Never Enough Time (or a Dozen Ways to Find Time)

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less chary of the latter than the former; space we can recover, time never. – Napoleon

Q. What time is it?

A. You mean now? – Yogi Berra

Wherever you turn, the hue and cry is that there’s more work to do – and less time and fewer people to do it. But the McGrattan/Rogerson study from a recent issue of American Demographics suggests this is not the case: “Since 1950, work hours have remained steady while pay has risen,” the report notes.

And last Nov. 11, The New York Times revealed that, according to the International Labor Office, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans worked 1,966 hours during 1997 – 2,000 hours equals 40 hours a week with two weeks’ vacation.

Taking Control

Nevertheless, if you feel overwhelmed by work, you probably are. What are some ways you can take more control?

1 Better schedule your time. This will be the first bit of advice virtually every self-help book gives you. But if you knew how to do this you wouldn’t feel overburdened.

2. While scheduling certainly is important, I think the most important aspect is organizing your time.

This means not allowing yourself to have 400 interruptions a day, each one causing you to go back over the project you were working on more than once.

Here are a couple of ways of getting back control of your time:

a) Don’t answer your own phone. Get a secretary/assistant or an answering machine. And ignore the answering machine until you’ve finished the project you’re working on. They’ll call back.

Here is an absolutely key phrase to remember: There is virtually nothing that can’t wait an hour or two. (Honest – it took me years to learn this.)

b) Close your office door or put a chair in the entrance of your partition for a couple of hours a week. Let people know that between 2 and 4 o’clock each day and on Wednesdays you will not be disturbed. Schedule key projects for this time period.

3. Invest in fast computer equipment. Computers become extinct in a microsecond anyway, so don’t think you’re being extravagant by dumping your slow modem, sluggish system or antiquated software. Your time is more valuable than upgrades and replacements.

4. Understand what’s important…and what isn’t. Don’t just automatically send that memo, make that call, write that report or attend that meeting. Take two minutes, think it through and determine if the effort you must put behind it is really worth it.

This doesn’t mean you should get lazy. It just means you should carefully pick where you put your effort and where you don’t.

5. Walk around the block or take a spin in the parking lot. Decisions made under pressure are too often bad ones. The five minutes you lose taking your time to make the right decision in an atmosphere where you can think without distraction can save you untold frustration and squandered time in the future.

6. Say no (sort of). Yes, you want to be a good guy, but saying yes to too many projects too often means you won’t be able to devote sufficient time to them. You can’t give up the basics, but watch your speech, committee and other such “extra” time. You can say “later” and mean it.

7. Know what you’re getting yourself into. Get an accurate take on what the project you’re agreeing to entails. Don’t find out after you’re in it that your work load will be 10 times what was expected.

8. Realize when the project really has to be done. It’s taken me way too long to realize that, too often, I create unnecessarily tight deadlines for myself. Be certain when the work really needs to be completed; don’t be the one to suggest it be due in the next hour, day or even week.

Either ask for a realistic time schedule or recommend one you can really live with without undue stress and rearrangement of every other project.

9. Make yourself listen to what’s being said. Not getting the picture, or asking to have it repeated, just wastes time and makes you look bad. Worse, moving ahead on a project without clear direction is a total time-waster.

10. Know where your time is going. The book “The Dance of Change” suggests you encourage team members to “jot down things they believe you devote too much time to and those you don’t pay enough attention to.”

11. Determine if you really need to make that trip. Since moving from Manhattan to the Florida Keys I’ve learned that it’s not always necessary to personally attend meetings. While personal contact does allow the players to get to know each other and read expressions, there’s no doubt that thinking through whether or not a particular trip is necessary will cut back on wasted travel time. Meeting through phone, fax, air courier and e-mail is faster – and cheaper, too.

12. Organize your work space. Put everything within reach. Move files that aren’t regularly used to a nearby storage area. Use every tool you can (electronic organizers, phone message pads, etc.) to avoid accumulating too many scraps of paper, which can get misplaced.

Don’t Look Back

One last piece of advice – this from Southwest Airlines chairman, president and chief executive Herbert Kelleher, reported recently by Fortune magazine:

“Never look back…when people ask me what I did yesterday, I can’t answer them. I’m not faking it. I try to remain directed forward…[and] it’s convenient to forget about all the mistakes I’ve made.”