Recovering Time: II

In Part I, we looked at time-defragmentation strategies. In this Part II are some strategies for recovering time by reducing planning effort and the time needed to deal with difficulties that arise from self-defeating patterns.

Get help with micromanagement

Micromanaging is an attempt to control what we cannot actually control. That's why it chews up so much time.

Have you been micromanaging? If you have, you're in for a treat: you actually do have time to do your own job, and once you focus on it, it will be fun again.

Get more space

Cramped, cluttered quarters cost time. If you can't get a bigger office, compress the stuff you have.

Strategies for compressing your stuff: get taller filing cabinets; throw stuff out; move things to storage; and acquire shelving, trays, or drawers.

Harness the urge to perfect

Stop doing the tasks
you shouldn't be doing.
They aren't your job.

We spend way too much time ironing out details of components that we'll never actually use.

Learn the meaning of "good enough." Situations change so rapidly that building for the future (that is, next week) is often a waste. Do what you're pretty sure you'll need — and no more.

Spend less time searching for stuff

Among the items most commonly lost are: cell phone, eyeglasses, documents, keys, and whatever you had in your hand a minute ago, until you set it down someplace.

Organizing helps with the documents. For the other items, establish a standard "parking space" for setting things down temporarily.

Get out of the swamp

Sometimes we're so swamped that we don't have time to work on getting unswamped.

Give priority to tasks that free you up. For instance, you might have an assistant, but he or she isn't cutting it, and you're tolerating that. Deal with it.

Stop doing tasks you shouldn't

Some things we do aren't really a part of the job. We took them on because we didn't know how to say no, or we liked them, or maybe we can't let go.

Unload what you can, and then deal with causes. Learn to let go. Learn to say no. Learn to let others do the things you love that aren't part of your job. Get some coaching or help from a mentor.

And here are two suggested by reader Rodney Thompson:

Shift your time

Start your day an hour earlier to gain some uninterrupted time when no one is around.

Clearing the delicate, frightening, or urgent tasks might keep them from nagging at you for the rest of the day.

Monitor yourself

Realistically write down your top priorities for the day, and set time aside to get them done.

Put the list somewhere in easy view. Mobile devicess are nice, but index cards are always powered on.

If you were to implement just one of these strategies this week, which would it be? First in this series   Top    Next Issue

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Reader Comments

Ron Thompson, Eiscon Group, Ltd. (www.eiscon.com)

Here's another one that I learned a while back. Be brave enough to leave when you are done. Staying around for "appearances" is a huge time waster!

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Ramblers are people who can't get to the point. They ramble, they get lost in detail, and listeners can't follow their logic, if there is any. How can you deal with ramblers while maintaining civility and decorum?

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

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In the learning context, self-explanation is the act of explaining to oneself what one is learning. Self-explanation has been shown to increase the rate of acquiring mastery. The mystery is why we don't structure knowledge work to exploit this phenomenon. Available here and by RSS on April 28.

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