If only there were more hours in a day...

There is no winner or loser in the game of time management. You've either used your time wisely or you haven't practised enough discipline to do so.

Senior executives and managers have a lot of trouble managing their time. There is no doubt that work from home (WFH) is here to stay. As a leader, you must think about whether your employees are working as efficiently as they could while working from home. Embracing change is a good thing, but working from home can be both good and bad, especially now that WFH doesn't have as many rules about when employees can work. Is this a good thing or a bad thing for productivity? It's also important that you don't make your employees too busy.

One of the hardest things to do for yourself is to figure out how well you are managing your own time. Is there a way for you to help your team? You can't hold yourself accountable for how well you use your time if there aren't any other people in your company who can push back on you.

At the top of the organizational pyramid, time management that boosts productivity and motivation starts. As a result, a lot of leaders who are in charge of developing or implementing the organization's strategy end up wasting a lot of time on other things. It's a waste of time and an opportunity to work 50, 60, or 70 hours a week if you work that hard. So, your time management responsibilities go beyond just making sure that your team or department stays on track. Keep track of your progress as well.

Here is a great source I found on Forbes.com titled: Effective Time Management Starts With Leaders Holding Themselves Accountable

One Time Management System For All

This isn't about micromanaging. It's about creating a framework and using a set of tools that track progress on an organizational and individual level.

At my organization, we follow?The 4 Disciplines of Execution ?system. The first step is to set out your organization's wildly important goals (WIGs).?Being able to identify what's important and valuable to achieve is crucial. You don't need to follow the 4 disciplines; that's not the point. The point is, if you aren't spending time on the right stuff, you are unnecessarily wasting your time.?

Whatever system your organization uses, it has to be a formal framework that everyone shares. Without a shared framework for tracking progress, it's impossible to hold anyone accountable for how they're using their time. That's the fourth discipline: creating a "cadence of accountability."??

A System That Fosters Self-Accountability

An effective accountability system needs transparency. A system that generates a cadence of accountability is one that creates a positive, supportive atmosphere where people hold themselves accountable. Self-accountability is particularly important for anyone in a senior position, where there may be too few people willing or able to speak up.

For a senior leader looking for tools of self-accountability, transparency needs to flow up and down. So I have weekly meetings with other senior leaders where we review our metrics and progress. In our weekly revenue meeting, they can hold me accountable if marketing is off-track in meeting its contribution to monthly revenue goals.?

When I have the weekly status meeting with my team, I'm the first one to go over my tasks and goals. I'm the first one to let the team know whether I'm focusing on the right stuff. We have a shorter, mid-week check-in meeting too, which helps keep things from steering too far off course. I also go first at that meeting. If I'm off-track, this transparency with the team is part of my self-accountability. It's also about being an example for the department.

Get Self-Accountable In A Way That Makes You The Example

You've got to leave your ego, pride, or whatever you call it, at the door with your team. It's not easy to do, but it's essential. Be humble enough to say when you’ve missed the mark or need help to make progress. We've got to own it when we're in that position. You set a powerful example of engagement and teamwork that others can follow.

When you're a visible, active participant in the time management framework, you're building an open environment—one where people are comfortable sharing what they're working on and where they're at with it. You can't create a cadence of accountability without it.

Visible Self-Accountability Staves Off 'Parkinson's Law’

Parkinson's law holds that work will expand to fit the time allotted to complete it. The scary part is, that it holds true that the more time allotted, the more complex we'll make the task.?

Having a framework that encourages visible self-accountability from the top down can limit the impact of Parkinson's law in a WFH world. It helps everyone gain awareness of where and how everyone else is spending their time, which can set natural boundaries on how much time a task should get.?

As organizational leaders, having an accurate idea of what those boundaries should be is invaluable to keeping us focused on the high-value tasks that align with the organization's WIGs. It may even improve our work-life balance.

Others prefer the old-fashioned method of writing things down in a diary. If you keep a diary, make a note of everything and fill in the time slots.

Some other useful advice is:

To-Do-Lists- We all have tasks or deliverables that we must complete. We attend meetings and take notes on what we must do. HOWEVER, if it's just a list, 'to do lists' mean nothing. If you have a list of key deliverables or tasks to complete, the most effective way is to put everything on a to-do list into a time slot in your diary, whether physical or electronic. After that, sort into the four dimensions listed below in order of priority:

1. DO IT RIGHT NOW
2. DEFER it, which means you keep it and schedule it for two weeks later?
3. DELEGATE it to someone else who can do it
4. DELETE IT FROM YOUR TO-DO LIST IF IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.

The key to planning is to schedule your 'To Do' list items in your diary/calendar. If you don't do that, it's unlikely that it will happen.

The 4Ds are second nature. However, for others, particularly in a corporate setting, it does not because people become preoccupied with their busyness. Tim Ferriss, the author of the 4-Hour Workweek and the Lifestyle Design Blog, talks about the busyness of busyness, which is when you get so caught up in "things" like emails, phone calls, and unnecessarily running over in meetings that by the end of the day, you wonder what you did and can't account for anything you did that day. So, what significance do you place on your busyness? Why do people want to be so preoccupied?

At the end of the day, we all have 24 hours at our disposal. What we do with it and how we choose to set this up, is entirely based on the micro-habits, behaviours, choices and discipline we apply to our lives.

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