Category Archives: Time Management

One step back – a thousand steps forward.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

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The future can dictate your past – if you let it. Thus spake Tony Robbins, generally accepted to be the world’s  most famous and top performance coach (despite what other coaches claim). His intention is to tell you not to live in the past, but the subtext is not to live in a failure-based past. In a similar vein, many coaches promote the idea of making sure your past is gone – truly gone – before you move along, there.

The reason is that even when you are future focused, there is still something you have done that is incomplete, or you feel an emotional, nagging feeling that something might not be truly over. Either way, not dealing with it can be self-defeating. Not always, but sometimes.

Several writers do suggest that when preparing your future, you look at the past in depth. For some writers, the objective is purely forward focused in the sense that they ask, “What did you do as a child that really made you feel happy?” and then suggest you use the answer as a guide to what to do next. (If that went as well as suggested there’d be thousands more spacemen and no chiropodists.) The other motive for analysis of your past is to simply see what you can learn from it, and to use that knowledge as part of the planning.

In either case, the gazing backwards can identify some things you wish you’d done but hadn’t; some things you wish you hadn’t done but did; and some things that you started but didn’t finish even though you should have, or wanted to. The benefits are clear.

Incompletes, as Jack Canfield calls them, will play on your mind for ever. If your reminiscing identifies some incomplete that you can do something about, organise your time so you can do it. If you’re reminded about an offence you wish you could take back, send an apology or simply let it go. If there was a goal you still have time to achieve, get to it. If there is a lesson to be learned from what was done or was not, write it down and learn from the experience.

Once you’ve looked at what went wrong, look at what went right and ask similar questions. Everything that happens to us, teaches us something. Covey and other put it something like this – experience has no motive. It teaches us lessons we need to learn without judgement. It has no bias or ulterior objective. Experience just ‘is’. It is a valuable teacher.

I therefore recommend analysis of the past with an open-mind.

As Jinny Ditzler puts it her excellent book, ‘Best Year Yet’, ask yourself “What were my disappointments, what were my accomplishments, what did I learn and (importantly) what am I going to do about it?” Find the answers, because therein lie the plans you need to make and the actions you need to take in the near to intermediate future if you are going to have a sense of contentment when it all comes to an end.

Don’t be led by other people’s experience and advice. Listen to it, consider it, decide whether or not it is something you need to act upon, but don’t blindly follow someone else’s plan – their plan is based on their needs, values and experiences. Their plan is based on their disappointments, accomplishments, lessons and wants. Not yours.

What have you/haven’t you done that you need to do or let go? What are you going to do about that discovery?

Do It Now.

Welcoming Disruption. I like a challenge.

24 Friday Jan 2020

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The wife’s got the painters in. Not a euphemism, we’re having the lounge done properly. If I painted it, it would look somewhat off-centre because I can’t paint straight lines. Of course, losing the main living area of the house for the day is quite disruptive and I insisted on making sure that the wi-fi was still plugged in, even if I am missing the morning TV and the amusement of the Trump Impeachment debacle. Hence the early post.

There are two kinds of disruption – planned and unplanned, and the amount of whining associated with either is often disproportionate to the amount of notice provided. It’s as if knowing in advance what could go wrong is more annoying than the unexpected. Having notice gives you time to plan, but it also gives you time to consider ‘what is wrong’ and ‘why didn’t (someone else) think about this when they organised it?’. NOT having notice brings out the martyr in us, but it also brings forward a surprising amount of initiative and creativity.

And people like that, because it the adults’ time to play.

Personally, I prefer the forward-planned disruption because of the time management protocols I can bring into play, but I also enjoy the unplanned interference with a plan.

Why is that?

It is because the unexpected disruption brings into focus just how well I planned the day.

If I have planned well, I have done the most important tasks before the disruption arises or, if the disruption opens the day, I can plan major events around it. I can fit the new problems in and that’s the exciting and challenging part.

