Life's a batch

If I were back in school and Time Management was a subject, I would probably have scored a D.

‘His attention wavers, must do better.’

Managing my time when I was a recruiter was a constant battle.

 These days I’ve come on leaps and bounds.

 Well, I’m probably now a C.

‘His concentration is improving, he knows his values, but could do better’

Talking most days with recruiters, these two seemingly innocuous words - Time Management - constantly pop up in their challenge bucket. It’s certainly not unique to recruitment - it’s every industry.

So, I decided to research time management experts. I wanted to interview someone who could offer some credible insights that I could share with others and benefit from myself.

It’s where I learned about Kate Christie, CEO of Time Stylers, an international speaker, and bestselling author.

I took the plunge and just spurted out, ‘I’d really like to interview you’. She said yes.

Here’s what we discussed.

Why do you do what you do?

 I’m very passionate about time. Ultimately, I guess my passion story around time is: I was working as a lawyer and then in corporate and was living by the ‘you can have it all’ narrative. It worked well for me until I had three babies in the space of three and a half years and the juggle became increasingly hard to sustain. I felt like I had backed myself into a corner where I had to choose - I could either have a brilliant career or be a brilliant mum. Either, or.

So I decided to opt out of my career and that was a mistake - because I loved my job. But what my decision did do was give me the head space to reframe where and how I was spending my time. It became clear to me that I did not need to have it all - what I really needed was to have all of what was most important to me. The rest was just white noise. And in curating my schedule with this philosophy in mind, I suddenly had plenty of time.

I don’t want anyone else to make the same mistake I made - no-one should feel forced to choose between a career or vocation they love and being a great mum or dad or whatever, the case may be. That’s why I am so passionate about teaching other people how to find and harness hours of lost time.

What’s the most important skill you can develop to improve your time management?

The most important skill is a mindset shift - move away from thinking about ‘time management' and move towards a mindset of ‘time investment’. We all have the same amount of time and no-one can buy any more. It’s the great equalizer. So, start thinking about your time the way you think about your money - as a precious resource that needs to be invested with intent for the greatest possible return.

Recruiters spend significant amounts of time on social media researching and sourcing for clients and candidates. It’s so easy to get distracted. Any tips?

Social media is the devil when it comes to investing your time well. So, people who must use social media as part of their work need to batch time into their calendar for that type of research process - for example, batch in 30-45 minutes for your research, and set a timer so that you stay focussed. When the timer goes off, take a break and then move on to a different task.

Recruiters can and should batch a lot of your tasks - for example, research, interviews, invoicing, billing, client relationship management and so on. Batching helps you focus on one task at a time, and the ability to single focus is a critical time investment skill. When your try and juggle more than one task at a time - multitasking - your productivity goes down by 40%. This is the equivalent of dropping 10 IQ points.

Get on social media but do it mindfully and don’t get distracted by the shiny objects.

How do you get back on track when you’re at your least productive part of the day (i.e. after lunch or the 3pm slouch)?

Be aware of your energy during the day. We all have peaks and troughs of energy and you want to batch your time and tasks to take advantage of the high energy periods and to manage the low energy periods. You want to use your best brain for your best work. Do your hard, important and strategic tasks when you’re firing. And then, when you have your sluggish part of the day, batch in your process-driven work - the tasks that you can do without the use of your best brain.

And you will come out of that slump at some point in the afternoon with an energy burst and that’s when you need to jump back into your higher impact, strategic work.

How should a recruiter time manage around the constant unpredictability of what can unfold every day?

Everybody has a degree of control over their day; some of us will have more control than others depending on our job or where we are in the hierarchy of the business. But you need to identify what you do have authority over and seize that. And this will give you an anchor and greater sense of control, so when the unpredictable comes up it doesn’t feel like your whole day is a random series of events.

And if you’re batching tasks in your calendar, always batch in a buffer for an hour to deal with the unpredictable. Aim for a set time daily. The unpredictable obviously won’t occur at this time, but by having a built in buffer, you can shuffle things around to manage the unpredictable more effectively without blowing your whole day completely out of the water.

As professionals we are interrupted roughly every 3 minutes and we need to mindfully triage these interruptions. Not all interruptions will require our immediate attention, and yet, 70% of the time we stop what we are doing, and we attend to the interruption. Create a personal triage system to identify which interruptions you need to deal with immediately and which you can park and come back to later in the day.

There are so many time management tools and hacks. What’s your standout one?

There are thousands of productivity apps and tools out there. And these types of apps are opened each day as much as dating apps. So. It’s hard to pick a stand out. My tip is more around ‘don’t go chasing after the shiny objects’. Your best point of reference is to think about who in your network already invests their time really well. Ask them what they are doing, what apps or systems or strategies they use, and then get them to show you how they use it. Find the tool which works best for you and then stick with it.

Have you coached or trained recruiters before. Did you notice any common trends?

Yes, I’ve worked with one well-known agency in Australia. The recruitment business can be phenomenally reactive and so recruiters often have a sense of being ‘out of control’ and regardless of how well planned their day is, this can often go out of the window because of the sheer volume of demands coming at them from a multitude of stakeholders. There is a constant sense of having to react.

One strategy that works is planning for your day and your week assuming that there is no sense of reactivity and taking a very proactive approach to your week. Batch in time for your most important/ strategic tasks; batch in time for research; emails; phone calls; admin and so on, as if you had total and absolute control of your week.

The idea of doing this is to help set yourself up for success. While you will never have a week with 100% control, the discipline of seeing your week in this way will improve your perception of control. And even if 20% or 30% of you week goes as planned in your calendar, that’s 20-30% better than last week.

What’s the best book you’ve ever read on time management?

One of my favorites is ‘Eat That Frog’ by Brian Tracy. The whole concept is to start your day by getting the hardest most revolting task out of the way first.

The second book isn’t specifically around time management, but it’s does tap into intention, mindset and mindfulness. It’s called ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl. It’s a phenomenally powerful book - my key take out from it is that while you can not always control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond. I believe any book that gives you perspective about your life and where you’re spending your time is going to be extremely valuable.

 Thank you, Kate Christie.

Kate will be releasing her third book late this year. It’s called 'SMART Time Investment for Business'. 

Kate consults to big and small business, government departments and C suite executives on maximising individual time spend and managing organisational drag through smart time investment strategies. She has appeared on television, radio and in print as a leading commentator on time management and maximising work/ life integration to ensure your success across work, family, community, and life.

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David Wolstenholme is the Founder of BrandMeBetter, a coaching and consulting business.

“I'm on a mission to help more aspirational recruitment leaders and recruiters build their personal brands, helping them to achieve greater business success.”