A credit manager for a men’s clothing store struggled with overtime for years. He never could get his boss to let him have an assistant for the details. Finally, after three years suffering, he decided it was hopeless and found a job with another firm where he didn’t have to work 80 hours a week and he had more time to spend with his family. On the other hand, the chief accountant in the same firm solved the same overload problem by deciding to do as much as he could and not worry about what didn’t get done. His solution of doing things in order of their importance, but only working a regular workweek was more successful. When the boss saw that the work wasn’t getting done, he let the chief accountant hire more help. [In the following sections, Lakein showcases some ways you can use time to your advantage.]
Make the Most of Your Transition Time
I have suggested that you need to balance work and play. You might say to me, “I don’t have time for everything.” Well, I say let’s see if we can find you some time. More specifically, let’s see if you can find some time that you have previously overlooked.
One kind of time that’s often overlooked is what I call transition time. This kind of time starts when you awaken in the morning and ends when you commute to work. For most people it amounts to perhaps 40 minutes a day. One man I know has reduced it though to only 15 minutes. He uses the time only to do essentials—eat breakfast, shave, dress—and he does these as quickly as possible.
There may be an advantage in extending, rather than reducing this transition time, though. If your day is broken into many parts, transition time offers you perhaps the only block of time you’ll have alone and undisturbed.
Why not reflect on the best use of your time during the coming day and consider those time management techniques that will help you get things done. There are other ways to enrich transition time, too. For example, one politician was reported to have listened to Shakespeare plays while shaving. One creative manager, realizing that he got some of his best ideas in the morning, has come to expect them and catches them for further development while they and he are still fresh.
Use Commuting and Lunch Time Wisely
If you’re a professional person, how about working at home twice a week and skipping that 45-minute commute on the expressway? If you drive to work, true, you’re limited in the use you can make of the time you spend while sitting in traffic jams, and safety does come first, but you can listen to the news on the radio, practice your new vocabulary exercise, and as more and more cassette tapes [today, podcasts] on educational subjects are becoming available, you might learn a foreign language, listen to a business report, or take a memory course. Commuting time offers a chance to preview and plan your day, though you should crystalize that plan on paper as soon as you sit down at your desk.
What is the true price of lunch? In some selling jobs, of course, the customer is crucial, and in such a situation a working lunch may be beneficial, but by and large a full-scale lunch is a fantastic waste of time. For most people lunch just adds calories and expenses they can well do without. Many doctors today are dead set against three square meals a day and many first-rate MD diet specialists either skip lunch altogether or have some cottage cheese and that’s it. If you take an early or late lunch, the normal lunchtime offers a good opportunity to get things done while the phones are quiet and others are away. On the other hand, if you have a hectic, busy day, a lunch break may provide the only breathing time for you. In that event, if you cut back on your lunchtime, you might decrease your effectiveness the rest of the day. Maybe this is a good time for you to take a walk or swim at the Y.
For example, a general merchandising manager, recently promoted, no longer took a regular lunch hour off. He felt that since his job involved more responsibility, he should be available all the time. And so he just grabbed a quick sandwich on the run. After several weeks of this, he found himself irritable in the afternoon, snapping at his colleagues, and having difficulty concentrating on important matters. I convinced him that he needed a sitdown lunch to restore energy and calm.
How to Use Waiting Time
If you have to wait for the subway, bus, or your carpool or in the prospect’s office, you can use those patches of time profitably, too. You might read the paper. But suppose you’ve had a lifelong goal of reading the classics. Most of them are available now in paperback [or as ebooks and audiobooks]. You may not always feel like reading Don Quixote as you wait for the bus at the corner of Main and Pine, but isn’t it nice to have the option? If you’re a salesman, you can use waiting time to write up the last order, dictate a follow-up letter, or better prepare yourself for the coming sales talk.
Make Your Sleep Work for You
If you like, you can put some sleep time to work once you realize that most bodily functions continue while you are asleep. As your dreams show, your subconscious works even while you’re sleeping. Why not deliberately put it to work on your tough problems? Here’s how: Pose a question to your subconscious just before you fall asleep. Select one that requires hours of thought. After all, your subconscious will have four to eight hours to work on it. Now don’t waste time thinking about it consciously, but do expect a meaningful answer when you awaken. Many who have tried this method have found it very successful. But if it only keeps you awake, by all means forget it.
How to Repeal Parkinson’s Law
I feel that so long as people do the job they’re hired and required to do, they shouldn’t have to look busy every minute of the time. I’ve always tried to give the people that work for me a real incentive to make good use of their time by allowing them to do reading, writing, or whatever else they want after they finish my work. I’ve even sent them home early with full pay when there was nothing else to be done.
The policy of making people sit at their desks even if they have nothing to do breeds bad time habits and accounts for a certain amount of psychological aggravation. “It isn’t surprising that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion,” as C. Northcote Parkinson has stated, “since all too often there are no alternatives available.” I propose that it’s time to repeal Parkinson’s Law by allowing people to reap the benefits of getting done early and letting them do their personal things.