When I was a DC in a busy city, disruption was the order of the day. Murder, death and mayhem were routine. But unlike many of my great colleagues, who’d abandon their intended plans when ‘something big’ came in, I’d work my tasks in around the new stuff. If there was a ‘prisoner in the bin’, they would just sit and wait and think. I would use the time where I was waiting for solicitors and other teams’ input by making telephone calls, altering priorities and even conducting previously-planned interviews around the new priority.

On the day, the effect didn’t show. But a week later, when they were playing catch up with all the stuff that hadn’t gone away while they ‘waited’, I was free to deal with new things, or able to do a better job of all the ‘old’ things like paperwork, case file preparation, and so on. I’d created time, while they had just packed what was available with the stuff they could have already done.

Priorities matter, but you can work all of your priorities around each other.

I tried, goodness I tried, to train colleagues in time management but the organisation itself wasn’t open to mass TM training for all. Despite a paper in 2010 about it, colleagues still run around chasing their tails because they haven’t been taught how to manage themselves in the context of the time available and the people they spend that time with.

There are many professionals who don’t even think they need time management training – which is odd in some cases because they bill by the hour.

Personally, I consider it not just a professional necessity but in times of mental health focus I consider that it is a lifestyle necessity, one which would have a positive effect on not just our work but our personal lives, too.

Imagine how much stress you’d NOT suffer if that small pile of paper had been done at the optimum moment instead of the ever-growing pile being addressed ‘when I get around to it’.

Think about it. Disruption is fun – if you have a strategy for dealing with it.

 

Read this post twice….you’ll see why.

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

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Stephen Covey wrote, “Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. But as soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy. We don’t do any more serious thinking, we don’t explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we don’t think analytically, we don’t write – at least not critically or in a way that tests our ability to express ourselves in distilled, clear and concise language.”

Just to allow for context, those words were published in 1989, and were probably an extension of his thinking from earlier years. And I add that because I think he is slightly mistaken.

(WHAT!!! A disciple questioning the Master! Next he’ll be chopping off his master’s arm and running the Jedi himself!)

Worry ye not. I think he is mistaken now because more and more people are subject to constant training at work, whereas in 1989 in-house, on-the-job developmental training was less de rigueur than it is now. No diversity, first-aid, health and safety input back in those days, and CPD hadn’t been invented yet.

But the essential premise remains sound. Few of us actively seek out additional training, while even being reluctant to attend that which is provided at work.

Which is self-defeating.

Every professional update improves your ability to execute on your responsibilities, and every voluntary educational experience broadens your mind and improves personal creativity. And quite often, what you learn away from your professional life impacts on that professional life. I did a law course in 1999 and the stuff I learned there certainly impacted positively on what I did at work. It changed my level of thinking and vastly improved my understanding of Sith (defence lawyers) practices, which I promptly turned back upon them, mwahahahahahahaha!

But it doesn’t have to be formal training, although that is best.

Every article you read on a subject of interest to you is an example of well-spent time. That’s why I write these articles, yet keep them short. It’s a minute, maybe two, away from your work focus but it might just broaden your thinking and/or provide new tools for increased quality of productivity without an increase in quantity (although you do get to do more of what you like, of course). And other writers on other subjects can add to your toolbox, either in work or just for qualified conversation at a posh dinner.

The message today is to take two minutes to read more articles – on LinkedIn or elsewhere – and identify areas of interest that will make you smarter.

One caveat. At the end of the opening, quoted paragraph Covey added, “Instead, we spend our time watching TV.” There is a lot of good stuff on TV, and I like an escapist cop-show as much as anyone. But the drivel that peppers the airwaves (The Masked Singer? FGS!) serves no-one’s interests but the financiers. Watching them takes more than two minutes and only provides the vapid with dinner conversation.

Go back to reading if you need 30-60 minutes that will make you better as an intellectual. Or just take two and use them wisely, Padawan. Better still, read this twice so it sits comfortably in your pre-frontal lobe and causes you to see your next valuable, voluntary training opportunity.

 

Speaking of which……. Me book. (Blatant plug.)

