Time Management
Secrets

The experts tell all!

Martin Manser

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Author’s note

Learn how to use your time effectively

Know yourself

1.1 Start with some dreams

1.2 Think about your personal goals

1.3 Know when you work best

1.4 Track how you spend your time

1.5 Get on top of stress

1.6 Prepare to change

Know your work

2.1 Clarify your job

2.2 Stop putting things off

2.3 Keep your concentration

2.4 Overcome low motivation

2.5 Sharpen up your decision-making

2.6 Be flexible about where you work

Get organized

3.1 Clear your desk

3.2 Keep a diary

3.3 Set up systems

3.4 File it

3.5 Create an action list

3.6 Set a realistic schedule

Work better

4.1 Work SMART

4.2 Spend time to save time

4.3 Be proactive, not reactive

4.4 Identify the important and the urgent

4.5 Break down a taskinto smaller steps

4.6 Get it right first time

4.7 Respond creatively to problems

4.8 Life beyond work

Work better as a team

5.1 Learn how to manage your boss

5.2 Develop a balanced team

5.3 Work together harmoniously

5.4 Delegate effectively

5.5 Learn to say “no”

5.6 Plan better meetings

5.7 Run better meetings

Communicate more effectively

6.1 Think about how you communicate

6.2 Cope with email

6.3 Speak on the phone

6.4 Make better use of your computer

6.5 Make the most of the Internet

6.6 Listen carefully

6.7 Make good notes

6.8 Read more quickly

6.9 Think about what you’re writing

6.10 Write more clearly

Take control of your time

7.1 Create blocks of time

7.2 Stay focused

7.3 Keep your paperwork under control

7.4 Use slack time well

7.5 Deal with interruptions

7.6 Combat tiredness

7.7 Put it all into practice

Jargon buster

Further reading

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Author’s note

Thank you to Hannah and Brian Murphy for their contributions.

Learn how to use your time effectively

There was a saying in our home as I grew up: “Even a world leader only has 24 hours in a day!” We all want to make sure we live well, that we make the best use of our time, but it is limited for each one of us. How can we make the best of our time?

We all have different personalities and have various demands made on our time. Some of us are very organized, others less so.

Over my working life, I’ve learnt a number of techniques to help make good use of time. There are two basic ideas: one is to work efficiently – to see that I have systems in place so that things go smoothly, making the best use of the resources available to me. But I have learnt to do more than that; I also want to live and work effectively – to make something of my life, to make it count, to achieve something definite, good and right.

Over the 30 years of my working life, I have had to ask myself some hard questions: what do I want out of life? What do I want to achieve? What kind of person am I? How can I develop as a person? How do I want to spend my time? How should I value my time?

So this book is more than being simply about how we spend our time. It’s about how we spend our life. Here are 50 secrets I’ve learnt, divided into seven chapters:

 Know yourself. If you know what kind of person you are and what you want to get out of life, you can begin to set priorities.

 Know your work. Our business life is a major part of our lives. Knowing the underlying purposes of your job will help focus your attention on seeing how well you use your time.

 Get organized. Here are tips on working effectively, e.g. by keeping a diary, setting up systems and drawing up schedules.

 Work better. It is important to use your time proactively, setting priorities and working well at tasks, however small they are.

 Work better as a team. We don’t work individually, in isolation from one another, so it’s vital to develop good working relationships within a team with successful delegation and well-run meetings.

 Communicate more effectively. How do we stop all our time being taken up by email, computers and the Internet? Face-to-face and phone communication are also vital in good time management, as are good listening, reading and writing skills.

 Take control of your time. Effective use of time takes place as you learn to manage time well by remaining focused on tasks, minimizing interruptions and using slack time that may come unexpectedly.

If you follow these seven secrets you will know how to spend your time well, how to live effectively, how to make the most of the adventure of life. I wish you all the best!

You can learn to take control of how you spend your time.

Know yourself

This opening chapter will help you understand the broader issues concerning how you spend your time. Defining what you want out of life, what goals you have and when and how you work best will help you understand your overall priorities. This will then translate into the way in which you go about managing your time.

1.1 Start with some dreams

Before you start looking at how you spend your time at work, it is very useful to think about your life more widely. Do you have a clear vision for your life? What are you most passionate about? Answering these questions will help you decide on what really matters in life and so how you choose to spend your time.

Here are five ‘Ds’ to think about:

1 Drive. Think about what really fires you up. What motivates you? What is it that gives you energy and a great sense of personal fulfilment? What values in life do you hold? What do you care deeply about?

