Preserving the Most Precious of Resources: Time

In the business world, you can recoup financial losses. Time? Not so much. Once it’s spent, it’s gone forever. The challenge, then, is making the most of this precious resource, especially in an era when remote work and increasingly lean workforces are the norm.

How lean? This lean: Some 4.53 million American workers departed their jobs in November 2021 as part of what has come to be known as the Great Resignation, and it was projected that 43 million would have moved on by year’s end. That’s 25 percent of the U.S. workforce.

As a result, many companies have had to get by with limited staff. That means that as important as time management was before the pandemic, it has become that much more vital now. And make no mistake – it has long been seen as a priority. A 2018 IBM survey showed that executives viewed “time management and skills and the ability to prioritize” as the second-most important soft skill, behind “willingness to be flexible, agile and adaptable to change.” Just two years earlier, time management had been seventh on the list.

The bottom line is that every minute counts. Time management leads to greater efficiency, productivity, and, ultimately, a better bottom line. But it is an endless challenge, not only for the reason just mentioned but because employees are being pulled in so many directions. They have multiple hats to wear and multiple distractions with which they must contend, most no farther than a smartphone away.

So what’s a business leader to do? It seems everybody has ideas, one of which involves using technology to track employees’ time usage. Various apps fill the bill, not to mention apps that keep tabs on things like keystrokes .

If that seems as Big Brother-y to you as it does to me, perhaps the better approach would be to provide guidance for your team. There’s plenty to be found out there. One blog post on the website MOO.com covers all angles of time management , noting how critical it is to get enough sleep (eight or nine hours a night), optimize your workspace, and delegate your responsibilities. It also points out that planning out your day and week is essential.? Seems fairly common-sensical, doesn’t it?

Particularly noteworthy is the recommendation of a method called time blocking, where certain tasks are designated for specific chunks of time:

To time-block your day, you need to schedule the hours you have available and assign them to items in your to-do list. For effective time management, you won’t necessarily do the most important thing on the list first thing in the morning. Instead, you should assign your top task to the part of the day when you know you’ll be most productive. If you’re a morning person, that could be first thing. If you’re a night-owl, late afternoon might be when you really hit your stride.

Others have said the same thing differently, noting that it is important to identify one’s “productivity zone,” for instance. Either way, the goal is the same: Know thyself and the part of the day in which you might be most productive.

For those who might require a more regimented approach to time management, consider the Pomodoro Technique , developed by Italian entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. While still a student, he used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato (a “pomodoro” in Italian) to stay on task. That involved setting the timer for 25 minutes – one “Pomodoro,” as he labeled it – and working until that time had elapsed, taking a short break, re-setting the timer, and repeating the process as needed.

The issue of distractions is a considerable one. One study showed that in 2021 American workers spent an average of 44 minutes a day on social media, which computes to nearly three hours a week. Working around that is also a matter of discipline – locking your phone in a drawer, closing non-work tabs on your computer, etc.

Best-selling novelist Jonathan Franzen takes this to extremes . When he works on a book, he does so in an empty office and on a laptop that does not have a WiFi card. To further ensure he cannot connect to the internet, he glues a cable into the Ethernet port and cuts the cord, literally. That’s dedication. That’s discipline. That’s often what it takes to manage time effectively in a world that has grown ever more hectic.?

Whatever method you choose, it’s important that business leaders understand how important time management is – that they guide their teams accordingly.