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Save money through Time Management. But not how you think……

20 Monday Jan 2020

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Anyone who has ever read about time management will be familiar with the Time Matrix. You know, the one which is segmented to identify Urgent v Important, and looks like this.

TM Matrix

Have you ever thought how applying this same Matrix to your financial habits might just make you more wealthy?

Think about it. You have a spending pattern. There are things you like to buy, things you have to buy, things that you want to buy but can’t – a whole range of purchasing options based on the same two criteria you use when spending ‘time’.

There are Quadrant 3 things – you ‘want’ it now and so you buy it ‘now’, even though a sober reflection may have said it wasn’t important enough to spend hard-earned cash on, but you (or someone you love/like/respect) suggested it was NOW or never.

There are Quadrant 1 things – things you genuinely have to buy now because they are vital to something in which you are presently involved. For example, I recently had to buy longer screws to fit a light switch that stuck out just too far for the provided screws to reach the fitment. (I know it’s an off example but read on.)

There are Quadrant 4 things – things that aren’t urgent or important but your heart overrules your head and you buy it because it’s pretty or funny or quirky or you’re just so fed up you need to demonstrate your personal power by possessing this bauble.

And there are Quadrant 2 things – things which aren’t necessarily urgent but which are, or may be, urgent now or in the future. Back to my screws. I needed 50mm screws, but could only get 75mm screws, which, it turned out, were far too long. I therefore had a Q1 need for a pair of pliers strong enough to cut the screws to length. Looking around, I realised that I anticipated a need to cut even bigger metal rods, so I bought bolt-cutters, instead. And that made me realise that notwithstanding the urgency of the screws, now would be a good time to make an anticipatory spend on a toolkit and, being Christmas, there were many good kits available at a discount price. The bolt-cutters were Q1, but the extra purchase was Q2.

What else can we allocate to these Quadrants?

Q1 – unexpected fines/bills, repairs to broken electronics, fuel for an empty tank, fast food when we’re hungry.

Q3 – tips for surly waiters, money for chuggers (charity muggers).

Q4 – extra SkyTV channels, that emergency pasty fat people buy at 9AM, our expensive Starbucks coffee to carry to work – the one that we worked 20 minutes to afford, a copy of OK magazine.

Q2 – fuel for the car before we run short, household bills, a 30th anniversary copy of The Seven Habits (I am genuinely excited), good food, investments and savings, tithing if that’s what you do, etc.

Where do you spend most of your money?

Don’t worry about it to stress-point. As with time, occasionally what looks like a Q4 spend is, in fact, a Q2 spend if we genuinely need something to de-stress ourselves, for example. A Q3 spend on a friend may hurt but may pay dividends in terms of that friend’s realisation that they are loved, making it Q2, or even Q1 spend.

Have a think – do you have foreign holidays because other people do, when you could spend the same on personal development? Do you have a plan to buy a new car on a monthly rental when buying an old one outright could leave you with money you could invest, and an asset to sell if you wanted to?

The Time Matrix – a way to save money. Who’d have thought it?

Juggling is for Jugglers.

14 Tuesday Jan 2020

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In 2006, I attended The Seven Habits Workshop run by FranklinCovey in the UK, at their then HQ in Banbury, Oxfordshire. It was facilitated by the skilled coach Stephen Smith who, like me, looked a lot younger in those days.

During a ‘Why are you here’ session, Stephen asked the hitherto reluctant, waiting-to-see-how-the-land-lies participants “Well, do you want to improve your work-life balance?” As one might expect, we chorused in a fashion designed to at least give the impression of enthusiasm, “YES!”

“Okay then, let’s see just how much more work we can get out of you, then.,” said a smirking, ‘I-knew-you-were-going-to-fall-for-it’ Steve.

Very few people want to skew their work-life balance in favour of the former. Which is odd, really, because so many people do unconsciously skew their lives that way.

I know people who work every hour God sends in an effort to maximise income, only to swear blind that their ‘family comes first’. Which is not to say that they’re lying, just that what they are doing (working) may not be what they think they’re doing (providing a secure lifestyle for their family).