2 Dream. What have you always wanted to do? Where do you see yourself in a year’s time? What about in five years’ time? Dream some dreams!

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled” Barack Obama, US President

3 Develop. What natural skills, abilities or talents do you have that you could develop further?

4 Discuss. Chat through the answers to some of these questions with friends. Are you being honest or completely unrealistic about yourself. Are there seeds of some possibilities that could become real?

5 Define. It will help you greatly if you can set clear and positive goals: “I’d like to…”, “In five years’ time I want to be able to…” You can then break down these goals into more immediate aims, such as steps to obtain a qualification, gain experience or learn new skills. Think about what the next steps would be in order to fulfil the goals and aims that you have set for yourself.

Focus on what motivates you, the things you would like to achieve and what personal fulfilment means to you.

1.2 Think about your personal goals

Goals can be related to your work, to your family life or to life in your community. They might even relate to playing a role on the world stage. Whatever the case, it is only once you have set yourself a goal that you can plan how to translate it into reality.

Your goal might be, for example, “to become a partner in this firm by the age of 30”, or “to spend 50% more time with my family” or “to help underprivileged children”. Whatever the goal, once you have settled on your main objectives, you can begin to break them down into smaller steps to enable them to be realized.

case study Five years ago, Alex knew he wanted to work in Thailand: that was his dream and passion. He was already qualified as a teacher in his home country, but he needed further training to refine his skills and learn the local language. He couldn’t give up his full-time job, so he decided to spend an evening every week for two years learning the local language from a friend, and studying the background and culture of the country. His focused, practical steps taken towards this long-term goal eventually paid off, and Alex is now teaching in Thailand with a real sense of fulfilment.

A useful exercise at this stage is to prepare a pattern diagram of the various activities surrounding your goal. This is a diagram you creatively draw that captures what you perceive to be the main aspects of your central idea. To do this, you should:

 Take a blank sheet of A4 paper, arranging it in landscape format.

 Write your central goal (a word or a few words, not a whole sentence) in the middle of the paper.

 Write around that central word other key words that relate to it.

 Keep branching out various other aspects of the goal that come into your mind.

 If you get stuck at any point, answer the fundamental questions: who?, why?, where?, what?, when? and how? Doing this will stimulate your thinking process.

 At this stage, do not reject any thoughts.

 You can colour different key words to show which relate to each other.

 You can number the different key words, too, in order of importance.

Hopefully you’ll find it a useful way to think about your goals, what other aspects of your life they may affect, and get a clearer picture of what steps you’ll need to take to achieve them.

Define your goals and think creatively about the different aspects of them.

1.3 Know when you work best

Each one of us has a period of time during the day when we work best. It could be early morning, mid-morning after coffee, after lunch or in the evening. You should be doing the most important or difficult work when you are most alert.

When working out which time of day you work best, remember that eating a heavy meal can make your work rate slower, and so you are more likely to make mistakes. You should guard your most productive time and not use it doing non-productive tasks. The saying goes, “time spent sharpening a pencil is never wasted”, but you shouldn’t use your high-energy time to sharpen pencils!

case study Stan works in an office and knows that he works best in the morning. Every day as far as possible he completes the parts of his work that need more concentrated thought between 9am and 1pm. In the afternoon, he makes himself available for meetings or routine admin tasks. He has to be flexible to some extent, but he gets more work done by grouping tasks into those that need concentration and those that are purely administrative than by shifting from one to the other.

one minute wonder Take your diary and highlight across a week the one hour every day when you know you are most productive.

 Morning people. For many people, the best time of day is the morning, when they are most alert, have the highest energy levels and so do their best work. There are two well-known proverbs for morning people: “An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening.” “Lose an hour in the morning and you’ll be all day hunting for it.”

 Energy through the week. The same principle also applies to days of the week. If you work best on Mondays and Tuesdays, schedule routine meetings for later in the week.

For example, standing around in a queue at 8am waiting to hand in your car at a garage is frustrating for you if your highest energy level is at that time. If you can hand it in later in the day, once your hardest work has been done, then that will be better for you. Keeping as far as possible to this time will help you avoid becoming distracted by all the constant interruptions that can turn you away from fulfilling the task you have to complete.

You shouldn’t be using your most productive time on routine tasks.

1.4 Track how you spend your time

An important step in managing your time is to know how you are actually spending your time. A very useful exercise to work this out exactly is to record the minutiae of your day.

