Tag: time management

Individual time management systems are notoriously difficult to implement.

Most professionals are never taught how to manage their time, and cobble together a home-grown system based on whatever software they find on their computers when they get their first jobs. They know little of best practices or universal principle, and get by making lists when they have to, but mostly operate without standard processes.

They do learn, however, how to complain about not having enough time, having too much to do and being stressed by how much the job is demanding of them. Everyone they know who cares about their job has the same complaint, so they find themselves in good company.

The Caribbean manager is no different in this regard. They, like others, look at what other people who accomplish much more than they do with a sense of amazement. These hyper-productive people seem to be using magical methods to get the job done.

In an attempt to close the gap, they may place themselves in a time management course, or pick up a book on time management. Unfortunately, the results are temporary.

The reason is simple: no two people are alike, yet the guru behind any time management approach is advocating a single approach for everyone.

While it is a good bet that the approach works for the guru, it is doubtful that it works for more than a handful of people.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious.

People are different, and the habits they currently use vary tremendously also. Some of the factors include:

• the availability of the internet
• choices of software
• availability of PDA’s
• whether their jobs involve travel or not
• the degree of variability they face in an average day
• their personal level of discipline
• their preference for evening or morning activity
• how close their old habits conform to the new ones being taught
• whether they are more right or left brained, or more of an NT or SP, or their sign is a Leo or Sagittarius, or DiSC, or Black or white, or whatever system of classification they use to differentiate human beings

Certainly, a time management system designed in North America, with its virtually perfect supplies of electricity, water and relatively low crime is a different animal from the best Caribbean manager’s style of time management.

The fact is, the vast majority of professionals are unable to shoehorn themselves into “foreign” time management systems that other people have designed for very long. They fall back into their habits quickly, and are often no better for having taken the course 6 months after the fact.

The lucky few need only make some small changes to fit into the new system, and they are the success stories touted in public.

To further complicate matters, any given system that is adopted can only be relied upon to work temporarily. A time management system is a little like a diet – it must change over time, to accommodate changing goals and different goals.

A time management system for a single individual will be different depending on an individual’s

• career phase (including retirement)
• age
• level of responsibility
• kind of job
• work environment
• country
• mobility
• use of, and access to new technology

We in Framework believe that professionals do not benefit from being taught a single system for the reasons outlined above.

Instead, the program we are developing has as its cornerstone the requirement that the user of a good time management system must also be its master designer. They need to be able to make decisions as to how they change their system when, for example, a new version of Microsoft Outlook is adopted by their company, and they find out that it removes some capabilities that they used to enjoy.

In our course we plan to teach people how to design a time management system, by giving them insights into the nature of the problem they face, and a menu of choices that they must make to complete the system. They will start with their current set of habits, and by taking care not to be too ambitious about their capabilities, the system they will design will be one that suits them.

We will also help them to migrate to future systems and to look for the creation of tools that can be added into the system they have designed.

To this, they will need to understand the principles behind the need to manage the flood of demands on their time that they now face, and how it impacts them as Caribbean professionals.

One of the efforts that we at Framework are undertaking this year is that of defining a method of time management that fits the Caribbean tempo and lifestyle.

The reasons why none of the popular approaches used worldwide has become popular in our region are varied and many: too much rigidity, too much technology, not enough humanity et al.

While the best approach I have found is the one described in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, eve this approach does not provide a complete time management solution for our way of living.

I know this from personal experience, having lived in both North America, with its daily predictability, and here in the Caribbean, where for example I am “borrowing” someone else’s wireless internet access, because it is taking now 7 weeks to get my phone and therefore DSL service installed. Incidentally, the borrowed service is now down (an occurrence that befalls us every three days or so.)

In my reading this morning, I realized that my own time management tricks have evolved a great deal over the years. In particular, my calendar has evolved to the point where I discovered that I actually have three calendars in one, viz:

1. A Same Action Calendar

   This is my weekly calendar of regularly scheduled items. It contains items that I have scheduled do to each day, each week, and each year at regularly recurring intervals.

