– Efficiency -- doing the right things correctly

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Busy v Productive Work

• Problem No 1: Procrastination
• Putting off doing the things that you should be
doing at this point!

• Solution
• List all tasks that you are currently putting off
• Remove two from the list by doing them now!
• Plan and set a schedule for dealing with the rest
• Reward when tasks are completed
• Punish when tasks are not completed on schedule

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Dealing with Indecision or Delay

• When faced with a task - decide to deal with it

according to one of the following actions:

– Do it

– Delegate it

– Dump it

– Deadline it

– Dissect it

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Busy v Productive Work
• Problem No 2: Paralyzing perfectionism
– This is a failure to recognize the difference between
excellence and perfection
• Excellence
• Achievable
• Healthy
• Satisfying
• Realistic
• Perfection
• Unattainable
• Frustrating
• Unrealistic

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Busy v Productive Work

• Problem No 3: Setting unchallenging objectives

– Objectives need to be set that challenge you in a realistic
manner and take heed of resource availability Otherwise
you are busy without any possibility of success

• Use SMARTS criteria where the objectives are:

– Specific
– Measurable
– Attainable
– Realistic
– Time-bound
– Supported by the organization

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Overwork

• Overwork can have effects that may be

classified as
– Psychological
– Physiological

• People are overloaded for two main reasons

– The person or team does too much

– The person or team have too much to do

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Overwork

• To deal with over-work, try the following

– Understand your pressures
– Don’t get worked up or panicked
– Don’t blame everything on yourself
– Walk away
– Estimate time as well as possible
– Agree priorities and keep them
– Remind yourself that there is a limited
amount of time available to you
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Urgency V Importance

• Differentiating between
– Urgent tasks
• assume importance as they demand immediate
attention
– Important tasks
• May become urgent if left undone
• Usually have a long term effect

– To judge importance v urgency, gauge tasks

in terms of
• Impact of doing them
• Effect of not doing them

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Prioritization Grid

Importance

Priority 2 Priority 1

Priority 4 Priority 3

Urgency

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Prioritization
• The main aim of prioritization is to avoid a crisis

• To do this then you must

Schedule your Priorities

as opposed to
Prioritizing your Schedule

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Crisis Management

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Crisis Management

Proactive V Reactive

Why Crises Occur

Anticipating & Preventing

Crises

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Proactive v Reactive Work

• Reactive work - concentrates on getting things

done

– Handling daily routines

– Dealing with urgency

– Resolving crises

– Handling interruptions
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Proactive v Reactive Work

• Proactive work - concentrates on making

things happen

– Developing plans and schedules

– Focusing on key tasks

– Achieving deadlines & targets

– Managing projects
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Why Crises Occur
• Checklist of reasons:

– Failure to recognize the crisis

– Underestimation of time required

– No contingency plan is ready

– No follow-up on delegated tasks

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Anticipating & Preventing Crises

• The most effective way to anticipate

and prevent crises is to:

– Set deadlines and stick with them

– Use interim targets and milestones to

break the task or project into manageable
chunks

– Build the schedule so that it is realistic

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Planning

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Planning

What is a Plan?

Information & Planning

Time Management Systems

Goals & Time Spans

Cascading

The Daily Plan

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Planning in Time Management

Rule No 1

Failing to Plan
is Planning to Fail

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What is a Plan?

A plan is a road map set in

real time to reach an
objective or set of objectives
through the use of defined
resources
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Information & Planning

Essential information:

• You need to know what you have to plan

• Once this is established

– Break the task into manageable chunks
– Gauge the time required for each chunk
– Schedule each chunk into a logical sequence

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Time Management Systems

• There are certain key criteria that need to be

applied to a time management system:

– Functional

– Portable

– Intelligible

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Time Management Systems
Pitfalls

• Totally dis-organized ‘system’

– Nothing can be located when required

• Perfectly maintained system

– Too much time is spent keeping the
system in perfect condition as opposed to
actioning the items contained within it
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Time Management Systems

• Key components
– Appointments
– Dated deadlines
– Tasks - to do and work in progress
– Ideas and notes
– Key task identification
– Personal information
– Financial planning records
– Crises log
– Project log
– Contact list
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Goals & Time-spans
• A time management system is ineffective if defined
goals are not available to work towards