And I say that because I wonder if they’ve asked their families do they want mummy/daddy working for mo’ money – or do they want mummy and daddy present.

(I suppose teenagers may provide a different answer, depending on the level of gadgets they have or want.)

I believe, as do many in the ‘family field’, that what families need more than anything else, is presence. They want Ma or Pa to ‘be there’ at school concerts, recitals, sports events – and above all to be waiting when they need picking up. Selfish, really. But that’s what kids want.

Go home, be present. At least sometimes.

On another tack, in terms of the balance between work and ‘life’, since Steve regaled us on the matter the world has changed to the degree that the lines between work and ‘life’ have blurred. We are, thanks to the smartphone, available to work when at home, and home when at work. Few think about the appropriateness of crossing the divide. Most think it’s alright to interrupt people when they want, because they can. You may notice that phenomenon when you’re chatting to A and B butts in without an ‘excuse me’, because the smartphone has legitimised interruption.

Of course, in terms of the aforementioned work-life balance ‘thing’, when either interrupts the other our eye is taken off the ball in the moment. Concentration wanders, mistakes are possible, disaster can occur.

As far as possible, and in recognition that I use the word ‘appropriateness’ in this article, try to keep communication under the right heading. Work for work time, life for life-time, at least as much as you can manage. It’s the most productive approach to ‘The Balance’. It means you can get work done without thinking about cooking dinner, and it means putting the right amount of salt and butter into the mashed potato without wondering if that report you submitted is in the right post-tray.

Damn – now I’m hungry………………

 

For more, read this book!

PTM Pic

Lean towards lists – and keep your equipment safe.

10 Friday Jan 2020

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This morning, I had a plan. I had a doctor’s appointment first, followed by several numerically-ordered ‘As’, as per the advice given by so many time management writers to whom I have been loyal for some time.

Unfortunately, the doctor directed me to the local X-Ray department after his inspection, which meant that all the other things got demoted and had to wait their turn. Still in numerical order, but now subordinate to the additional task.

Some people, some intelligent people, don’t cope with such a situation as well as perhaps they could.

Some may have resolutely declined and delayed the radiologist’s company in favour of their plan, thus (arguably) risking their physical health in avoidance of a mental breakdown caused because their plan was at risk.

Other people would have gone to the local hospital’s radiology department, bitching the whole time that they ‘have better things to do’ and would have to reorganise their day to cope with this health-focused deviation from their intended schedule.

Did I go nuts? Of course not. And the reason I did not go nuts is because I had an organised list of things to do, written down and ready for review when the interruption was over.

David Allen, author of ‘Getting Things Done’, says, “You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know everything you’re not doing.” In other words, part of the mental challenge of personal organisation and productivity is having the capacity to know – or be able to quickly and easily find out – what is important, what is less important and what is not important, so that constant re-planning of tasks is not a routine part of life.

If you have no written list of things to do, ideally prioritised in some way, then you are relying on your memory to hold an abstract list for you. Unfortunately, the brain does not have an indexing system as reliable as a ‘list’ – it bundles every thought in one giant retrieval system, yes, but you have to think about retrieval at a time when your mind is struggling with multiple thoughts and inputs just when you need it to concentrate on just on problem. You are creating the bullet points as you remember the ‘thing’, but the bullet point disappears as soon as your brain moves on. And the bundle contains not only the things you must do, but also a bucket-load of the ‘not now’ and the irrelevant, both of which get in the way of cogent thought on the Now. (Oooh, very Mindful.)

I recall a training session where a colleague said he didn’t have a list because he liked to be spontaneous. I suggested that his supervisor (present) might like him to know what was expected of him and for him to organise his priorities accordingly, after which he could be spontaneous.

Having an organised list or plan allows you to free up your memory for thinking creatively, proactively and in a less-stressed fashion. Not having a list/plan means making it up again and again as you go along, always playing catch-up with yourself while ‘yourself’ keeps running off at tangents. Like playing tag with a chicken – as Rocky Balboa.

