Walk the Week - Catch that Train!

As we enjoy the Easter holidays one certainty is that travel will be frustrating. By road it will be stressful because everybody else has the same idea, while train travel is equally difficult and annoying because so many lines are closed in the UK for engineering work over the bank holiday. If travelling by train it is best to be well on time to get a seat and a comfortable journey. We have probably all experienced the last-minute dash to catch the three minutes past the hour train which is just about to leave the platform at a major London terminal, running round people whilst trying to find your pass or ticket. Whether you succeed and jump on the train - where there is by now standing room only - or frustratingly miss it by 30 seconds – it is a stressful experience. You are left hot and bothered either way and, if you fail, stressed about being late for work or home.

I have tried a new approach which is simply not to rush and try to be more on time, but if I miss one train to recognise there is nearly always another. I can then usefully spend the time I am waiting for that next train getting a drink, reading or working, sending WhatsApp messages to family or work colleagues to tell them when to expect me. Of course, timing may be critical if you have an important meeting to go to or a job interview, but then I suggest travelling should be more about effective planning and time management in the first place.

See this LinkedIn article Why I never run to catch a train and why you shouldn't either which observes three things

1 never run to trains looking like an ill organised idiot;

2 always plan ahead to ensure sufficient time;

3 If for whatever reason you miss the train don't feel bad as you have an opportunity to use the time to improve yourself.

 When presenting at a meeting I always arrive early. It is almost always the case that something needs to be organised, like handouts or your laptop communicating with the system used for the presentation. I have literally seen the CEO and another senior executive of a large organisation in a meeting room on their hands and knees ten minutes after the start time of the meeting still trying and failing to connect a laptop with the projector screen for a presentation.

Here’s a great article from the American University of St Augustine for Health Sciences 9 Proven Time Management Techniques and Tools which recognises that  Different people need different effective time management strategies. The recommended techniques include:

Pareto Analysis (a.k.a., the 80/20 rule)

The 80/20 rule is a technique created by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. It’s the idea that 20% of actions are responsible for 80% of outcomes.

Eisenhower Matrix

Before Dwight Eisenhower became president in 1953, he served in the U.S. Army as an Allied Forces Commander during World War II. He was faced with difficult decisions every day that led him to invent what is now called the Eisenhower matrix, or the urgent-important matrix.

See the following graphic which illustrates this technique.

https://www.upwork.com/mc/documents/Einsenhower-Decision-Matrix.png

Eat That Frog Technique

This technique is named after a Mark Twain quote: “Eat a live frog the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Start your day by doing the most onerous tasks first and getting them out of the way.

See also some other suggestions in another interesting article on the topic 18 Effective Time Management Strategies and Techniques. These include:

·        Divide larger projects into smaller tasks

·        Limit distractions

·        Leave the emails for later

The last is really worth considering. We tend to be slaves to email which  can be an unexpected time sink. Every time you stop what you’re doing to check your email, you’re derailing your productivity. This applies specially to those long and convoluted chains of emails where the crucial information you need is hidden away as an attachment to the eighth email. I have a colleague who has stopped using email for the most part, and yet still carries out a senior and responsible role working more efficiently as a result. Nowadays the effective use of tools like Microsoft Teams gives us more options as to how we communicate and provide our professional services.

I had a client once who took punctuality to an extreme. If you were late even by a minute to an in person meeting you were not permitted to join – and even senior executives were left kicking their heels outside the room. This is perhaps going a bit far and is more difficult to implement in an online meeting, where it is harder to stop participants joining late. It is annoying though when the last person to join sends a Teams call messages everyone else saying they are “sorry but their earlier meeting has overrun by 5 minutes”. Everybody else then has to wait for them. As well as being disciplined and managing time better a litmus paper test as to how to avoid this is to assume each meeting is a critical one with the company’s chief executive. It is surprising how rarely participants turn up late to a meeting with the CEO.

And if you never seen it have a look at this YouTube video in which  John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) nails the challenge of efficient and effective time management  in a classic 1976 work “Meetings, Bloody Meetings”; his hilarious portrayal of meeting culture still seems worryingly accurate today.

See also this post 46 Positive Quotes on Time Management to Inspire You which states These quotes can offer advice on increasing productivity, beating procrastination, multitasking, or setting priorities. Three that struck a chord with me are:

"You may delay, but time will not." – Benjamin Franklin.

"Don't make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don't revisit the issue unnecessarily." - Bill Gates

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln