MANAGING TIME - PART TWO

In Managing Time, Part One, I encouraged you to begin a one- or two-week experiment of recording how you spend your workday. Before you can manage your time, you must understand where time is going and how it is being used up; only then can you begin to appropriately manage your time. The purpose of managing time is not to put you under an increased load but, instead, to free you up to do the things that you are good at and that you enjoy.

I find a lot of satisfaction in being able to get my work tasks done for the day and then begin doing things that I enjoy. I like to read and to write creatively. I find both to be stimulating and relaxing because they are very different from most of the work I do. So I work to manage my time so that when my work day is done, I can do what I enjoy and am relaxed at.

If you did not read Managing Time, Part One, this would be a good time to do so. Part one is stored in the Archives over to the right.

If you have kept a daily journal for a week or two, look over those notes now. You are looking for items that repeat themselves several times in a day, or many times in a week. You are also looking for time wasters.

A key part of time management is getting rid of “time wasters.” All of us struggle with non-productive, time-wasting items. Here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself about the repetitive items on your list:
1. What would happen if this were not done at all?
If the answer is ‘nothing,’ then stop doing it! Is it possible that this repetitive item has just become a habit? It gets done because it’s always gotten done and the purpose of it stopped being meaningful a long time ago? Go ahead and stop, see if anyone complains, and then tell them you stopped because a consultant told you to—but you now realize he was wrong!
2. Could somebody else do this better than I do it?
Is this repetitive item something that one of my assistants or a secretary should be doing? If this is so, then hand it off and let them handle it.
3. Is this a repetitive issue that I could easily teach someone else to do?
Training an assistant to take over a task for you will take more time in the short run but will save you lots of time in the future and that’s what this exercise is all about.
4. What do I do that wastes the time of others?
I will talk more about this in a moment.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all possible time wasters but I wish to stir your creativity to think about the conservation of time. A huge time waster is time people spend on the telephone and the Internet. Much of this is redeemable time if only we would impose limits on ourselves regarding the duration of phone calls or surfing the net. Do you need to take that call right now? Could you finish that project first and then return those calls? (Thank you to the inventor of caller I.D.)

Number four on the list is a question that very few people ask themselves. We tend to get so preoccupied with what other people do to us, and to the time wasters that we have to contend with. It is important that we ask ourselves, “Are there things that I do that waste the time of others?”

I was asked to provide some assistance to a thriving church in the western part of the nation. The Senior Pastor was concerned that his staff was not getting things done in a timely manner; reports were coming in late, phone calls and visits never seemed to get done on time, if at all. The pastor was growing discouraged and was concerned that perhaps he needed to make some changes, perhaps remove some staff and add some new.

I spent time talking with the staff and was able to identify a number of issues that individual staff members could work on and easily correct. There was, however, one rather touchy issue that had to be addressed and that fell to me as the outside consultant. The pastor had to answer the question, “What do I do that wastes the time of my staff?” and no one on staff was willing to address that with him. Because I had built an amicable relationship with the pastor (and because he couldn’t actually fire me), I was able to talk with him about this and show him what was happening.

The pastor loved sports and especially football. On Mondays during football season he would often call several of his associates to his office, or he would visit theirs, and he would want to “talk football.” Sometimes the conversations would last for an hour or longer and staffers were reluctant to say anything. The pastor had never considered the question, “Am I a part of the problem? Do I do things that hinder my staff from getting their work done?”

To the pastor’s credit, after the question was posed to him, he changed. He still loves football and he still talks about it, but he is aware and sensitive to “the time of others.”

No staff lost their jobs! Now addressing this one question was not the complete answer to all the time issues among that staff, of course, but it was major. Correcting and removing time wasters will take time and work; it is a process and something that we have to work at. But like all good habits, we can learn and do until we get the good habit into place and it becomes natural for us.
In our next article we’ll talk about consolidating time—or learning to do one thing at a time.

MANAGING TIME - PART ONE

“Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and acceptably, not as the unwise and witless, but as sensible, intelligent people make the very most of the time—buying up each opportunity-because the days are evil “(Ephesians 5:15-16—Amplified Bible).

Why would the Apostle Paul speak so forcibly, so clearly, about how we use our time? I think the answer is very straightforward and really quite simple.

Time is something all of us get in equal measure. No one gets anything more or less than a 60-second minute and a 60-minute hour. Try as hard as we can to change it, every day still has 24 hours in it; not a minute less and not a minute more.

The supply of time is inelastic and everyone gets the same amount, not in the length of years but with the given minutes and hours. The difference is that some learn to use time more efficiently than others and so it seems like they do get a longer day because they are able to get so much more done. But they don't get any more time than any of the rest of us; they have just learned how to use what time they have with efficiency.

I sometimes find that when I teach on time management, there is a negative reaction among some who feel that it brings them into bondage and they do not want to be in bondage to time. However, nothing could be further from the truth in the way I approach time management. I want to be efficient in the use of my time so that I can get my work done quickly and completely. Then I have time to do the things that are fun for me…like spending time with my children or my granddaughter, enjoying a hobby, visiting with friends, or sometimes just doing nothing. Over the next couple of months we will look at some practical suggestions to help you manage your time in a more efficient manner. This is not designed to make you a slave to time but so enable you to get done everything so you can have plenty of time for yourself, to do the things you want to do.

Before we can go to managing time we need to understand where the time we have now is going by a process I call "recording time." There are several ways that you can accomplish this and I'll share one that works well for me. Take a blank sheet of 8 ½ x 11 paper (lined paper is even better). Across the top put tomorrow's date and down the left side, starting with the time your workday begins, put in the time (e.g. 9:00am) and then in a straight line down the left side, in 15-minute increments, line out your work day.

The next morning, beginning at 9:15, record in just one or two words how you spent the previous 15 minutes (made phone calls, read mail, wrote letters, worked on report, etc.). At 9:30 do the same, and so on throughout the day. At the end of the day, put the completed sheet in a folder and prepare a new sheet for the next day.

Do the above for at least five days and preferably for ten. At the end of the five- or ten-day period, take an hour and look to see where your time has been going. I think you will be surprised at some things on your list.

In the next article we will get into the practices of managing time. To do that effectively we must have the above information in hand, so let's not waste any time. Let's get started on this now!