As I continued to come up the ranks as a new manager, I constantly heard focus group feedback about how lack of follow-through by leaders and managers was a key point of frustration for teams of employees. Whether it was to solve a problem, answer a question, or do some customer research, it didn’t matter—the same managers’ names came up time and time again. They were building a reputation—and not a good one.

Communication and follow-up are extremely important. Your ability to follow up with employees, clients, or peers is one of the clearest indications of the effectiveness of your organizational skills. When people are continually apprised of your progress, assumptions disappear and stress is greatly reduced. Even if deadlines must be extended or your progress isn’t as far along as you’d hoped, your ability to communicate that clearly to all parties builds trust in the fact that movement is taking place.

Your online calendar should be a haven for follow-up appointments. As soon as you ask someone for something or they ask you for something by a certain date, your next inclination should be to immediately add it to your calendar. Then, the pressure is off of you to remember. Once you do this a few times, it will become second nature. Specific examples include calls to return or email responses. For email requests, many online calendars allow you to embed the actual email request into the calendar appointment itself. Now you’re beginning to manage your inbox volume.

An important point to consider is to schedule these follow-up deadlines and appointments before they are due. If you owe your manager a presentation by five o’clock p.m. on Thursday, the
appointment should not be seen for the first time at five o’clock on Thursday. You can use pop-up reminders or audible cues (alarms) if you are using an online calendar tool to your advantage. If you’re still using a written calendar, you can use color coding or symbols to address urgency or action needed.

Your calendar is an important proactive tool to manage your follow-up items—not just the due dates, but the actual time to work on them and provide periodic updates to the person making the request. Be the leader who gets things done. Build the confidence of your peers, colleagues, direct reports, clients, and business partners, and never have their confidence in your ability to effectively follow up questioned.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

When I managed people in a call center, I used to like walking the floor at least once in the morning and once before I left for the day in order to talk with the employees. I often wondered where the time went in the day, and why there were times when I wasn’t getting everything done I wanted to. I knew the
people doing the hard work deserved my time, but I didn’t know how I could continue to balance it. My peers were getting feedback that their employees never saw them, so I knew I was doing the right thing, but I didn’t want my other work to suffer.

Then, I thought back to my own advice about blocking off time on the calendar. It was a lesson I’d been trying to teach others, and yet had completely missed the fact that it was the solution to my own problem! Although I could typically walk the floor in fifteen minutes, it wasn’t on my calendar. I instantly scheduled thirty minutes to start the day and thirty minutes to finish the day, for walking the floor. I built in double the time to allow for extended conversations, problem solving, or getting caught in the hall with someone who wanted to share a lengthy story. As I started to figure out actual timing, I adjusted it down and input a middle-of-the-day walk, too. I was actually more efficient because I knew a calendar reminder would pop up—and over time, I knew it was coming and became better able to focus on my current tasks and meet all of my goals.

Do you account for everything you do in a day? Take the time to list out ancillary pieces that you may not have typically added to your calendar and add them. Some examples may include:

• Walking around/time not at your desk (e.g., water cooler or
even a restroom break)
• Running into people in the hall/casual conversations with peers

Although you may not schedule these events, they do take your time. These previously unscheduled items can now be add-ons to the previously noted administrative block of time we discussed earlier. Have you accounted for this time? Using the blanket blocking of the time will allow you to know that time is still being taken up. All of the efforts to account for time are about knowing what is taking up your time each day. That knowledge is a powerful thing, because it will ease the pressure you feel on yourself; if it’s not done, it’s not the end of the world. However, as you become more productive, you’ll start to see more wins and sustained efficiency. In addition, on many calendar applications—Microsoft Outlook, Instant Messenger, and Skype, for example—those blocks of time you’ve set aside will show your peers that you are “busy,” thus keeping requests for your time in check.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Are you the eager employee who volunteers for everything that comes your way in an attempt to advance within your organization? What is your confidence level when your boss or your boss’s boss gives you an assignment when your plate is full? I remember working for an individual who was driving me hard. I made every effort to keep my tasks organized, so I maintained a spreadsheet. I had a column that noted all of my deadlines. Some were manager-assigned,
while many were self-initiated, aggressive dates to work toward. I wanted to do everything possible to push myself and prove my worth. One day, I was providing an update to my manager, so I showed him the spreadsheet. Although thirty-seven of the forty items were on pace to be achieved on time, he focused on the three that were past due. The three that were past due were my own deadlines missed. Unfortunately, he held them over my head for quite some time.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: We must be realistic with our timeframes, regardless of how badly we want to meet them. We should continue to drive our work and not sandbag our deliverables, but we must balance it with everything we’re doing. In our efforts to be “gogetters,” we may actually be casting a negative shadow if we don’t accomplish everything we said we would by the given timeframes.

