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Tip 50 – Using time wisely

I was a seminar this week that stressed the importance of time management. Actually there is no such thing as time management! The only action we can ever hope to take is to manage ourselves and the use of probably our most precious and irreplaceable asset – time itself!

However,’time management’ is in everyday speech and there are many techniques in common use. Here is one that is worth investing some time in, which can actually save you time, helping you work smarter, not harder, helping you beat work overload – a key source of stress.

Time Management - Urgent v Important model

Steven Covey’s four quadrants of time management: in this technique time management requires the prioritisation of tasks. To do this efficiently it is useful to recognise the difference between urgent and important.

Urgent

Urgent tasks are deadline based. This is usually independent of yourself and is often driven by others. The sooner the task needs completion the more urgent it is. This has no relation to importance. It is easily possible to rank any of these jobs that you have in terms of their deadlines.

Important

The importance of a job drives how much 'time' you want to spend on it. Notice that this is independent of 'urgency' and is what you want to do: the kind of activities that will take you closer to your goals or dreams. For any task the quality of your output will often relate to the time you spend on it. These tasks can be ranked using scales   such as: 'high' 'medium' or 'low' or a simple numerical ranking.

Where do you spend the time?

So which tasks would you naturally spend more time on?
The answer is those tasks that contribute to the completion of your goals.
This is the ideal scenario, but in practice you may need to be more flexible. For example, tasks that are delegated to you by a higher authority figure (eg senior management) may need more time spent on them than warranted in order to cement your work relationships. It may be that tasks that you find unenjoyable or unrelaxing could easily end up at the bottom of the queue of time management importance.

So tasks can be split into urgent and important. To help you in sorting them you can use a matrix system as some tasks could be both or neither. Once you have ranked your list of jobs for ‘urgency’ and ‘importance’ you will be able to put them into a matrix as in the diagram below.

The Urgent/Important matrix

Click here to arrange an introductory session to find out more.

A coach can help you develop ways to manage your time more effectively and in many other ways.

Box 1 - urgent and important [Sometimes called Quadrant of Necessity]

In terms of your diary, take action immediately - they must be done now. These are critical activities which also support your goals. In terms of crises they may be a mixture of problems that were completely unexpected or you could have avoided with better planning. This is “firefighting” or “re-activeness”.

Highly important and urgent tasks should be rare. Particularly, if you have been able to plan well. However, jobs in this box need to be done straight away. For example, safety issues must be resolved, family crisis, product quality has been compromised, senior management want data for an urgent meeting etc.

So what does it mean if you are constantly dealing with crises and fire fighting? If this is the case there is often poor planning at the route of it. This may be your own poor planning in which case you need to deal with it appropriately. If you are a manager and are constantly dragged into dealing with crises materialising from others you will need to deal with their training.

How many parents spend a lot of needless time sorting out their childrens’ problems? Try to examine the route causes and deal with them.

The aim is to keep jobs in box 3 where planning can be carried out more thoroughly.
Confusion over importance can push some tasks from box 2 to 1 by mistake.

Box 2 - urgent but not important [Sometimes called Quadrant of Deception]

These tend to be jobs not related to your goals but generated by others. Because you don’t really want to spend much time on tasks not connected with your goals, you may wish to try and delegate these.

These are the tasks with near deadlines but not relevant to your own goals. It’s possible that much of your daily activity will come under this heading. There will be plenty of jobs in this category that are trivial in themselves but would have serious consequences if not done, for example, paying bills. Try to spend as little time as possible on this category of task.

Many people tend to spend more time than is necessary on these jobs for a variety of reasons. If you particularly like a task you will keep with it for too long. You believe the job is ‘important’ when in fact it isn’t (just urgent) and although it may well be important to others it is not to you. Beware of perfectionism: if the quality of the task output is unnecessarily high then it will tend to take up too much of your time.  The key with items that should only command a small amount of your time is to make sure you understand what is required and do not exceed that requirement.

You will need to put these tasks into your diary for completion ahead of the deadline and plan to give them as little time as possible.

Box 3 - not urgent but important [Sometimes called Quadrant of Leadership & Quality]

This means their deadlines are in the future. They are important so you must do them. So plan them well for carrying out in the future. A lot of jobs will fall in this area so make sure you plan properly or you will have problems later.

These tasks are relevant to your goals but their deadlines are not immediate. This represents ”quality time” or “pro-activeness”. If these tasks are not done they can easily end up in Box 1 as a crisis. By ‘done’ I mean that you thoroughly assess these and plan their completion rigorously, so that you are not surprised later with unforeseen events. Anything can end up in Box 1 if you leave it long enough. If you find too many items ending up in Box 1 ask yourself why and learn from the experience so that it will not happen again.

If you have any room in your diary after putting in the Box 1 and 2 tasks, fill some space with Box 3 tasks.

Box 4 - neither urgent or important [Sometimes called Quadrant of Waste]

These can be simple trivial tasks that you ought to avoid, but you may end up doing just to ‘get them out of the way’ at the expense of important tasks. They can usually be ignored as they are trivial now. They may move into a higher ranked category at a later time so may need some planning.

If you leave these jobs to simmer for say 4 weeks they will either jump to becoming ‘urgent’ into Box 2 or you may find that they are irrelevant and you can bin them. Some items that would be in this area you may be able to automate at a time when you do not need to be there, eg computers can be backed up, checked for viruses and adware whilst you are sleeping.

If you are inundated with jobs in this category one option is to work longer hours. This is the least attractive option if this carries on for any length of time as it can be physically and mentally draining.

Many items in Box 4 are done just for fun. However, having fun can be important!

In which order should I do the jobs?

In theory, you would tackle the jobs in the order: Box 1, then 2, then 3 and finally Box 4. If you did this you it is quite possible that on many occasions you would never get into Box 3. Thus some of the Box 3 jobs ought to be done anyway despite the natural order. If you have any gaps in your activities then is the time to start Box 4.

These can be fitted into your diary once you have accounted for Boxes 1, 2 and 3.
Remember that you can add tasks for yourself such as ‘quiet time’ as important items.

Once you have identified a Box for your task, think if you need to do it. If not, try and delegate it.

In general, to create a good balance Boxes 1 and 4 will not have many items and most of your work will be in Boxes 2 and 3. A split of about 10% Box 1, 10% Box 4 and 40% for Boxes 2 and 3 is usually manageable.

If you find the percentages regularly exceed these, look at the underlying causes and try to do something about them.

This system is quite structured and will need some interpretation and flexibility for real life examples; if someone telephones you for urgent information you are not likely to put them on hold while you put the task into one of the boxes and deal with it appropriately!