– Strategic Goals - long term goals, perhaps out to five years

– Tactical Goals - medium term goals, from 3 - 12 months

ahead

– Operational Goals - short term goals defining the exact

action to be taken The schedule may cover hours or days

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Checklist for Goals

• Checklist for Goals

– Are they realistic and challenging?
– Have they been agreed with the manager and
linked to the performance appraisal system?
– Do you know what it will look like when you have
achieved the goal (visualization)?
– Are the goals important to you?
– Is there a time bound aspect to the goals?
– Are the goals SMART?
– What will the reward be once the goals have been
achieved?
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Cascading

• Planning levels should cascade as follows:

– Yearly overview plan

– Monthly Plan

– Weekly Plan

– Daily Plan
• Note that in the cascade, the time span decreases whereas
the level of complexity increases

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The Daily Plan
• The Daily Plan should cover three main
areas:

– Scheduled activities for the day showing time

allocated to each

– Identification of key tasks for the day to allow them

to be prioritized

– Indication of who you need to contact during the

day to allow you to complete tasks
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The Daily Plan
• When setting out the daily plan pay
attention to the following points:
– When do you perform best, suit your bio-
rhythm

– Build in planning time at the start and end

of the day

– Prioritize actions into ‘musts, shoulds and

coulds and focus on the ‘musts’
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The Daily Plan

• Guidelines continued
– Leave room for unexpecteds

– Don’t stack meetings back to back

– Batch telephone calls

– Build in quality time

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Tips & Techniques

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Tips & Techniques

Time Logs

Quality Time

Managing Documents

Managing Interruptions

Managing Workspace

Managing your Phone

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Time-logs

• A time-log is an effective way to see where your time

actually goes to during the working day Record the
information for about 2 weeks to get a representative
picture of time spent

• By logging activities and the time taken to complete

them, the time-log provides useful information that
can identify
• Accuracy of estimating time for tasks
• Time stealing activities
• Level of interruption
• Loading during the day
• Crises points / tasks

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Quality Time

• Quality time is where you can plan to do the

most important high priority tasks

• It allows for deep concentration through

eliminating interruptions

• It imposes a structure on work

• It allows you to move away from reactive

work to proactive work
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Dealing with Documents

• Document handling can steal a vast quantity

of time from our working day

• Improve your document handling by:

• Handling documents only once by :

– Act on what is required by the document

– File the document for reference later

– Dump the document

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Dealing with Documents

• Have a good system for handling your documents

that allows you to:

– Define what you need to keep and for how long

– Allows you to file materials easily and logically

– Facilitates access to materials

– Purge the files on a regular basis

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Managing Interruptions

• Try to reduce the number of interruptions by

applying the following techniques:
• Create a visual barrier at your workspace to reduce the
incidence of ‘drop-in’ visits

• Don’t have extra chairs in your workspace - people do

not hang around as long if they must stand

• For important work - move to another space so the

potential interruptors can’t find you!

• Tell people that you are busy, explain why and arrange
to contact them at a more suitable time

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Managing Your Workspace

• How our workspace is organized has an impact

on how efficient we are - try the following to
improve efficiency

– De-clutter your desk by clearing it at the end of each

working day

– File documents once they have been used

– Purge files regularly

– Organize a work flow system in your space

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 Managing Your Phone

• The telephone can be responsible for eating vast quantities

of time - control the phone by using:

– Batch your outward calls

– Delegate calls that you don’t have to make personally to one of your
team

– Terminate calls once the business has been done

– Set up a rota in your team for handling incoming calls

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Summary

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Summary
• Have a great planning system and use it

• Take on realistic goals an schedule accurately

• Do not over-commit

• Set and agree priorities to distinguish between urgent and

important tasks

• Build in some flexibility to cope with anything unexpected

• Control your documents, workspace and phone

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Summary

• Don’t procrastinate – Manage Your Time Today

• Define and use periods of quality time in your

schedule

• Learn to say No in a professional manner

• Stay away from perfectionism and aim for excellence

• Build in time for personal development

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