MANAGING STRESS: Time Management (PART 2)
Plan the Work, Then Work the Plan
Make Good Lists for Effective Prioritization
Time management matrix is essentially about prioritization, and virtually every time management expert focuses on the importance of prioritizing and rescheduling, usually in the form of a daily or weekly “to-do” list, a “next action” listing, or a defect tally checklist. The basics of good lists are simple: create and review them every day, ideally at the same consistent time; keep them visible; and use them as a guide to action. One of the important rules is to write all your to-do items on a master list or lists kept together, rather than jotting them down on miscellaneous scraps of paper. You may want to keep your list on a separate planner, your mobile phone or laptop computer.
Perhaps the more difficult challenge is to determine what goes on the list and how to prioritize it. Contrary to some traditional time management advice, you do not want things on the top of your mind, unless you are working on them. Some people, students in particular, often try to just keep their to-do list in their heads. That rarely works well. Effective time managers collect and organize their tasks where they can be reviewed and serve as a reminder, but then do not have to be stored in their minds.
Once you’ve collected your to-do list, most experts recommend you review not just routine items but everything that has high priority today or might not get done without special attention. It is suggested that you may use what is called the ABC method: assigning an A to a high-priority item, a B to an item of medium priority, and a C to low priority items. To use the ABC system effectively, you should ensure you are incorporating not just short-term but long-term items, derived from your lifetime goals. Most importantly, always start with As, not with Cs, even when you have just a few minutes of free time. The essence of effective time management is to direct your efforts to high priorities. That is easily stated but exceedingly hard to do.
Ask “What’s The Next Action”?
The most critical question for any to-do item you have collected is: What is the next action? Consideration of that step is one of the most powerful mind-sets of effective time management. Many people think they have determined the next action when they write it down or note something like “set meeting.” But in this instance, “set meeting” is not the next action because it does not describe a physical behavior. What is the first step to actually setting a meeting? It could be making a phone call or sending an email, but to whom? Decide. If you don’t, you simply postpone the decision and create inefficiency in your process because you will have to revisit the issue and will have it hanging over you. The next action is truly the next physical visible activity that needs to be engaged in to move toward completion. This is not just a listing of the item or demand but specifically the next action step.
w
Know Yourself and Your Time Use
Consistent with the section above on self-awareness, a principle that is included in almost every good time management discussion is that you have to know yourself and your style. While I will not recommend you monitor every minute of your time, some documented record of how you currently spend your time is certainly a useful exercise. One good strategy is to record your time selectively, keeping track of particular problem items you feel are consuming an inordinate amount of time.
Each of us has both external and internal prime time. Internal prime time is that time of the day when we typically work best – morning, afternoon, or evening. External prime time is the best time to attend to other people – those you have to deal with in classes, at work, or at home. Internal prime time is time when you concentrate best. If you had to pick the two hours of the day when you think most clearly, which will you pick? The two hours you select are probably your internal prime time and you should aim to save all your internal prime time for prime high-priority projects.
Interestingly, studies have shown that most business people pick the first couple hours at work as their internal prime time, yet this is usually the time they read the newspaper, answer routine mail, get yesterday’s unanswered emails and voice mails, and talk to colleagues and employees. It would be much better to save such routine tasks for non-prime hours.
Fight Procrastination
It is hardly provocative to point out that procrastination is a major stumbling block everyone faces in trying to achieve both long and short-term goals. Procrastination is the familiar situation when you have written down and prioritized a critical A task and just can’t seem to get started on it. Instead, we may resort to doing a bunch of C priority tasks, like straightening the desk, checking our email, or reading a magazine, to avoid focusing on the on the A task.
One strategy to avoid this common human scenario is what Alan Lakein calls the Swiss Cheese Method. This Swiss Cheese Method refers to poking holes in the A project and those holes are what Lakein calls instant tasks. An instant task requires 5 minutes or less of your time and makes some sort of hole in your high priority task. So in the 10 minutes before you head off to class, you have time for two instant tasks. To find out what they should be, (1) Make a list of possible instant tasks and (2) set priorities. The only rule for generating instant tasks is that they can be started quickly and easily and are in some way connected to your overwhelming A project.
Perhaps the nicest thing about the Swiss Cheese Method is it does not really matter what instant tasks you ultimately select. How much of a contribution a particular instant task will make to getting your A project done is far less important than to do something, anything, on that project. Whatever you choose, at least you would have begun.
The 2-Minute Rule
One of the great traditions of many families with young children is the “5-second-rule.” The 5-second rule holds that if a piece of food accidentally ends up on the ground it can still be eaten safely, provided it was retrieved in less than 5 seconds. While the 5-second rule is actually nonsense, the 2- minute rule is a functional and rational approach to time management. The 2-minute rule suggests that any time demand that will take less than 2 minutes should be done now. The logic is it will take more time to categorize and return to it than it will to simply do it immediately. In other words, it is right at the efficiency cut-off. If the thing to be done is not important, throw it away. If you are going to do it sometime, do it now. Getting in the habit of following the 2-mimute rule can be magic in helping you avoid procrastination. Do it now if you are ever going to do it at all.
…………………………………………………………………….
