Salient Sunday - Self management

Time management is a misnomer, the challenge is to manage ourselves – Stephen Covey

In J.R.R Tolkien's classic novel 'The Hobbit', Gollum asks Bilbo a set of riddles that would determine Bilbo's fate. One of the famous riddle is:

"This thing all things devours; Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats mountain down."

Bilbo rightly answered 'Time' and saved himself one more time from being eaten by Gollum.

The riddle also portrays the mightiness of time; that which has no beginning and end and is the only permanent reality. It is a great equaliser, fair to all - not partial to anyone or anything.

Moving from one classic to another, have you ever felt like the white rabbit in 'Alice in Wonderland'? The rabbit who is always on a race to catch up with the evading time, measured by the rapidly moving hands of a ticking clock. The humanly built timelines and defined deliverables often times see us in a rut of constantly chasing something or the other.

Knowing that time is finite, I believe it's more effective for us to manage ourselves rather than being constantly busy or on the run.

During my journey in the corporate world, I have met colleagues who have time for everything and others who are always on the rush and has time for nothing. Upon closer look, it always trickles down to the skill of managing oneself.

I have identified certain tools and techniques that are very effective in self-management.

Identifying tasks

1. Using time management tools to identify your long term and short term goals and breaking them down into daily activities is an effective way to achieve your goals. I have found that Microsoft One Note is a good tool for this. The pleasure of ticking off check boxes is one that you should experience by yourself.
2. Using Agile project management tools, not only for your projects, but also for your own personal time management. Kanban boards, one of the Agile project management tools, enables you to list down identified activities as backlogs (according to dictionary - an accumulation of uncompleted work or matters needing to be dealt with) . Once an activity is started you may move it to 'in progress' and once it is completed , move it to 'done'. This tool provides a platform to think through and identify tasks that could lead to the accomplishment of a goal and track the progress. There are several online platforms like miro.com that you may use for this purpose.

Prioritising

1. Once the tasks are identified, the next important activity is prioritising them in the backlog. In your life, you are your own 'product owner', you have to keep prioritising the backlogs in accordance with the value you perceive for each activity.
2. If you have the role of a decision maker, the best way you could help your team is not to delay the decision making. Thus, prioritising all the tasks that will affect the work of others is something all leaders ought to do. Once, I had a chat with my boss about how he manages his time effectively. He answered that he reaches office earlier than his team members and clears all the unread emails in his inbox by the time the team reaches office. This enables the team to act on the key decisions made, the moment they step into their office. From my experience, the lightning fastness in which he responds to emails that requires his decisions/approvals has helped the team to deliver tasks in a timely manner.
3. One of the most effective tools I have come across for Prioritising tasks is Eisenhower Matrix popularised by Stephen Covey. There are four quadrants in the matrix:

Do Now: Urgent and important

Schedule: Important, but not urgent

Delegate: Urgent, but not important

Eliminate: Neither urgent nor important

There are several templates available in the web that can help you with this. Understanding the various tasks at hand that are listed in your backlog is of utmost importance because you have to decide what is 'urgent', 'important', 'not urgent' and 'not important'.

Executing

1. Once the tasks are identified and prioritised, execution becomes much easier. You have firstly, eliminated tasks that are neither urgent nor important, secondly, delegated tasks that are urgent, but not important, thirdly, scheduled tasks that are important but not urgent and lastly, executing your most urgent and important tasks.
2. During the phase of execution, what has helped me the most is having the attitude of doing one thing at a time. Focusing all your attention and energy on a single task helps efficient execution.
3. Keeping away distractions is one of the most important requirements for accomplishing what you really want to accomplish.
4. At the end of execution you will move your backlog items to 'Done' in the Kanban board or tick it off in the Microsoft One Note. This is the phase where you will also constantly seek feedback to improve.

Though you achieve your personal goals, your success will be measured by how effectively you influence and inspire your team to deliver their best. In essence, you as a leader needs to be constantly communicating your organisational priorities and goals to the team so that each team member aligns their daily task identification, prioritisation and execution in accordance with it and resonates with your priorities and goals.