Think back to the times when you were a go-getter and found some commitments not being fulfilled. Effective immediately, I want you to begin to under-promise and over-deliver. You shouldn’t tell the boss that it will be done by five o’clock p.m. because you hope it will be done. You should tell the boss when you know it will be done. If five p.m. isn’t the right timing, you should be honest and tell the boss when the realistic right time is, or invest time to reprioritize other tasks. If you haven’t established a strong enough relationship to do this, you may want to begin to build the trust and respect required to have those prioritization discussions. By under-promising and overdelivering, you’ll start to find appropriate times to hand work in early, beat deadlines, and often times start taking on more responsibilities. It’s ironic how easy it is to stop being a go-getter and actually go out and get more done when you are real with your deadlines.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I used to lie in bed and roll around with constant thoughts in my head: What do I have to do tomorrow? On no! Look at the clock. Tomorrow is now today. I would get ideas in my head, and keep kicking those ideas around to enable myself to remember them in the morning, thus sleeping poorly and often not even remembering it anyway. One of the greatest time management tips I can offer is a simple pad of paper at your nightstand. I’m now in the habit of waking up when I have an idea—most times I’m groggy, but it’s now ingrained in me to immediately write it down. I then drift off for the best night sleep ever, knowing that my ideas or follow-up items are waiting for me when I wake up for the new day.

Grab a pad of paper and a pen, put it next to your nightstand, and simply wait for the ideas to flow. When random thoughts wake you, write them down immediately. This has numerous benefits. First, you won’t forget. Second, you’ll sleep better. Finally—and the greatest benefit of all—you will have stronger ideas since you have reached the inner non-stressed part of your brain.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I come into work each day and the first thing I do is read a passage from the most impactful book I ever read: “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”, by Dr. Richard Carlson. Why? In addition to doing it as an inspiration boost each day, I do it because my calendar tells me to do it. It’s been on my calendar for over ten years, and it pops up every morning at seven a.m. Naturally after all these years, I barely see it, because it’s so ingrained to do it—but it gets done. I’m not curing the world of its ills with this task, but it shows that building the right habits will lead to stronger time management. More importantly, it’s a great lesson: You don’t have to think about what has to be done next if your calendar can do it for you. My calendar is filled with what many would consider silly reminders—but I also have far less stress because I know what’s coming. Without even thinking, I get gently reminded to
transition work and tasks.

Create your own recurring appointments. Invest time today to study your schedule and start to add basic appointments immediately. You can start with the ones that should be on everyone’s calendar, regardless of position or role in an organization; the tasks that have nothing to do with your actual job responsibilities. First, add a five-minute
appointment at the end of each work day to review and organize tomorrow. Actually schedule this event at the end of the day on the calendar. I promise you that you will sleep better knowing exactly what’s on your plate for the next day. Five invested minutes will save you hours later!

Next, add an appointment to organize the following week each Friday—project out a week at a time and actually schedule this event on your calendar. Do the same thing at the end of each month
based on regular monthly tasks, such as budgeting, for example. It’s important to also be smart about when you do this. When I say end of the month, I’m not talking about the thirtieth. I’m actually thinking sometime around the twenty-sixth, so day one isn’t sprung on you. This allows you to better spread out the tasks over the course of a month versus cramming everything into marathon sessions. Many of us like to procrastinate until the actual need to do something. Therefore, if you have multiple tasks that are due at the end of the month, you may not worry about them until the end of the month. Suddenly, a flood of pressure is on you to beat the impending deadline. Be someone who does not procrastinate until the end of the month—spread your tasks
out during the month. The amount of time to complete these tasks throughout the month is the same time it will take to finish at the end of a month. The only difference is the amount of pressure you feel—and, most likely, the quality of work performed!