In limitless jobs, where there are truly an endless number of things that could be done, such as creating advertising copy, researching, selling, removing every speck of dust from the house, Parkinson’s Law theoretically doesn’t apply; there is always enough work. In practice, certain tasks tend to be done on a particular day, and these are the ones that are stretched out. You really can’t push people to be creative by the clock. And beyond a certain point, simply putting in the hours is not necessarily the best way to get creative work done, as the architect I mentioned earlier clearly demonstrates.
Do More by Doing Less
In all planning, you make a list and you set priorities. It is extremely important to list and set priorities. However, all the items on the list are not of equal value. Once you’ve made a list, set priorities based on what is important to you now. Use the ABC priority system. Write a capital letter A to the left of those items on the list that have a high value; a B for those with medium value; and a C for those with low value. To a certain extent, you’ll have to guess but that’s OK; it’s still useful. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to look for tasks that are better left undone.
How often have you resorted to poking through routine work to get a feeling of satisfaction because you’re doing the processing efficiently, while you let more important activities go because you want to avoid the feeling of doing them inefficiently.
For example, neatening the desk. You would be unlikely to label this as an A activity, unless it’s become a disaster area. But because it’s such an easy thing to do and the results show immediately, you might very well spend an extra few minutes, unnecessarily, neatening your desk, when perhaps the thing to do is to get away from your desk and go on and see what you can do with a personnel problem
that needs solving down in Department 73.
Why do people have this strong tendency to get bogged down with Cs? One reason is that many activities of top value cannot, by their very nature, be performed well. Part of their value may be that they’ve never been done before. Examples include setting up a committee to consider manufacturing a new, highly competitive product; diapering a baby for the first time; learning Chinese; switching to organic cooking; or finding something else to do with your evenings besides watching television.
Now there is a certain luxurious feeling that comes from doing whatever you want without regard to priority or time involved. Since you know you’re not doing As, you can waste time and gain the feeling of doing something well or starting something easy and finishing it, crossing an item off your list and moving the paper from your inbox to your outbox. But don’t kid yourself; it’s because you’re doing all these Cs, not because you haven’t any time, that you don’t get to do your As.
Use the 80/20 Rule
When I deal with people who claim they’re overwhelmed, one of the best ways I can help them is to have them become more comfortable with not doing Cs. But people are often hesitant to let go of Cs. Therefore, I suggest to you the 80/20 Rule, which says if all items are arranged in order of value, 80 percent of the value would come from only the top 20 percent of the items, while the remaining 20 percent of the value would come from the remaining 80 percent of the items. Sometimes it’s a little more, sometimes a little less, but the vast majority of the time I think you’ll find the 80/20 Rule is correct.
What this suggests is that in a list of ten items, doing two of them will yield you 80 percent of the value. Find these two, label them A and get them done. Leave most of the other eight undone because the value you’ll get from them will be much less than that of the two highest value items. Instead, use your time to find more top priority A items and give them additional time.
A real estate salesman came to me for advice about increasing his sales and profits. We looked over his card file of his properties for sale and his prospect list and discovered that unquestionably, 80 percent of his sales were coming from 20 percent or less of his customers. The 80 percent of his time that was going into low-dollar properties contributed little to his cause. In fact, they wore him out. Being low priced, he had to show them more often, and this took time away from the more expensive and profitable properties. By the end of our talk, the salesman realized that his time was best spent with the cream of the crop. The real payoff for his selectivity came by tripling his earnings in the ensuing 12 months.
When Not to Do Cs
One of the best ways to find time for your As is by reducing the number of Cs that you feel compelled to spend time on. The main question with the Cs is, can I not do this C? Think of the great feeling of satisfaction of drawing a line through a C item on your to-do list, without ever having to go through the effort of doing it. Rather than think I have to do this C, get into the habit of thinking maybe I don’t have to do this C.
Let’s say your to-do list contains get the car washed. You have given this C priority but are tempted to have a half-hour out and get it washed anyway, just to get it off your mind and off the list. It’s much easier to get it off your list and forget about it, by deciding it doesn’t need to be done at all. This will give you an extra half-hour of selling time a day and that’s high-priority time.
In the ABC priority system, there’s something called a Z. A Z is something that doesn’t have to get done at all. And many Cs can be turned into what I call CZ’s. CZ’s are Cs that can be deferred indefinitely without harm. Definite CZ’s include rearranging a pile of magazines, mopping the kitchen floor just before the children come home on a rainy day, checking for the morning mail when your secretary always brings it in immediately upon arrival. Some Cs need to be deliberately deferred, to test whether they can become CZ’s. Let them age for a while and see if they die a natural death.