There are two ways of working out how long you spend on different tasks: one is to estimate, the other is to record accurately. The second way is better. If you do this for a day (or ideally, longer), you will probably be surprised that many tasks take longer than you think.

Set up a chart on hard copy or on a spreadsheet broken down into the following columns:

Description
Start time
End time
Time in minutes
Priority

For the priority column, choose a level of priority from 1 to 5, with 1 being the greatest priority, 5 the least.

one minute wonder Calculate the hourly rate that you are costing your organization:

 Take the productive part of each day, which is probably somewhere between 50% and 80% – let’s say 65%.

 Say you work 8 hours per day x 65% = 5.2 hours per day that are productive. Say you earn £30,000 per year; then double that to count in benefits and employment overheads = £60k per year.

 Divide that by 52 weeks minus 6 weeks for holidays/illnesses = 46 weeks x 5 days x 5.2 hours per day = 1196 hours per year.

 Round to 1200 hours and divide £60k by 1200 hours = £50 per hour.

 This means that you cost your company or organization £50 for every productive hour you work – an incentive not to waste time!

Recording this level of detail will almost certainly reveal things that you were not aware of about your working day. It may, for example, demonstrate that you spend more time than you had throught in travelling or doing routine tasks (one of my colleagues calculated that he spends a total of 15 minutes every day walking from his computer to the printer and back), or that you spend less time than you should in planning and thinking.

When working out the priority column, consider the following:

 Which tasks are central to your role.

 Which tasks could be delegated.

 Which tasks could be done more effectively.

 Which tasks you should not be doing in the first place.

Calculate your time on different tasks and your hourly rate with overheads.

1.5 Get on top of stress

If we had no stress in our lives, maybe nothing would get done. But most of us have too much stress – enough to make us read a book about time management! We find ourselves unable to make decisions and we lose a sense of proportion about life as we become more and more burdened.

We become frustrated at how little progress is being made on the project we’ve been working hard at, despite all our efforts. We think we’re too busy even to take a holiday. If such feelings are familiar to you, it is vital that you find ways that work for you to manage and reduce the stress in your life. Here are some guidelines (see also 4.8):

case study In Ron’s first eight years of working independently, he put in extremely long hours. He was often so exhausted that he couldn’t relax even when away from work, and his relationship with his wife and children suffered. His stress built up and took an emotional and physical toll. He eventually realized that he needed to learn how to build a more balanced lifestyle. So Ron scheduled in more family time. He also developed regular habits of walking around the block (5, 10, 20, 40 minutes depending on the time available) and developed a support group of friends who met regularly. He became more resilient and had ‘coping mechanisms’ in place to help him in times of stress.

 Schedule in regular times of rest. If you know you’ve got a very busy week, try to make the weekend or the next week less busy.

 Learn to say no. Don’t try to control everything in the universe: set yourself realistic goals (see also 5.5).

 Plan holidays in advance. A colleague plans a weekend away every six weeks, to have something to look forward to.

 Allow time to be with your partner and family. Schedule family time into the diary if need be!

 Take up a new hobby. Or volunteer to help a local charity. Working with others will take you out of yourself.

 Spend time with friends. Old friends and new friends.

 Develop a sense of humour. It’s one of the best antidotes for stress.

 Engage in physical exercise. For example, jogging, cycling, swimming, walking or dancing.

 Absorb yourself with the arts or music. Make time to go to an art gallery, the theatre or a concert.

 Attend to your spiritual side. Spend time in a form of prayer or meditation to help connect you with more than the physical world.

Think of practical ways to reduce the stress in your life.

1.6 Prepare to change

An important part of this book is to help you identify what you need to change in order to manage time more effectively. But do you lack the motivation to change? Here are eight ideas to help you become more familiar with the idea of change in your life.

1 Try new ways of doing things. Move beyond the “I’ve always done it this way” mentality. You can begin with something relatively small, like driving a different way to work. Set realistic goals to make a small noticeable adjustment. Don’t get off at the closest bus stop to your work, for example, but the stop before and walk the rest of the way. If you can do that a couple of times a week, it’s a start.

2 Admit you don’t know everything. I have been helped by the saying, “It’s a strong person who admits their weaknesses”. This means you will listen more, acknowledge errors and be willing to receive feedback and learn from mistakes.