By creating recurring appointments, you’re shifting much of the self-created pressures away from you to the calendar, and investing time to save time. You’re now using your calendar as a tool to benefit you.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I was once in the middle of transitioning roles, so I met with the person whose job I would be taking over. I asked for a task list so I could get started. He handed me two. The first was a short list; the other was a much longer list, which included all the items from the first as well as several others. I asked him about the difference. He said the short list was the least amount of work he could do in a day and walk out of the office satisfied knowing that all critical items had been met. Since that day, I’ve managed around the concept of the “least amount of work I can do in a day.”

You see, many of us think in terms of the longer list, creating high levels of stress when we don’t accomplish everything. We, in turn, push our work from day to day like we used to push our vegetables on our plates as kids. We push it around but does it ever get consumed—or in this case, done?

Create your must-do short list, including what must be done during the day, the week, and the month. What is the least amount of work that can be done with you walking out satisfied that the job was done? The list can be ever evolving and reviewed regularly to ensure it remains updated. As you continue to massage the short checklist, you should
block off the time to do each item by using your calendar as a tool to reserve time for this must-do list. Even if you don’t have a designated time for these tasks, block off the amount of time anyway, as a way of acknowledging that they must be done at some point in the day.

For example, you know you need to do an hour of project work over several days. You may schedule it for two hours from ten a.m. to noon, but you can build in the flexibility to move this block of time through the day if something else comes up. Yes, I doubled the time, because if you don’t do it today, the work still needs to be done and you’ve just pushed twice as much work to tomorrow. I recommend that you double all the time you expect things to take. The concept of doubling time is important. If you want to think you need thirty minutes to meet with someone, set the actual appointment for sixty minutes. As stated in the last chapter, expect the unexpected.

Instead of pushing tasks day to day—which actually takes time—start to use the extra time that you build into your calendar to pull in tasks from future days, weeks, and even months out. You must understand that consistently pushing to another day is a red flag. When you can account for the least amount of work that you can do in a day and consider yourself successful, you will walk away satisfied and benefit greatly from the power of the pull versus the push.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Have you ever been deep in thought or just hit your stride on a project only to have it snatched away with a phone call, an incoming email that you caught from the corner of your eye, or worse, a loud ding from a device you’re working with? Research has proven that it will take you up to seven times longer to come up with the thought you just had than it took for the original idea.

You must build in time for the unexpected—or as the business world affectionately calls them, fire drills. In an article entitled “Don’t Let Technology Take Over,” Dave Beck references a Basex study of over one-thousand office workers showing that interruptions consume more than two hours, or twenty-eight percent of a typical workday. To quote the article, “More than half of those surveyed said they open email immediately or soon after it arrives, no matter how busy they are. The two hours of lost productivity included not only unimportant interruptions and distractions…but also the recovery time needed to get back on task. The study found that based on an average salary of $21 per hour for ‘knowledge workers’ whose jobs involve information, workplace
interruptions cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year.”

Have you accounted for these two hours in your calendar? Have you trained yourself to jump in to actually deal with these interruptions? Think about how you schedule your day. If you schedule all eight hours in a work day, you are guaranteed to not meet everything that’s on your calendar. Look at your schedule for the coming week and start to block off time to account for fire drills—the things you didn’t plan on dealing with today, but have no choice. Maybe the few minutes here and there don’t need to make your calendar to deal with those small tasks, but you may need to account for it in other administrative or work action time. For example, if it takes you thirty minutes to typically do paperwork daily, schedule an hour for administrative purposes. Next, it’s time to schedule specific time for real-work action like responding to emails and returning messages. Personally, I prefer the quiet morning time for email and later in the morning for phone calls, when possible. Next, identify other x-factors such as busier days of the week or seasonality, and make the adjustments. As another example, when I was a manager in a call center, we knew the call volume was heaviest on Mondays, so we built time for managers to be on the floor with the people on the phones that day, and made a point not to schedule Monday staff meetings.

You may be asking yourself, “Why does scheduling stuff I know I need to do each day need to make my calendar?” You probably already know that if you don’t schedule it, it may not get done. Having the actual reminder will prompt you to get to it. These scheduled periods of time become a barrier of protection to show you what’s supposed to be done today. The phrase supposed to is italicized because we know that planning a day doesn’t always mean that’s how the day will play out. By scheduling administrative work and overestimating the expected time, you are leaving a fire drill cushion.