Give the ABCs Their Place
Rather than let the high-quality As get buried by the much larger quantity of Cs, try reserving a special place on top of your desk for the A items. Create a special C drawer, where the unimportant items can get dumped safely out of the way. If you already have a C drawer, get yourself a bigger one or a whole cabinet for the Cs. Now as a start, try physically separating your paperwork into small A piles and B piles and a much larger C pile. Resort the B pile into either the A or C group and then put the As in the A place and the Cs in the C drawer.
Sometimes it pays to slow down. What can you do when you have no doubt that you should do the unpleasant A tasks, yet are strongly inclined to run away from it and turn to something else? First, you must recognize clearly when you have reached such a decision time and that you’re at the point now of choosing whether to do your A-1 priority now or to avoid it. Once you recognize this decision time, you’ll want to take control of the decision-making process. The way to do this is to slow down the final decision. A quick decision to put the unpleasant A-1 out of sight and mind gives you little chance to curb your tendency to procrastinate. Take enough time to consider the situation carefully. Give yourself every opportunity not to ditch the A-1 for some activity of lesser value. Slow down the process so that you have the time to make a conscious and deliberate, favorable choice.
WHEN PERFECTIONISM HELPS AND WHEN IT DOESN’T
Perfectionism is worth approaching when 80 percent of the value comes from the last 20 percent of the effort. For example, the construction of a dam, bringing home the family’s favorite groceries, unstopping a plugged-up sink, remembering your wedding anniversary every year. Perfectionism is a waste of time on such labors as rewriting your address book every two months, when there are not many changes or rechecking a low-priority letter for typing errors, when it’s already been checked by the typist.
Once you get immersed in such activities, they seem to acquire a momentum of their own. You may then be carried along without control, drifting aimlessly and helplessly with the tide. One way to combat this drift is to set your self-control points for reviewing your progress. Check every 15 minutes or half-hour or go on until 3:30 and then review. One way to remember to do this is to use a timer. If you’re not benefiting from continued efforts, stop and change and do something else.
Do you suspect diminishing returns? Are you being needlessly perfectionistic? If you’re not sure whether it’s worth finishing something or worth continuing, I suggest that you stop. If you don’t come back to it, then, in fact, you were done.
PROCRASTINATE POSITIVELY
Perhaps you have been trying to get started on a project, but find yourself continually procrastinating. OK. If you have to procrastinate, I’m going to show you how to do it positively. Sit in the chair and do nothing. That’s right, nothing. Don’t read a book. Don’t shuffle papers. Don’t watch TV, just sit completely still. If you sit doing nothing for 15 or 20 minutes, now don’t cheat, you must do absolutely nothing, you should become very uneasy. That A-1 priority is staring you right in the face and you’re doing nothing. Precious minutes that you could use to accomplish a lifetime goal are slipping by and you’re sitting in a chair doing nothing.
Whenever I find myself procrastinating, this is the technique I use. Believe me, after ten minutes at the most, I’m off and running on my A-1. What is you’re A-1? What is the best use of your time today? Decide, don’t procrastinate, and do it now.
ENTREPRENEUR ACTION ITEM
Making Time Is Your Most Important Business Resource
It’s no secret that proper time management is a crucial element of success regardless of who you are or what you do. Nonetheless, far too few business professionals appreciate time as one of the most important resources around, and precious little is being done in the average workplace to make better use of everyone’s most limited asset.
Despite the heavy focus on profitability or the strength of your human capital, managing your time properly is by far the most important element of succ
ess in today’s market. And yet you’re likely wasting it. Here are some tactics to make better use of your working hours.
You Need a Personalized Approach
Most people are familiar with the fact that time management is important, yet precious few understand that you need a personalized approach to seriously achieve any extra efficiency in your day. This is because everyone’s schedule is unique. No one else understands the importance of your time during particular periods of your schedule. But to appreciate that yourself it’s important you start with an audit of your daily habits to see where you’re wasting the most time.
A number of digital apps will show you where you’re wasting your time and how to make better use of it. Installing a fancy app on your smartphone or computer will likely help you watch your minutes more closely, and it may even result in some extra productivity, but you need to understand that you’re the one in control of your time, not some machine. Successful time management is all about self-control and the ability to honestly assess your own situation to determine when you’re dithering vs. when you’re making the right decisions.
Only after you’ve thoroughly and honestly reviewed your daily schedule to see where you’re wasting time can you begin to make meaningful life adjustments. Smart time management tips for small-business owners often emphasize a consistent theme—brutal honesty when assessing something’s importance is a crucial part of time management.
It’s helpful to break down your daily tasks and responsibilities into categories that are ranked by matter of importance. You may discover that you’re wasting untold minutes on insignificant duties that can be dedicated elsewhere. Furthermore, categorizing your daily responsibilities in terms of their importance helps you focus on the most urgent and pressing of issues first.
Prioritizing Is the Key to Success
Napoleon Hill's Success Masters Page 16