Taking Time to manage your most

precious resource

As another New Year dawn’s people naturally start to assess their lives, to develop new goals and resolutions and they particularly look at how they spend and allocate their most precious resource, their time.  Particularly relevant in the current environment where everyone seems to working harder and longer with less recourses, the danger is that instead of working smarter and becoming more innovative, effective and efficient, our working days run away from us and we become less effective and less efficient and ultimately spend more time in the office and less time with family and friends.

Time management is not just a tool for organising your working day but it can also influence all aspects of your life. Effective time management, or resource management as I will discuss below, is made up of some simple and effective actions some of which I will outline in this article. It is practiced by leading business people, sports personalities and even leading public servants to help them become more effective and efficient in their chosen fields.

To start with, can you summarise your attitude to time in one word or sentence?  Responses we have come across in our courses include ‘I’m always chasing time’, ‘Time is money’, ‘I never have enough of it’.  These are typical responses from people with busy lives to lead.  If you think about time you will most certainly conclude that time is precious, it is scarce, and it is also irreversible and irreplaceable.  No matter what happens the clock still ticks away at 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour and 24 hours per day – you cannot stop the clock! 

 In light of this fact time management is actually a myth, it doesn’t actually exist.  What does exist and what is really relevant is your own resource management - you must allocate your resources to the available time which match the goals you have set in life.  Easier said than done I admit, but unfortunately the starting point for more effective use of time is what you actually want to do with it in the first place and to do this you must put some goals in place.  Start off with your short/ medium term goals which are easier to frame, but you must ultimately think about what you’re life goals are – where you want to be in 10, 20 and even 50 years time.  Remember the golden rules of goal setting – the must be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely and they must be written down.  Apply these simple rules to all your goal setting endeavours.

Moving from the macro to the micro view of resource management, most people think in terms of days, so most people have daily ‘to-do’ lists.  These are great for keeping track of what you have to do today and crossing off these activities from your list, either in your head or on paper brings great satisfaction.  However, the normal persons to do list is usually a jumbled up mix of low priority and high priority tasks, smaller and bigger projects and urgent but not important tasks in terms of their ultimate goals.  For example on most peoples to do list you will find actions such as:

1.       Call John about outstanding invoices

2.       Develop our marketing plan for the next three years. 

Ultimately, these actions are not compatible on the same to-do list.  The marketing plan is actually a project to be completed which in turn is made up of a number of actions.  While the calling John regarding the invoice is an action as part of the bigger project of debt collection.  Thus, where developing a ‘to-do’ list, think in terms of projects and then look at the actions within these projects that are priority and require your attention today.

One of the most effective resource management tools is delegation and for people who have the delegation tool at their disposal they should count themselves lucky and use it to maximum effect.  Unfortunately, some people are not good delegators and they usually make up excuses like ‘I can manage this myself’ or ‘its quicker if I do it myself’.  But they are missing the point, if they realised the time savings that delegation can bring to their working lives, they would certainly do more of it.  

The key to effective delegation in this situation is to start with delegation of small tasks and then work your way to bigger tasks.  Also keep in mind the following:

1.       Always delegate routine matters or tasks that can be done better by others

2.       Never delegate task that require your own specials skills and input

Effective resource management also allows you to identify and understand the distractions which occupy your day and then remove these “Time Wasters” from your schedule. The good thing about this is that it helps you to work smarter and not harder by eliminating distractions and time wasters and replacing these with more effective and productive tasks that are leading you to your life goals. These simple changes also remove associated stress and anxiety which will greatly improve your work-life balance.  To implement all of these changes all you have to do is to monitor over a week or two the key distractions and interruptions in your day – unnecessary meetings, personal calls during the working day, reverse delegation or unnecessary coffee or nicotine breaks etc.  When you identify what these distractions and interruptions are and you can then take action to eliminate or reduce them from your schedule.  A simple rule we would advocate is that if you screen unnecessary personal calls during the working day (e.g. one of your friends ringing up to discuss the weekend plans) people will soon get the message that you do not want to be distracted with personal calls between the hours of 9 and 6 and if they want to chat they will have to call you outside of these hours.  

Procrastination and perfectionism are also barriers to effective resource management and people tend to identify with one or the other to varying levels – either you put decisions on the long finger or you want complete perfection in the completion of tasks.  With perfectionism you need to realise when good is good enough and perhaps apply the 80:20 rule to tasks you’re undertaking.  With procrastination you need to identify and admit when your procrastinating ask why and take action.  If tasks can be competed now in an effective manner, why push them aside until later?

Of course resource management is a function of assertiveness and the most effective resource management tool I know is the assertive action of saying ‘no’.  That mean saying no to tasks you don’t want to do, that are unnecessary interruptions or that are not taking you towards your life goals.  This might sound selfish, but think about the week gone by and ask yourself how many things have I said yes to doing where I should have actually said no.  This should be an eye-opening exercise when you realise how much time you wasted doing things or completing tasks for other people which are of no benefit to the development of your own life goals.  This should not be confused with taking a genuine interest in other people and helping out when they are in need. 

Effective resource management/ time management is crucial to assist you create a better work life balance.  Some of the tools identified in this article will help you make a start, but there are many more which can be applied.  The key is to take one or two and apply them to your daily life.  Start with your attitude to time and goal setting, ask yourself the hard questions and then take it from there.

If you have any queries in relation to this article, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Declan Byrne, Director, Innovo Training and Development, dbyrne@innovotraining.ie

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