10x your time management

As a firm believer in Time Management practices, I worked my way through this chart published by @ChrisDonnolly, self-assessing my own approach built over years of bumping into different philosophies on time management as well as doing things instinctively and discovering it’s a recognised “thing”.

My primary target towards time management is productivity, and my philosophy is about being pro-active. Working reactively is a time burner and often unproductive, yet our days are filled with unexpected requests that have to be dealt with.

So how did I fare?

I mostly match #1 Oliver Burkeman’s 3/3/3 method which is supported by:

• #5 Biological Scheduling:
  • My peak focus hours are 9am-midday so I will either do a Deep Dive or Difficult piece of work in this time.
  • I am most restless straight after lunch. I need variety at this point, to talk to people, to walk around and get away from my desk. This is when I do all my “1 minute tasks”, see below.
  • After 1-2 hours of this, I am ready to focus again, and can then wade through several short bursts of focused tasks, so I get to the end of the day feeling like I’ve been truly productive.
• #6 Getting things done: I start each day with a fresh plan, having consulted my diary for
• (a) what meetings do I have today
• (b) what do I need to prepare for them and
• (c) what big tasks do I have to prepare for coming up in the next few days.
• (d) bearing in mind that some big tasks will take days and involve colleagues, I will
  #7 Break Tasks Down, planning out stages of work with ‘collaboration moments’ with colleagues who may also be contributing to the final deliverable eg a pitch deck.

The above helps me structure my day and get Deep Dive & Difficult tasks done. What of the millions of interruptive, distracting but equally critical activities.

I find #10 Two minute rule to be a fallacy. One action always leads to another and before I know it, I’ve lost the first hour of my day working reactively. To tackle the many little requests, I have created my own #11 “90 minutes of 1 minute tasks” which involves quick emails, messages, calls or dropping by people’s desks. This is my way of being pro-active about the reactive stuff.

Any request that comes in gets jotted down on a fresh page called “1 Minute Tasks”.

Before going to lunch, I consult my 1 Minute Tasks list and spend 30 minutes organising my afternoon:

• Anything that is a simple email response, I’ll fire it off there and then
• Anything that requires a conversation, I fire off a series of messages asking people if I can drop by their desk or call them for a 5-10 minute chat between 2-4pm. Conversations speed up decision making and resolution, as well as burn some restless energy and have some
  #4 Digital detox all at once.

After lunch, I do 60-90 minutes of calls and desk visits that I have organised.

Adopting the above approach helps me, following 30 years of work-alcoholism, to be productive during working hours and be able to switch off after 6pm. It keeps me focused, so I can respond clearly and thoughtfully when people approach me with questions.

Nowadays, most people I work with say how calm I am, and I take pride in this. Not only because it helps to engender calm and focus in the people around me, but also because it was hard fought-for. When I was a multi-tasker, I was definitely not calm. One person in the early days said the space around me was more like a Trading Desk. I don’t know how they intended it, but I was exhausted and felt like a Trading Desk. I wanted to be more in control of my day and to be calm – for my own health and the wellbeing of my colleagues.

In summary

I have crafted my approach to Time Management, using a combination of the recognised Time Management strategies. If you would like to take my assessment into HOW you manage your time, click on the link: An Exercise in Time Management.