Not enough hours in the day?

How leaders can create time effortlessly. Jeremy Clifford is a leadership development coach, helping future and existing leaders to be more successful. Here he talks about some simple time-management techniques.

How do you feel when you get to the end of the day and you still have a list of things you haven’t got around to?

Being an effective leader doesn’t mean you have to take on more tasks and squeeze them into your already packed day, it is about making every minute in your day valuable.

Many leaders I speak with talk about prioritisation but when I ask them what techniques they use, I am often surprised about the lack of focus they actually have.

I’ve been looking at time management and prioritisation techniques recently as part of my leadership training, and thought it would be useful to share some thoughts.

Using time management techniques can?

1. Keep you focused
2. Make you more efficient
3. Increase your productivity
4. Eliminate unnecessary tasks
5. Help you to manage tasks at the right level of seniority

There is no shortage of techniques out there, so for the purposes of this blog, I am going to outline my favourites or the ones which I think are the simplest to put into action.

Let’s start with the simplest.

Eat that Frog:

This technique is named after a Mark Twain quote: “Eat a live frog the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Brian Tracy has turned this into a simple and effective time management tool - and one I was first introduced to when I became an editor and ran a small team of journalists.

What is it?

The technique is based on identifying the most challenging task you have to do that day (and often the one you procrastinate with) and you tackle it first thing in the morning.

Why do it?

?Because the first three hours in your day are when you have the most mental energy and your brain is at peak performance.

What’s the benefit?

This gives your day momentum, knowing that you have got the most difficult task out the way - the rest, as Mark Twain says, cannot be as bad.

How do you identify your frogs?

Frogs are important and not necessarily urgent tasks. Think of big tasks.

They generally require more time than other tasks - but if they take more than three hours - then break them down and tackle it over several days.

This is my favourite…

The Eisenhower Matrix:

Named after World War 2 American General and President, it is fashioned after his prioritisation model where he tackled urgent and non-urgent tasks.

What is it?

It is a four-box grid where you identify your urgent and important tasks in the top left box. Your Important but not urgent in your top right. Your urgent but not important tasks in your bottom left, and your not urgent and not important tasks in the bottom right.

Why do it?

By doing this, you will identify the tasks that need to be done immediately and by you (urgent and important), those that you can schedule (not urgent but important), those you can delegate to others (urgent but not as important) and those you can delete or do only when you have time (not urgent, not important)

What’s the benefit?

This helps you to prioritise your workload, and also to practise the art of delegation - in doing so, helping to develop other people in your team. It also provides a framework for a conversation with your line manager to make a case for when certain tasks should be done. Not everything can or should be a priority for your line manager.

How do you identify which tasks go where?

As with all things, make your to do list. And then you need to determine what is the difference between urgent and important. Urgent tasks require your immediate attention - it must be done now and there are consequences if they aren't completed in a set period. Important tasks are those that may not require immediate attention but may help with longer-term goals and therefore can be scheduled into different parts of your day or week.

This is a great tool to sort out your in-tray at the beginning of each week.

The 1-3-5 Method and the 3-3-3 Method

These two techniques help you to manage your concentration during the day while ensuring you remain productive.

The 1-3-5 Method

What is it?

This is a simple rule that ensures you remain productive throughout the day by committing to accomplishing 1 major task, 3 medium tasks and 5 small tasks each day.

Why do it?

It ensures you keep momentum during your day rather than getting bogged down on one task - and so helps to dispel that feeling at the end of the day that you haven’t achieved as much as you wanted to.

What’s the benefit?

Simple - you get more work done and in an ordered way, while keeping on top of all those menial tasks like managing your emails.

How do you identify your 1-3-5?

List all your tasks for the week - these may be tasks that have spilled over from last week or are tasks you do on a regular basis.?

You will want to include urgent tasks that come up during the day - but be careful to deploy your Eisenhower Matrix technique to this.

Once you have your list, sort them into columns according to big, medium and small - with a Big Task taking around three hours, medium tasks 1-2 hours and small tasks less than 30 minutes.

Also consider each task as you may have a task that may take a while but doesn’t need much mental energy, so you may reclassify that as a small task.

Decide which ones you will do each day by creating a to do list based on your 1-3-5

The 3-3-3 Method

What is it?

Pretty similar to the 1-3-5 Method. Except this first step is more time-bound.

Spend three hours on your most important project with some defined goals for that time.

Complete three shorter tasks - which are generally urgent or those you have been avoiding.

And then spend time on three maintenance activities that are needed to keep the wheels turning on your day, like jeetings or emails.

Why do it?

It manages a good workload balance so you get big and small tasks completed during the day.

What’s the benefit?

The same as in 1-3-5 - you keep good momentum. Knowing that you are only devoting three hours to your first task - recognises that the brain can realistically only concentrate for that long.

The other 3s in your model ensure you push forward on a diverse set of tasks and so contributes to that sense of achievement.?

So there you have it. There are far more techniques, but these are the simplest and easiest to put into action EVERY single day.

They will help you to work smarter, get more done, and build a sense of achievement every day.

Jeremy Clifford develops leadership skills through training programmes, coaching and mentoring. Visit his website at www.chrysalistransformations.co.uk