You can’t control all the interruptions that may come your way, but you can control your reaction to them. You don’t want to be a slave to your calendar, but you do want to be committed to it when you can. Let’s go back to the paperwork example. If you actually completed it in the expected time of thirty minutes and had no interruptions, you bought yourself some extra time to pull future work in from other days. If you did have some fire drills to deal with, you accounted for much of this with the reserved blocks of time.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I was running to what I thought to be the most important meeting I ever had—I say with sarcasm. I mock myself because I can’t even remember what the meeting was about. What I can remember is that someone who worked for me stopped me at my office door and asked for a couple of minutes of my time. I asked if it was important. The words said, “No;” the eyes that I remember so clearly said, “Definitely.” I never saw her again. I found out later that she was having stress-related mental health issues. I could have easily found her the support and assistance she needed with a quick phone call. Instead, my schedule dictated where I needed to be and at what time.

Regardless of your schedule, people are the highest priority. When we die, our inbox will most likely not be empty. As we go through this book on time management, it’s critical to understand that “how” you manage your time can influence others. It’s also important to realize just how important people are. The ones we often complain about who are occupying our time, can actually make us all more productive if they feel like they are part of the solution, part of the team, and active members in supporting all of our time management challenges. All the while, these individuals teach us to make better judgments
and assessments that will pay off later. This comes by building trust, respect, and support for the people who surround us personally and professionally. We can’t do most things on our own.

Let’s take the time to acknowledge that the clock may dictate where we should be and at what time, but we must also have a willingness to drop everything to take care of the matters that need our attention the most. This usually revolves around people! You must take action to ensure that you pay attention not just to words, but to the cues that people are sending with their body language.

When I teach this portion of my seminars, I’m often asked how this idea of making time for those around us can positively impact effective time management. After all, dealing with people not only takes up a lot of time, but it often takes time away from what needs to be accomplished. Besides the lesson I learned in the story about it simply being the right thing to do, this also pays off in the long run, because people see what you’re willing to do for them. They, in turn, are more willing to reciprocate if you are ever in need. Not everything has to be burning with urgency, but you will find that time management is about working together with colleagues, co-workers, clients, and business partners so that everyone wins. Additionally, as your ability to assess what is really important and urgent becomes better, your ability to effectively prioritize will likewise improve.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I was sitting in a company-sponsored time management class as a new manager at the ripe age of twenty-four. I held in my hand my brand new time management binder that, I was sure, would solve all my problems. The instructor made a comment that has unintentionally stuck with me for years: ““If you can’t manage your time well, you’ll be playing catch with one of your kids one day and your mind will be elsewhere, trying to remember what you need to do next.” Fast forward to many years later, when I was kicking a soccer ball around in the yard with my oldest when I found my mind wandering. I was distracted with work thoughts. My personal and professional lives were bleeding together.

Welcome to the modern world, where there is inevitably a blur between work and home. Yet, we have control over more than we think. The boss may be barking instructions, your email inbox is
blowing up, and you have to post that picture of what you ate last night on Facebook. It can all be done. Time management isn’t about a new binder or even an electronic device. It is a disciplined mindset that allows you to live in the moment while working toward the future. Time management is often a mental game—but the concept of time management doesn’t have to be hard. It’s about commitment, routines, flexibility, adjustments, and planning. We create our own self-limitations. You must eliminate what’s holding you back.

You can’t come home after a day of work and completely clear your head—can you? Yes. It starts with taking inventory. I don’t want you to start a time study. They are too subjective, the data sources too unreliable. Instead, I want you to write down the top three things that take up most of your time at work, regardless of whether they’re required or not. Think it through. Not what took your time yesterday; think about what consistently occupies your day. The goal of this blog series is to gain efficiency where and when you can, even if it takes small steps. By keeping it top of mind as you continue to read through Time Management Manifesto, you’ll start to adapt your most time-consuming methods and habits to find the balance you’ve always wanted.

Time management is a requirement for all people in all roles—not just CEOs, managers, owners, or even individual contributors. If you think you don’t have enough time to invest in order to improve your own time management, think again. There are only twenty-four hours in the day. They should not all be devoted to work, but if you don’t manage the work piece, you can’t balance the personal piece. Start immediately. Manage your time, don’t let it manage you.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com