But above all, having a plan/list means that interruptions – an inevitable reality of working life – can be dealt with consciously, competently, effectively and without the urge to punch a fax machine. (Yes, I did. Once. A long time ago.)

Keep your technology safe -make lists.

The Wisdom That Saved Me.

09 Thursday Jan 2020

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This will be an absolute, unashamed plug. But it has an X-Factor style back story about me.

In the early 1990s I read a book. I have, admittedly, read some more since then. In the mid-1990s, I threw what those in my former profession called a ‘double-six’, which is an inexplicable euphemism for losing it emotionally and doing something that exhibits the point at which a straw broke your camel’s back. In my case, and I really didn’t see it coming, I broke down in tears in front of one of the best, most understanding supervisors I ever had the honour to serve. I suspect he was as surprised as I was. Evidently, a build up of stress factors over a period of time just hit me and I suffered an emotional collapse.

Traditionally, when this happens to coppers they have 6 months off, see the doctor for some pills, and later debate with their friends who has the highest dosage of said pills. Which is not a judgment on whether or not they were suffering from stress, because they invariably were. It is just a statement based on my experience of my colleagues’ response to it. Absence, medication, discussion. Standard procedure.

In my case I left work at the start of the shift during which it happened, had the following shift off, then after a three day weekend was back for my morning shift on the Monday. Two workdays lost, a weekend off as per the rota, and back.

One might suggest I wasn’t really stressed. Well, I don’t cry easily. I am/was a macho, rooftop-chasin’, car-chasin’, door-kickin’ kind of guy. So tears at lunchtime suggest a breakdown.

What ‘sorted’ my depression for me was not drugs. It was application of what I’d learned in the aforementioned book. It espoused taking control of events by using the gap between stimulus and response to decide, consciously, deliberately, in a considered way what, exactly, to do about the event. I took my family to dinner, decided what changes I felt I needed the job to make in my regard and, with that clarity, sought and got it.

Never lost it again. I’ve suffered some severe cr4p since then but it’s never brought me to tears or caused a lay-off.

On the 9th of March 2020, the 30th Anniversary Edition of that book will be released. It’s been updated, and if the font size remains the same there’ll be an extra 120 pages of ‘stuff’ in it. I’m already pumped and waiting to buy it.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (1932-2012), amended by his son Sean.

If you want an intelligent, profound and systematic take on effective living that doesn’t dictate what you should do but focuses on how it is you who decides what and how you need to do things, this is it.

I’ve read tons of stuff. Anthony Robbins, Ziglar, Tracy, Sinek, and others. They all provide great advice on how to get what you want.

But every time I think about ‘life’ and consider ‘doing’ what these writers promote, I find that I always come back to the wisdom – and the book – that Stephen Covey gave me. And if the book blurb is true, 50,000,000 suspect the same.

Go on. Treat yourself. Buy a book that I can assure you from experience, really is life-changing.

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Yep. Shook his hand……

20th Century Thinking. It’s BRILLIANT!

07 Tuesday Jan 2020

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Are your practices outdated?

I don’t mean the skills you possess and perform. Most professions require, expect and train you for competencies specifically relating to your role. It’d be a poor employer who didn’t, surely?

In this context, I am asking whether the ‘soft skills’ surrounding your professional productivity are up to scratch, and whether or not you’re still utilising pre-digitalisation thinking in your processes and procedures.

I’ve just left the police service, and that has been wholly digitalised. You’d think, as you watch NCIS press the “evidence button” that identifies, in one click, which suspect car has a specific tyre tread bought in that shop with that credit card by a person with that driving licence (doesn’t and a can’t happen, btw), that police forces would be completely at ease with IT.

Nope. And I wonder if this is reflected in other organisations, too.

First of all, and I admit I can only speak for the organisations I worked for, people are trained in THAT programme but never in ‘how computers work’. For proof, next time you’re arrested, watch the custody sergeant hunt and peck with the mouse instead of tabbing from field to field. No-one has told her how to use ‘computers’, just how to use ‘the custody programme’.

