Handling time as currency and wolfishly tracking its wise expenditure using six neglected time management principles equals the solution to “Finding More Time in 2015,” according to Karolyn Ericson.
This facilitator and business educator, who has mentored companies and business professionals since 1988, concludes nearly every training session with a survey asking participants to identify future topics of interest. The top two answers that come up consistently are time management and stress management.
“People are stressed out,” Ericson explained. “They are not managing their time. If I ask them if they have ever had a class or read a book or researched it, a lot of hands go up. Close to 80 percent. They know the basics. They’re neglecting the basics. And that gets us into trouble.”
Budgeting Time
Research, she says, shows that “the average worker loses two hours a day in unfocused time. So like a budget, like a currency, you have to look at where you are spending.”
With 2015 just beginning, “this is the year” to properly budget and plan time, eliminate wasted time and accomplish prioritized tasks. While preparing a January presentation for Chino Valley Women In Business, Ericson unveiled a wild animal analogy to inspire her audience to craftily track and devour inefficiencies in time management.
“That’s how we need to be about time,” she said. “We have to ride it like a wolf. Grab it by the throat and hang on. If the wolf doesn’t hang on, he doesn’t get dinner.”
Six Principles
Ericson promotes the concepts of being deliberate, tenacious, committed and focused. She also encourages people to create a habit and have a routine for planning and optimally harnessing time through what she calls “the six most neglected principles of time management.” They are:
1) Create a To Do List;
2) Prioritize;
3) Manage Interruptions;
4) Schedule;
5) Get Organized; and
6) Do this every day.
“All of us can find more time in the day,” she explained. “We all know these six. The problem is that we are not doing them every day. We all know there are 24 hours in a day, but it’s choosing wisely how we spend those hours.”
To illustrate the muddle of poor time management, Ericson employs a model created by Stephen Covey, the late American educator and author. Covey prioritizes time in four quadrants:
1) Important and Urgent;
2) Important But Not Urgent;
3) Urgent, But Not Important; or
4) Not Urgent and Not Important.
People find themselves living and working in all four quadrants, Ericson said, but they should function primarily on Important But Not Urgent tasks, where they plan, prioritize, schedule and stick to the plan. This helps overcome being swept into the urgencies of others and being distracted from their own goals, tasks and deadlines.
“You need to get the time scheduled and blocked so that you will always have it,” she advised. “It’s planning your work so that you can work your plan.”
Urgency and Stress
Anything throwing a person off track can heighten urgency and stress. Urgency is that dreaded feeling in the stomach when missed deadlines, office politics, hardware breakdowns, software glitches or other interruptions intrude upon the day. Activities that waste time also create urgency and stress like chatting lengthily on the phone, reading trivial email, mindlessly surfing the web or just plain zoning out.
She cautions that “cushion time is good” when scheduled – such as a lunch hour and 15-minute work breaks – but email, telephone calls and people entering one’s work space without an appointment are simply time-absorbing distractions.
“We all have to learn how to handle interruptions,” she said. “They pull us in different directions and get us off task and track.”
For email efficiency, Ericson recommends turning off notifications and chimes. As a rule of thumb, email could be read first thing in the morning, during a morning break, returning from lunch and around 3 p.m. More frequent checks are suitable if an important message is expected.
Employees and colleagues generally respect a closed door as the signal that someone is busy and wishes not to be disturbed. It is smart to identify up front what specifically constitutes an emergency that might justify overriding a request for privacy.
A supervisor can reduce interruptions by asking employees to keep a running list of items and questions, which then might be slated for discussion later in the day.
“They will have all of these questions,” Ericson predicted. “By the time [the appointment] comes [around], they have figured out all of them. You are teaching them to fish and think for themselves, and empowering them.”
Bursts of Work
Managing interruptions enables people to “get a better, more focused burst of work done,” she said. “I suggest working in a burst. It can be an hour, or an hour and a half. Then, [they] can switch gears.”
As expected, Ericson has calendared her own existing 2015 quarterly, monthly and weekly tasks, including goals, meetings, personal appointments, vacation and speaking engagements.
“Get organized,” she urged. “Do it every single day. Disorganization causes stress. It’s a time waster. Schedule your personal and work-related items all in one calendar. It’s not just being organized at work. To find more time in 2015, you need to be a wolf managing the six principles every day.” QCBN
For more information, email Ericson at ctwdtrainer@aol.com.
By Sue Marceau
Quad Cities Business News
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