   For example, I went cycling this morning at 4:00am with my cycling club, a regularly recurring Thursday morning activity that I undertake whenever I am in town. It is pre-scheduled into my calendar, and requires an intrusive alarm clock to set it into motion!

   Each month at around this time, I balance my check book.I also pay my phone bill.

   Each year at around this time, I set an appointment to look at issuing various tax documents that are due on January 31^st for the prior year, and also at scheduling my company’s annual meeting – -a legal requirement.

   These recurring activities are all programmed into Microsoft Outlook, although I do use a variety of other tricks to help me to remember them, such as a programme called Rememberit.com that sends me an email reminder to complete one particular tax document that I seem to forget about each year!

   This “Same Action Calendar” keeps my life humming in the background, and I never have to remember to do any of the actions in it. I love to find new things to put in this calendar, because each time I do it, I relieve myself of the burden of having to remember, or to rely on someone else’s memory, or to rely on a piece of mail that can get lost.

   It is much easier to take that child to their swimming lesson when it is on the same night each week, and when the schedule is regularized, it can be safely put in the Same Action Calendar where I can forgot about it until it reminds me at the start of each day.

2. A Next Step Calendar

   This is my calendar of projects, and all other activities that happen only once, broken down into the “Next Step” that I must take in the sequence of actions to complete the project.

   This includes activities such as “contact my web designer” which is the next step of a larger project called “Update Website.”Another activity is “Install Monitor” which is part of a project called “Install New Office” (I just moved offices.)

   The calendar of Next Steps is, admittedly, filled with more fun and exciting activities than the Same Action Calendar, which is filled with lots of mundane activity, some of which I normally detest. They are both critically important, however, to my functioning as a professional.

   The next calendar is one that is truly Caribbean.

3. The Unscheduled Time Calendar

   (Also called the Interruption/Emergency/Goof-Off Calendar)

   This one is critical for mental health and sanity for those of us who work in the region. It is a calendar of time that must be devoted to fixing stuff that breaks, recovering from emergencies, cooling out from the heat, drying out from the rain, waiting for stuff to happen (like for the Fedex man to come between 8:00 and 2:00 when he comes at 2:30) and responding to interruptions of a human or inhuman nature.

   Life here is all about going with the flow, and there is a lot of stuff flowing about, that one needs to learn to go with – enough to drive a North American or European professional absolutely crazy. This time needs to be put in the calendar (just in order to reflect reality.)

   Each day differs, from what I can tell.

   Staying at the office in a meeting all day? Schedule very little Unscheduled Time.

   Going on errands to the Tax Office, Post Office and Bank, while picking up the children? Plan for a LOT of Unscheduled Time to account for the pothole that blows a tire, the long line at the post office, the bank that can’t find your account and the Tax Office that… nuff said.

   Plus, you may need to spend an extra fifteen minutes with that one child who had a tough day and is looking a bit forlorn.

   Each professional I different in terms of what their Unscheduled Time Calendar looks like, and it needs to be carefully tweaked to match the circumstances of the day, week, month or (God forbid) year.

Putting Them All Together

Of course, these three calendars are not actually three different pieces of paper, or three different electronic files. Think of them as transparent overlays that come from three very different ways of thinking.

In actual practice, they are being assembled at the same time as the Caribbean professional builds his/her calendar for the day. He/she ensures that all three mindsets are carefully balanced to produce a day that is not just productive in the traditional sense of the word, but also realistic and relatively peaceful.

After all, isn’t that the goal of trying to manage time in the first place?

P.S. Your comments are welcome, as this particular idea may be used in the programme we are currently developing. If you actually start using the idea, we would to know that also!

I had the privilege of leading a workshop today here in Trinidad at the TTAIFA conference – the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Insurance and Financial Agents.

The group was a wonderful one to speak and engage with, and as great a bunch of Trinis as I’ve every worked with.

