Time

Questions for this week: What are the five tools of time management? How to assess if we have crossed stage 5 in time management? When fewer billable hours exist, the interest in filling the daily log sheet decreases since the matrix shows more % in non-urgent and non-important tasks. How to keep the momentum in increasing the value of my time?

Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can subscribe to the Building our Team newsletter (1600+ subscribers)

What are the five tools of time management?

1) Prioritization: It's the first step to creating high-priority tasks that will better impact the outcome you produce. It gives meaning to your time because approximately 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results.

• TO-DO List - You begin every day with a list with specific deadlines in hours. You keep assessing value and effort.
• Urgent-Important-Time Framework - This helps you put your priority in place. You can easily use this to organize the ranking of your TO-DO List.
• Scheduling - You control your time when you schedule your week. You master it when you plan your month. You can execute it atleast 75% of the time. A simple way is to use your log sheet by adding ticket numbers, meetings, and analysis. Craft each day to give you the highest possible value.?

2) Decision: It is making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. A step-by-step decision-making process can help you make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives.?

• Doing vs Thinking - You are a knowledge worker; more than 50% of your work will be brain work. Choosing between Doing vs Thinking is critical. This decision will decide if you do the task on time or get stuck. The thinking about dependency, complexity, unknowns, impacts and so on will play a key role while doing the task.?
• Ask for Help - Deciding when to ask for help and how to ask for help will keep you moving forward to complete the task. Sometimes asking for help could mean taking responsibility for your losses and accepting your failure. Famously said, "Failure is Just Another Data Point."?
• Data-Driven Decisions - The primary advantage of data-driven decisions is there is less to no scope for conflicts. Your confidence will be more each time you make the decision. You make proactive and predictive decisions.?

3) Elimination: An average professional spends 51% of each workday on 3 unnecessary tasks: commuting, emails and meetings. You can imagine eliminating them means you get 50% of your time back.?

• The NO List -?You must create a list of tasks you will not do or request you will not take. Your time is not free so use it wisely. It also means we should know when to say NO to our clients. The ability to let micro nos in a non-offensive way is a great skill to learn.?
• Removing unnecessary steps - You must cut each step of your tasks like a surgeon. You will find tricks, hacks and skills that will remove all the tasks' unnecessary steps—making it so easy to do that you will be able to do it in 1/10 of the time without any need for motivation or inspiration.
• Perfection -?Right now, It's your enemy. The client expects not to be stuck, not to be frustrated and not to do manual tasks. Before we delight the client with the wow factor, we must give them a pleasant factor and no complaint experience. Chasing perfection in one part of the service to break the system down in another aspect is a disservice to the clients. Stop Chasing Perfection.?

4) Communication: This is one skill that could make a 10X impact in your career. The better you are at listening, writing, and verbal communication, the more people, will perceive you as a better professional.?

• To Client/Lead/Team - Keeping everyone in the loop is key to a more extraordinary communicator. You have no room for assumptions when people depend on the task you said you would perform. Not telling in advance about the missed deadline is worst than not doing the task.?
• Updating Tickets regularly - The idea of communicating to your future self by updating the ticket with the reasons for your decisions, the challenges you have faced, the assumptions you have made etc. It not only helps you two months form now but also your lead and client will understand the reasons for your actions. It could save time in random calls, client meetings etc.?
• Effective Meetings - Meeting has been named as the most unproductive part of a job by many surveys and research in the world. It serves only for few people who want to know the status. So that information costs 6 hours for an hour of meeting with 6 team members. One solution you can try right now is to ask the question at the beginning of the meeting what three action points do we want from the meeting? Once you get it, stop the meeting and go to work.?

5) Anticipation: the definition is "the state of expecting something to happen (and preparing for it)" Imagine if you knew in advance that your outcome is 100% guaranteed or if this task is a waste of time. Wouldn't you have prepared accordingly?

• Surprises - Can you guess a couple of surprised in advance? If not, can you keep 3 blocks of 2hr each to accommodate a surprise? Can you keep blocks of time to accommodate bigs or mistakes? If you have experience from the past, you also know the kind of mistakes we often make. So why not make provision of time for those mistakes rather than acting surprised?
• Failures - Make alternative plans in advance for failures. Provisions for buffers, missed solutions and delays in execution should be accounted for in advance. Aggressive estimations should be discouraged, and feasible solutions should be offered to clients. Failure is just another data point for making future corrective decisions but based on the past failure, you should anticipate it in advance and communicate it well.
• Changes - Clients will always ask for changes, which is a sign of progress. Our ability to be flexible in making the change happen will give us an opportunity to delight them. This can be anticipated by preparing the answer, showing some examples and providing quick solutions in a reasonable time. When the client puts pressure, we respond like water. This means you really understand your client.?

When you are able to make 3 points of all 5 tools above nature and its more than 75% part of your regime, that means you have reached this stage. Congratulation!!!

How to assess if we have crossed stage 5 in time management?

Here is a ten-question self-assessment to measure it. Each yes gives you 1 point; if your score is eight or more, you have crossed stage 5.

1) Have you spent two months without worrying about managing time?

2) Are you responsive to random pings during the day within a few hours?

3) Can you say No to anyone and make them agree with your decision?

4) Do you feel calm while working and not rushed most of the time?

5) Do you welcome surprises with a smile?

6) Do you feel happy and high energy most of your day?

7) Do you spend atleast 1 hour per week planning your week?

8) Do you have brainless work ready while waiting?

9) Do you take time to prepare before each meeting?

10) Have you identified the 20% task that produces an 80% result for you?

When fewer billable hours exist, the interest in filling the daily log sheet decreases since the matrix shows more % in non-urgent and non-important tasks. How to keep the momentum in increasing the value of my time?

When the work pressure is less and you have more breathing space, it's best to take charge of your time.?

These are the opportunities you can be in control of and plan your day, week and months.?

You can allocate your days accordingly and NOT add non-important and non-urgent for the whole day. Spread your allocation and make your decisions wisely—this is the time to put the knowledge into daily practice.?

The answer to the question of how to keep the momentum going? You can design your day with a balance of important and urgent work. You should control your priorities and tasks, especially when the work pressure is less.?

Now, you flip the time logging exercise into a scheduling one and fill it up to see how well you can anticipate your work days—creating strategies and measuring the results in advance.?

The Game gets interesting, and you can predict how many hours you will be saving next week and which topic you are planning to learn about time management during that free hours to increase the value of your time.?

Can you share it with your colleague Today?