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