3 Ask more questions. Remember your underlying aims and goals, and think creatively about new ways to reach them.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”

Victor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor

4 Move on from past experiences. Learn from your past, but don’t worry about specific events unduly.

5 Don’t be afraid of failure. The American inventor Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

6 Build in regular reviews. These could be in advance of your regular appraisal.

7 Evaluate your goals. An aspect of setting goals is so that you can see if you are reaching them or not.

8 Use friends to help you change. Gather friends around you with whom you can share your goals and frustrations. Allow them to help you and guide you where necessary.

Mentally prepare yourself for new ways of doing things.

Know your work

Alongside knowing what kind of a person you are, it is important to think specifically about your job. You need to be clear about your role and the responsibilities that you are expected to fulfil. We all need help at times to maintain concentration on all aspects of our work: to stop putting off doing routine or difficult tasks, to overcome poor motivation, to keep focused and make good decisions. This chapter has techniques to help you do that.

2.1 Clarify your job

We all spend a lot of time being busy, but it is important to stop and be clear about what our job is all about. We can then think how effective we are at actually carrying out our job.

1 Write down what you think is the general purpose of your job. For example, to lead a team in providing excellent customer service over the telephone.

2 Now write down the main areas that together make up the general purpose of your job. For example: leadership; monitoring statistics; providing customer service; training and developing staff; time management; and monitoring staff performance by holding appraisals and one-to-one meetings.

3 Now write down the activities that you need to do to actually fulfil the work in the main areas you listed in the previous point. For example, training and developing staff: maintaining a training rota and booking time out for the team to do individual training and booking staff on any compulsory training.

one minute wonder Think about your team, if you have one. Are you sure that you are clear about how your job, areas and activities fit in with those of your colleagues? Are you vague about what your colleagues do themselves?

4 Now think about how you actually spend your time. Using what you have written in the first three points, how much of your time is spent fulfilling the general purpose, the main areas you listed and the actual activities? What would you like to do less of? What would you like to do more of? Hopefully, you are spending most of your time in this way, rather than in general administration, for example (unless this is your job).

5 If you work as part of a team, be clear about how your job, areas and activities fit in with those of your colleagues, your boss and any subordinate people working for you.

6 Review the first four points regularly with your boss and at your appraisals. Such meetings can be useful occasions for you to consider, for example, what is preventing you from fulfilling your main purpose and discover where you are getting sidetracked into other areas or activities.

Make sure that you actually spend most of your time on the main part of your job.

2.2 Stop putting things off

You may be the kind of person who constantly puts off doing tasks that are boring or difficult. The longer you delay getting round to the tasks, the greater will be your resistance to them and, therefore, the harder it will be to actually complete them.

You may avoid doing a task for various reasons: the job is boring or routine; the task is too difficult; the work has no deadline; the goals are unclear; or you simply have so many things to do that you don’t know where to start. Or you may be afraid of failure or rejection if you perform badly.

In certain circumstances, it is right to make a decision not to undertake a task: when you need to collect all the information or when you need time to think. But, on many other occasions, it simply boils down to delaying doing something.

Here are some ways to help you break through the barrier of extended procrastination:

“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again”

Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American statesman and polymath

1 Break a large task down into more manageable sections (see Secret 4.5). Tackle one part, not necessarily the first part. The fact that you have completed a small section will then make you feel better about the whole.

2 Start on the hardest part. Do this in your most productive, high-energy time (see 1.3).

3 Give yourself a reward, but only after you have actually completed a task.

4 Work on routine tasks in your least productive time or as a break from periods of concentrated activity.

Procrastination ultimately makes a job more difficult.

2.3 Keep your concentration

We’ve all known times when our energy levels have decreased and we’ve lost motivation to complete a task. You need to set yourself realistic targets that use your skills and help you work well. Use rewards, if you like, to emphasize a sense of achievement.

 Set yourself a goal. “By coffee break, I want to have achieved…”. The goal should be challenging and should stretch you slightly, but it shouldn’t be too demanding or unrealistic. Plan to have a break after you have met your target and completed the task; resist the urge to take sudden unplanned breaks.

case study My aim in writing this book was to complete four units each day. In this unit, for example, I wrote rough notes for the area I wanted to cover and then wrote this case study – I found it’s easier to work from a specific example back to general principles – and finally the main text and intro. I tried not to interrupt myself by checking emails and, after finishing, read through the unit and looked at its place in the sequence. Writing took different amounts of time, depending on the subject of the unit, but I found setting a specific target helpful. I gave myself a break after writing two units and then after the day’s final two. The target was challenging, but realistic and achievable.

