A quick guide to managing your time better

Managing your time productively and
effectively
TIME MANAGEMENT

What are your BIGGEST challenges in your time?
Where do you think you need to IMPROVE?

“The bad news is time flies. The
good news is you're the pilot."
Michael Altshuler

CONTENT
• Understanding your ‘primary purpose’
• Effective prioritisation
• Developing a strategy
• Do the figures
• Six fundamentals of time management
• Time stealers and how to deal with them
• Action planning swiftly and effectively

DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE
• The reason your job exists
• What has to be achieved?
• What would you like to achieve?
• The overall aims and objectives
• The BIG picture?

PRIORITISING
There are three main factors we consider
(consciously or not) when prioritising
• Importance
• People
• Urgency

IMPORTANCE FACTORS
• Consequences of non delivery
• Benefits [to self or to others?]
• Interdependence
• Metrics

PEOPLE FACTORS
• Who asked for it?
• How enjoyable is that task (let’s be honest!)
• How long is it?
• How difficult is it?
• Can I delegate it?

URGENCY FACTORS
• When does it need to be done?
• How does this relate to other factors
• People
• Importance

STRATEGY TO TIME MANAGEMENT
• Define your Primary Purpose
• Prioritise your tasks and activities and keep your
Primary Purpose in mind
• Eliminate and manage time stealers

Say no to other people’s monkeys

Quick guide to saying ‘No’
 Show interest, listen, question and understand
what’s being asked
 Show empathy
 Explore the alternatives
 Clearly explain (at the right level) why you
can’t do this
 Approach the situation positively, don’t want
to be seen as the person who always says ‘no’
 Turn down the request, not the person

THE SIX FUNDAMENTALS OF TM
1.Prime time
2. Diary/calendar use
3.To-do lists/planner
4. Batching
5.Challenge the process
6. Working as a team

PRIME TIME
• Know when you’re at your “prime”
• Are you a morning person? evening person?
• Plan your day around your strengths, e.g. most
productive and energetic
• It won’t always be possible, but when you can, use your
own knowledge about yourself to your advantage

Quick guide to diary management
 Make sure your diary is up to date
 Make your diary available to the appropriate people
 Keep a paper diary? Make sure major meetings and
times of non-availability are shown in your outlook
calendar so others know
 Plan time for preparing for meetings, it may not
happen otherwise
 When planning meetings, ensure you allocate time
for travel and anything TFL may throw at you
 Put in regular meetings in your diary in advance so
you know to keep them free

PRODUCTIVITY MISUNDERSTANDINGS
We have all been told about productivity techniques
• To do lists
• Deadlines
• Multi-tasking
Researchers have found recently that there are some issues with
these techniques. Here are a few things we know now which may
help you.

MULTI-TASKING
Here’s what you may have heard:
“You can hold up to 7 items of information in your brain at
any one time”
“women are better at multi-tasking than men”
“multi-tasking is efficient”

MULTI-TASKING – MYTH?
Multi-tasking is not as efficient as focusing on a single task at a time
• Research shows that the magic number 7 is probably wrong
• Research indicates that for concepts and larger pieces of information, the number
falls to 1
• Recent research from Stamford University showed that people who “toggle” tasks on
average took longer to complete each task than those who worked on a task one at a
time.

DEADLINES
What you may have heard
“If we give ourselves plenty of time, we will complete the
tasks.”
“Longer lead time will mean more tasks are completed.”

LONG DEADLINES – MYTH?
Research shows that the more time you give yourself to finish
something, the less likely it is that you will finish it in that timeframe.
Here’s what you can do to improve:
• Deadlines do work - always give yourself deadlines to complete
key tasks. Ideally, get your manager to impose the deadline.
• Give yourself a shorter time to complete tasks – shorter
deadlines mean you’re far more likely to complete the task (and
perform to a higher standard)

TO DO LISTS
What you may have heard:
“If there are unmet goals and uncompleted tasks, having them written
on the to do list will motivate us to complete them.”
“If we write down everything on the list, we’ll know what needs to get
done, that will enable us to assign time and resources to each task.”
“People who keep a to do list are more productive”

TO-DO LIST - PERHAPS NOT THE HOLY GRAIL
Most to-do lists are not particularly motivating or effective.
However, good to-do list management does help productivity
significantly.
Here are some things to try
• Make your to-do lists more specific actionable plans rather
than large vague items e.g. write paper for exec might be research
and do an outline for the paper for exec by X date
• Don’t micromanage your tasks so that you feel you’re locked in,
allow yourself to be responsive.

MAKING TO-DO LISTS EFFECTIVE
• Review your list regularly to ensure it reflects what’s going on –
if things have moved on, modify the task
• Make sure you include the ‘how’ in your planning – and the ‘if
this, then that’ so your brain knows you have options
• Make key tasks ‘living’ by scheduling them in your calendar
rather than just noting them on the list. That will give you more
sense of the time the task should take and more commitment to
the task
• Batch similar items together – emails, mundane tasks, paperwork,
filing etc.

SUMMARY
• Give yourself specific action plans
• Batch similar tasks together so you can make better use of your time
• Schedule in key tasks in the calendar to give yourself more commitment
• Make sure there’s some flexibility in your planning to account for
interruptions
• Don’t list every single thing you need to do (it’s too depressing!)
• Review your list regularly
• Ensure you have deadlines for key tasks and make those deadlines earlier
• If you’re a manager – ensure the tasks you agree with your team have time
limits

QUICK GUIDE TO WILLPOWER
Do your biggest tasks first thing in the morning
• Research shows that willpower is at its highest in the
morning.
• If you think of self control as a muscle, as you keep
using it, fatigue sets in.
• Researchers showed in self-control tasks there were
significant performance differences in self control,
perceived effort, perceived difficulty, negative affect
and subjective fatigue.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror
every morning and asked myself “If today were the
last day of my life, would I want to do what I am
about to do today?”
And whenever the answer has been “No” for too
many days in a row, I know I need to change
something"
Steve Jobs

EXERCISE
• List all the people or teams that you rely on to do your job
effectively
• List all the people or teams who rely on you
• Consider your relationships listed. Using a scale of
‘High/Medium/Low’, how dependant are you on each
relationship?
• Now, using a scale of 1 to 10 (10 = high), how effective are
those relationships?

QUICK GUIDE TEAM WORK
 Make sure your colleagues are updated with relevant
information
 Be punctual – be there when you say you will
 Treat your colleagues as customers
 Put an appropriate out of office on so others know when
they can expect a response from you
 Be known for being a person of your word

MEETING STRATEGIES
1. Ensure all meetings have an agenda
2. All attendees should be able to have concrete next steps
or action items
3. The meeting should have an end time (and stick to it)
4. Invite as few people as possible
5. All meetings should have a clear decision maker
6. Be prepared to challenge and be challenged respectfully

A quick guide to managing your time better

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