Time Management Skills Fail Most People
About a year ago Ellen Goodman, the fabulous writer from the Boston Globe, coined the phrase “time bulimia.” Basically, she wrote about people who believe that they will have more time in the future. So, they schedule appointments, social events or work in the future thinking there will be more time at that point. Of course the problem is that there really isn’t more time in the future. If you are busy today, you’ll be busy next week, next month or next year.The bulimic part begins when people reach that date and begin to re-arrange their calendars or just cancel events that are causing overload. The dinner with a friend gets pushed back a couple of weeks; a work deadline requires an extension; or a day off gets postponed until the project is closer to completion. The magic of thinking more time will exist in the future never happens and people realize they are just as short in time then as they were in the past.
Time is consumed in major chunks. Twenty-five years ago, experts thought people would have more leisure time because of new technology and higher productivity. What the experts missed that fewer people would be responsible for economic growth and the rest would be working more hours in order to keep up financially. And, prior to 1995, no one saw the Internet as a powerful time consumer that medium has become.
So people “grind it out” daily trying to balance work, social and personal time. Most people are resigned to giving something up, for example fitness or social life. Of course, few people readily admit that too much of their time is consumed by non-productive activities such as TV. Studies that look at TV behavior have already linked higher amount of hours of viewing to lower wages and poor performance in school. TV viewing is a hard habit to break.
One thing that was “nice” about school: as the semester/year ended so did your commitments to that course (or grade). If you didn’t get finished reading the textbook or fully complete all the assignments, it didn’t matter because time had run out and it was over. You took your grade and moved on. Unfortunately, the “real” world isn’t so accommodating. Work just continues.
People need to practice the skills of time management to regain control over their days. (For example, if you are a TV viewer, record your shows on your VCR or Tivo and watch them later. Fast forwarding through commercials and highlights will save you an average of 15 minutes per hour. You still get to enjoy your programs and if you watch 3 hours a day, you just got a refund of 45 minutes or more.) Here are some ideas to help regain some control:
1) Make quality choices; much of our “free” time is consumed by trying to make “perfect choices” instead of “quality choices.” Because our funds are limited, we try to buy things that we think will be the most satisfying, utilitarian and sometimes the most unique. That time spent searching for perfection is both a time-waster and generally leads to long-term disappointment with the choice.
2) Keep a journal and make entries that include how disruptions may have altered your day and what most disappointed you about plans that needed to be re-scheduled or cancelled. Be sure to include how much time was spent that represented a balance between work, family, friends and personal time. Note any surprises and your ideas for tomorrow that may make a difference. Finally, consider a strategy that includes different ways to utilize time.
3) Use benchmarks to gauge how successful you are in achieving goals that you believe are important. Most experts believe the best way to measure progress is incremental and not the entire goal at once. Set up stages for measuring your progress and determine how close you are by your benchmarks. This is nothing fancy and doesn’t require software or a personal coach, just some planning on your part. And the more you practice this skill the better you will become in gauging benchmarks and degrees of success.
4) Limit your interruptions as they have multiple implications on your time. First, the interruption stops progress on your tasks. Second, there’s the time lost as you attend to the interruption. And third, there’s the time needed to re-capture the momentum to get back to the tasks abandoned earlier. Many times, those tasks get postponed or become a burden for another day. Take a hint from college professors: schedule office hours; also, tell your family how much time you need before you are ready to give them undivided attention.
5) Learn to say “No.” Take on tasks that you really believe fit your time frames and your personal level of knowledge and talents. If you are short on time, now’s not a good time to learn to play golf for the company fund raiser next month. Offer to do some behind the scenes work instead. Taking on assignments that require a high amount of preparation and time should be avoided (unless they are the difference between employment and not being employed; then those assignments become priorities).
6) Finally, learn how to delegate. Delegation is not telling someone to do something. There should be procedures or guidelines in place that provide direction for the person doing the task. Also, make sure that the person chosen for the task can actually do the task. There’s no time savings if you need to stop what you are doing to coach a person doing the task. And if it is done incorrectly, either you have to fix it or take the blame for a poor job. Either way, you lost time.
Time bulimia is not necessary even in our harried lives. Pick out a few activities that you enjoy and limit adding new activities. At your workplace, seek teamwork and look for ways to create synergy with others.
Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
--- E. C. Zeeman
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