Next, the counter to IT training is the associated inability to think for themselves once digi-trained. If it isn’t ‘in the system’, no one knows that you can knock a neighbour’s door to see if someone still lives at 123, Acacia Avenue. No-body seems to be willing or able (or allowed) to leave ‘their’ patch to make eye-to-eye enquiries, relying on the uninformed to do it for them.

Finally, and this just blows my mind, they’ve stopped working for each other. In 1986, if I wanted a statement done in Essex (200 miles away) I would telex (look it up) that force and they’d do it for me. Now, we send someone that 200 miles because Essex is busy. A working day and a half to take a one or two page statement, instead of (for us) little time at all and (for them) an hour.

Personally, my preferred option for ‘outside force enquiries’ was to conduct a telephone interview with the witness and then arrange an exchange of documents via email, which was never challenged in all the crown court trials where I used that method (which also crossed international boundaries but don’t tell anyone). Occasionally a visit was necessary, but not every time.

My point is that people get so bogged down in ‘doing it like this’ that we stop thinking ‘is there a better, more efficient AND effective way to get X done?’ Or, as suggested above, ‘How did we do this before IT got in the way?’

Look at how you do stuff – do you send people places to get things that could be electronically got? Do you send emails or texts and then wait to get urgent information, instead of making a telephone call and getting the answer right away? Do you email people in the next room instead of getting up off your ‘arris and talking to them. Yes, I had a boss who did that.

In other words, has IT stopped you using your head and your imagination?

If so – Houston, you have a problem.

I just had a funny thought about millennial combat pilots using texts in a dogfight…………………….

Put your focus on focusing.

03 Friday Jan 2020

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Last October I wrote about the Circle of Influence, and in doing so I made a fleeting mention of the briefly identified but ne’er seen again ‘Circle of Focus’.

Just to recap, Covey had detailed the Circles of Concern (everything affecting our lives) and Influence (things upon which we can have an effect) in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In his later First Things First he and his co-authors went further and defined a further, inner Circle of Focus.

They defined it as ‘things we are concerned about, that are within our ability to influence, that are aligned with our mission and are timely.’

He went on: ‘When we operate within our Circle of Influence we do some good, but what we do may be at the expense of something better. When we set and achieve goals that are in our Centre of Focus, we maximise the use of our time and effort.’

The question arises, therefore – how much time do we spend administering, pandering, diverting, interrupting (and being interrupted) and time-wasting at the expense of the time we should spend within that focused centre?

Life gets in the way. Professionals who once had staff to assist with all those things now find they have to do their admin (etc.) themselves and so their focus has become blurred as a result. But that doesn’t mean we can abandon the Focus at the expense of the mundane. It just means we have to manage our selves better.

Now, what tends to happen is that we do whatever arises as it arises – an e-mail pings, someone pops by, the phone rings – and we redirect our (very important) focus away in their direction.

Stop it. Stop it now – or at least as much as the Gods of customer service allow.

A thing that pings or rings or is passing(s) should be given only appropriate attention, not undivided, immediate attention if you are to maximise your productivity and effectiveness.

I suggest that you do a couple of things which might help you do that.

  1. Ignore emails, and plan to deal with them at a time which suits your responsibilities – maybe at the start of the day, immediately after lunch or last thins as part of tomorrow’s planning.
  2. Shut your office door if you can. People won’t interrupt if they can’t see you. Honest.
  3. Turn your smartphone off if you want uninterrupted time.
  4. Block time out for uninterrupted, focused thinking/doing time in your planning system Or, put another way, make an appointment with yourself and keep it inviolable.

While Covey and his associated training company never again seemed to refer to the Circle of Focus after the 1994 publication of First Things First’ I find that the concept of the Circle of Focus (like the short chapter on The Three Resolutions in ‘Principle Centred Leadership’) is one of the most profound time management concepts I’ve ever known.

Try it at work, if possible.

Set time aside for the most important stuff, the stuff which, if focused upon 100%, will provide the maximum bang for buck you can achieve.

Then try this at home……………………