 Target a task. Ideally, your target should be to complete a task rather than simply fill a length of time, so say to yourself, “I want to have all the sales figures collated by three o’clock,” rather than “I’m going to spend an hour on the sales figures and see how far I get”.

 Give it a time period. It is helpful to aim for a task that’ll take 30-90 minutes. Anything shorter is too short to stretch you and above that could be unrealistic. If you complete the task quicker than the time you have allowed, then good. If you haven’t, don’t despair. Don’t give up or stop if the end is in sight. If you stop, you will lose the momentum you have built up and it will take you some time to regain it. Continue to work steadily until you have completely finished the task.

 Interruptions and set-backs. If you have to stop or are interrupted, note briefly – write or type a key word – where you are up to in your work, so that you can pick it up again easily. If you meet an insurmountable difficulty that stops your progress, set a smaller target and think creatively about a different approach to the difficulty. Or tackle a different part of the task and return to the troublesome part later.

Set a target to complete a task rather than simply fill a period of time.

2.4 Overcome low motivation

Try to become aware of why you have low motivation at times. Learn to challenge the thoughts that prevent or stop you from moving on and actually completing a task.

Here are some common thoughts about poor motivation, and suggestions on how to deal with them:

 “I don’t feel like doing it.” Do what you know is right, regardless of your feelings. The day I left my office to discuss what turned out to be my first book, I ignored the internal thoughts buzzing around in my mind of “why are you bothering to go to this meeting?” It was good that I did go, as that book later sold many thousands of copies.

case study Marcus found himself sitting next to the CEO of his organization on a plane. Rather than panicking at the thought of talking to someone so high up in the company, he challenged the thoughts of failure and fear that he might say the wrong thing. He outlined, gently but clearly, what he saw as the organization’s strengths and weaknesses and how he saw the company’s future. The result was that, a few days later, he got a phone call which led ultimately to his promotion. By being firm with himself, Marcus kept his nerve and didn’t panic. He took a risk and spoke up, which paid off.

“I don’t know where to begin.” Cut up the task into smaller, more manageable units.

 “I don’t feel like working.” Set yourself simple tasks to complete. Imagine it’s a task you enjoy. Be firm with yourself, but then give yourself a reward when you have completed the task.

 “It’s boring.” Set yourself a time limit to complete part of the task in, say, ten minutes.

 “I work better just before a deadline.” Okay, that may be the case, but you can still plan your time better.

 “I’m afraid I’ll fail.” Remember that the person who never made mistakes never made anything. Don’t panic; think what is the worst that could happen? Learn from your past mistakes. Be courageous. If necessary, learn new skills.

 “I’ve always done it this way.” Take a risk. Do something differently. Think outside the box. Change your perspective. Innovation is an opportunity to grasp, not a threat. Grasp the opportunity.

Do what you know is right, regardless of your feelings of apathy.

2.5 Sharpen up your decision-making

We all make decisions constantly in life – which clothes to wear each day, what food we eat and so on – but it can be difficult making decisions about things that have greater significance.

Here are some guidelines on coming to a decision. It can be helpful to write down all the choices you face. If there are a large number, reduce the choices to the most important. Ask yourself the following questions (I find it helpful to write down the answers):

 What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option?

You may need to put greater significance on some advantages and disadvantages to discern the way forward.

case study I was due to go on an intensive course in London for a month. I had to make a decision about where to stay during the course: at home, incurring four hours of travel each day; with my brother in central London; or with my uncle in the suburbs? I listed the various options, weighing up financial cost, travelling time, and access to computer facilities. Through analysis, I realized that the most important factor wasn’t cost or travelling time, but how effectively I could continue working. This informed my decision to stay with my brother, using my laptop and his printer and modem.

 What are the effects of choosing each option? For example, choosing a new job that would mean working a long way from home for weeks on end would have a significant effect on your family life.

 What would happen if you made no decision at all? How would that relate to your fulfilling your long-term goals?

 What is the time scale for making a decision? For example, do you have a meeting coming up at which you need to report your decision? If so, allow time to write your report. If you have no particular time frame, then give yourself one to spur yourself on.

 Who can I seek advice from on this matter? Ideally, you’ll seek advice from someone with greater experience than yourself, but any good friend can work as a ‘sounding board’.

 Think ‘outside the box’. Be creative and imaginative in thinking up further possible solutions. It might be helpful to take a break from the fine detail of trying to come to a decision in order to help you focus on the bigger picture at this point.

 Don’t ignore your instincts. What is your instinctive response to the different choices that you face?

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