How to do an 8-hour job in 5 hours

Or how not to work like a dog.

A lot of people who are salaried employees seem to think that the best way to impress bosses (and friends and colleagues) is to be seen to be working for very long hours.

It's a myth promoted by incompetent bosses who themselves think that working LONG instead of working SMART would impress their bosses.

Yes, everyone has a boss.

I do, too. My clients. Not to mention my family.

Actually, everyone wants to look SMART. Even clients, who have their own bosses to impress.

Just that they haven't quite worked out how to work SMART. Every day. For 250 days in a year. (Sure, if you work SMART, you can take long breaks.)

The problem starts with the evaluation system in most organizations.

Most of them don't have one. Or even if they do, the Key Performance Indicator or Key Result Area or Management by Objective or whichever term they like to use... is so vague that no one can measure it at the end of the year. Like most mission and vision statements.

Vague. And changeable. The goal post has a way of shifting when it comes to evaluation time.

In an environment like that increments and promotions are left to perceptions.

But there is a way to beat the system. Work SMART, not LONG. Everyday.

Everyone wants a SMART person on their team. And this lies at the heart of getting an eight-hours-a-day job done in five hours. Instead of stretching it to 12 or 16 hours. In the hope of getting noticed by the bosses.

People who work LONG are easy to recognize. They Love Overdoing Needless Groundwork.

They believe the longer they are on the clock the better they must be.

Actually that's not the way races are won. Not even the rat race. You win because you get things done quicker.

And because you always seem to be available when an important task comes up.

Save time by working SMART. (Be free when opportunity knocks.)

For every task, in your Things To Do for the day you have to do, work out the SMART Objective.

It needs to be Sustainable, Measurable, has an Allowable cost, is Reviewable and is Timebound.

Here's an example.

• Write three articles on the #TimeManagementMotorbike so that each article gets at least 10 + engagements and 3+shares by the end of July 2020. In nine hours of my time for writing them.

I could have stopped on the job list with write three articles.

Instead, I set myself a target I could measure and a time within which to do it.

Now, I can schedule appointments with myself to get that done.

Got how to set a SMART Objective for your weekly job list? (If not, call or WhatsApp +91 9831171401. Or write to [email protected]. Yes, it does take a bit of practice.)

Tip 2: Do not schedule more than 10 Things-To-Do per day

Leave items 3 and 8 on your Things-To-Do list empty. Never exceed 10.

If you do, reschedule some for another day in the workweek.

If you are doing more than 10 things a day, you could not have set SMART Objectives for all of them. Or you are breaking up the same task to have a longer checklist. A job list and a checklist are quite different. A job has an objective. A checklist checks that the job is being done right.

Recognize the jobs that are chores. Necessary for operational efficiency. Do them when your body is not awake. Or never spend more than 15 minutes on them. They are not what will get you promoted.

Schedule the ones that will affect your career for the time that your body clock is at its prime.

The reason you should leave items 3 and 8 on your Joblist blank is that new things will turn up during the day. Be free for Opportunity to knock twice! You will have three spare hours on any given day to open the door to those opportunities.

Tip 3: Appointments with yourself

If you've set a SMART objective for the really important and urgent things you need to do, set aside the time of day that you are going to do it.

Make these appointments as important as the meetings with others that you have agreed to be in.

A Thing-To-Do is a meeting with yourself. The time you require to do it is already in your SMART objective for that job.

Stop as soon as you've booked yourself for more than five hours. Reschedule the jobs or meetings that aren't a priority for the day to another day in the working week.

Try to keep all your meetings, including the ones with yourself, to 45 minutes. You are going to need the extra 15 minutes to catch up with your messages.

Oh, I didn't tell you? During the 45 minutes of your appointment set your phone to Silent. Even for the appointments with yourself.

The people you work with (especially if you share your work calendar) will be impressed with how many appointments you have each day. And, yet, how promptly you respond. Within an hour is a great response time to have.

And when that "this is urgent" or "this is needed yesterday" message comes along and you haven't got a SMART brief, ask for it. It's a very creative way of saying no.

It will buy you a lot of time.

When a brief doesn't have a SMART objective it has a way of disappearing.

If you have the time to handle it, and the person briefing you does not know how to set a SMART objective, draft three and ask them to choose. In the 15 minutes you had for messages. Don't waste time discussing it in person. Draft, and send. One of those SMART objectives will stick.

No really SMART objective is more than a tweet long. Makes them that much easier to draft.

You will soon be sought after. Because now you will be making your colleagues, or your boss or your client look smart.

You will also know what you really need to do. You will have the "freedom of a tightly defined brief."

Try doing something that is "super urgent" without a SMART objective and you can be sure that you will be asked to drastically rework whatever it is that you do.

Because you will get the real brief after you have spent your time working on it. Or you will discover that the "super urgent" was just lazy thinking masquerading as being urgent. It wasn't Timebound at all.

I hear you say that the day is so full of "meetings" with others that you don't have time for "appointments with yourself".

Be patient. The next article coming up on the #TimeManagementMotorbike series is How to make sure meetings start and end on time. Planned well, there is no meeting that can not be done in 45 minutes. (Maybe that's why Zoom offers 40 minutes free. Their contribution to good Time Management practices! Thank you, Zoom.)

Tip 4: Quiet Hour

This is all very well. But when do you do all this planning? I learned how to do it from Mani Ayer. Set aside a quiet hour for yourself. When you take no calls. Your most important appointment with yourself.

Depending on your body clock, you schedule your quiet hour in the first 45 minutes of your day. Or the last 45 minutes, when you are all ready to pat yourself on the back for knocking off more than 80% of the Things You Had To Do for the day. By the way, your "quiet hour" is part of your five hour day. You will find the rest of your day going smoother because of the time you invested in thinking about how you will work. For me, usually, the seeds of the ideas I need to flesh out through the day happens during Quiet Hour.

Tip 5: What to do with your Quality Time

If you do learn to ride the #TimeManagementMotorcycle well you'll find you are no longer having to "work like a dog".

You will have time for Quality Control. Of course, the things that you do in the 45 minutes you allocated for it won't be perfect. But now you have three spare hours to improve the quality of your work. To get feedback from your colleagues.

You have three hours to not trust Grammarly. (Of course, you should use Grammarly. Just don't trust it.)

You will have time for a second and a third revision before you send off your work, sure that you've done your best to meet the SMART objective for that specific job.

Soon, when you find that you are being able to do an eight-hour job in five hours, as you get better and better with practice, you will find that your Work-Life Balance has got a lot better.

But there will be more tips on that, for achieving a work-life-balance in my third article in this series on the #TimeManagement Motorcycle.

I look forward to your comments.

The best thing you can do to start riding the #TimeManagementMotorcycle well is to pass this on to others in your organization.

So that you can all have time for the important things in life.