The most exciting part of the preparation came when I ran into a roadblock while trying to describe a certain quality that I know is important to being productive. I am now calling it “awakeness,” and as a Jamaican – we are famous for inventing new words – I like the “sound” and vibe of it.

In a nutshell (which is just about all the work I’ve done on it so far) “awakeness” is defined as the quality of being present to the outcome of a task while one is engaged in it..

When someone is experiencing awakeness, there is a connected feeling that makes the activity flow, and sometimes allows it to feel easy. Yet, it’s more than “being in the flow”. The process of completing a task takes several important steps:

1. Changing the definition of the task
2. Making a decision to do the task
3. Scheduling the task
4. Choosing to start the task at the appointed time
5. Completing the task
6. Deciding on next steps once the task is complete

As you can imagine, having “awakeness” is important at each step of the way. Let’s take a simple task such as “doing the ironing.” Doing the ironing is a task that could be poorly executed at any of the 6 steps, resulting in the task either failing to be fully completed in some way.

When there is “awakeness” there is a powerful quality brought to each of the above steps. At each step of the way, there is a clarity of purpose that changes the entire task.

1. The first step is about replacing how the task is expressed in writing and speaking, from “ironing the clothes.” The person doing the task would have to look to see why they are in fact doing the task e.g. it might be a real part of a goal of “providing my children a secure and safe environment in which to grow.” The task could be re-expressed as “ironing for security, safety and looking clean and fresh.” This re-expression can help to bring an awakened frame of mind to the activity that is not there when it’s just about plain “ironing” which seems to be something that just needs to be endured.
2. Making a decision to do the task at a specific moment in time is easier to do when there is “awakeness” simply because a deeper purpose has been engaged and activated.
3. Putting the activity into our calendars at a time that is realistic is also easier to do with “awakeness”.
4. Choosing to do the task at the appointed time, even when we are busy, is easier to do when the appointed time comes and we are awakened. If we are watching television and the time comes to do the task, it would be easier to turn it off and see about our children’s “safety and security” than it would be to watch the rest of the episode of “Days of Our Lives”.
5. Seeing the task through to the very last sock and t-shirt, and avoiding interruptions are all about being awake during the task. The hard job that we have to do while ironing is to prevent ourselves from unconsciously falling out of “awakeness” into the kind of absent-mindedness that allows us sometimes to drive for miles to a destination and wonder what route we just took to get there.
6. When we are in a state of “awakeness,” realizing that there are next steps is natural. When we are just ironing and nothing else, then the end of the task comes as a respite, and the tendency is to get the mind out of the boring task at hand and back to Days of Our Lives (recorded on our DVD-RW). On the other hand, when it’s about “our children’s safety and security,” it’s easier to see that it might be a good idea to put the clothes away now, and to schedule some more time to buy a good quality iron that would do a better job. The next steps are easier to see, and to start a new six step process when we are “awake,” because the actions are merely a continuation of the deeper commitment.

The point here is that the steps are, by themselves, not the point. There are some training programs and time management systems which try to be prescriptive about what happens at each of these stages, down to the kind of language that is used to re-express the task.

They all miss the point, however.

When we are “awake” the right things to do naturally present themselves. When we are asleep at the wheel, then no amount of detailed instructions will compensate for a lack of “awakeness.”

Why is this all important?

Well, we human beings need to be protected from ourselves.

On the first of the year, a part of us gets inspired to create plans to get fit and lost weight. By the end of the week, however, another part of us kicks in and takes control, and that’s the end of the plan until the start of the next year. The same happens with respect to other plans that we make, in our attempts to “Have the Lives that We Most Want.” The part of us that creates these plans does need assistance to make it through tough times , and this assistance comes most easily from our level of “awakeness.”

To put it another way, when we don’t have awakeness, then our mind will only allow us to accomplish simple tasks that require a single effort, and prevents us from accomplishing complex tasks like losing weight, that require sustained and consistent effort.

* I’d like to credit the book Getting Things Done for providing some of the key ideas and thinking for my own ideas.