Time Management | Where To Start?

The truth is, we cannot manage time — it’s a fixed resource. The day starts, and we get twenty-four hours. No matter what we do, time will continue moving forward.

However, there is one side of the time management equation we can manage. That is the activity side. What we do in the time we have each day.

The problem here is: The corporate world has taken over the words “time management”, and we associate it with work and, to a degree, greater efficiency and productivity. Yet, managing our activities in the time we have each day should not be the sole domain of the corporate world. It’s far bigger than that.

If you believe time management is only related to work, you might be proficient at managing your activities at work, but your personal life is a disaster zone. It’s this approach that needs to be reversed. We need to start with our personal lives.

What activities do you want time for in your personal life?

We can begin with the essentials: how much sleep do you want/need? How much time for showering, brushing teeth and dressing? What about eating? These are all essential things we take for granted, but they require blocks of time. For example, I try to get seven hours of sleep. I schedule forty-five minutes in the morning for my morning routines, and I enjoy cooking my dinner in the evenings — which, when I include eating, means I require around ninety minutes for dinner.

Then there are our activities. Exercise and fitness is important to me, and I schedule ninety minutes to exercise each day. I also read for around thirty minutes and take my dog for a walk — another hour.

When you add this personal time up, I have around twelve to fourteen hours daily for my personal activities. That still leaves me around ten hours to do my work.

Your work does not define your life.

Work is a part of life but not your complete life. When you look at it, if you work an average of eight hours a day, five days a week, your work life takes up around twenty-five per cent of your week. So, what do you do with the remaining seventy-five per cent?

What is your core work?

When it comes to your work, you need to identify your core work — the work you are employed to do — at a task level. Describing your core work in abstract terms does not clarify what has to happen.

If you work in HR, your core work may be maintaining the integrity of the company management structure. What does “maintaining the integrity of the company’s management structure” look like at a task level? What can you do weekly to ensure that this part of your work is done to the expected standards?

What about projects masquerading as tasks? “To facilitate the implementation of our new management structure” is not a task. It’s a project that needs to be defined at a task level. What has to happen to implement the new management structure?

That could involve creating the management structure chart, advertising positions, interviewing candidates, writing new job descriptions, and arranging a company-wide meeting to explain the new structure to employees.

Once you have identified your core work and defined the tasks that need to occur to complete your job, you can allocate sufficient time to complete those tasks. Again, you will need your calendar to decide when to do them. Remember, we cannot alter time; we can only manage our activity.

The advantage of creating tasks that repeat each day/week that cover your core work is you generate processes that ensure your essential work gets done. Even before you start the week, you know you have time to get this work done, reducing feelings of overwhelm and stress.

Pilots and surgeons use checklists for each flight or operation. These are highly trained and intelligent people, but they leave nothing to chance. Each flight or operation follows a process. It’s one of the reasons why flying is the safest form of transportation.

They know how long each process takes, anticipate potential problems and take steps to ensure risks are minimised. When you turn your core work into a process, you quickly learn how much time you need to get this work done.

Time dislikes a vacuum; your available time will always be filled with something. If you don’t control your activities, you will squander the time doing something meaningless, or you will be given tasks by someone else.

This does not mean resting on a Saturday afternoon is bad; we want to avoid living a do, do, do life; we need rest. However, spending a few hours on the weekend doing pleasurable activities such as a hobby, hanging out with friends or cleaning your home (well, I find that enjoyable) is more restful than crashing on a sofa binge-watching TV. There’s no guilt to deal with.

So, whatever you want time for, schedule it. Open your calendar and make sure you reserve the time for doing it. Identify your core work, and block out time each week on your calendar to get that work done. The simple knowledge you know you have time to get your most important work done each week will remove overwhelm, anxiety and stress.

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