Tag Archives: “time management”

Turn Over My New Page

12 Sunday Mar 2017

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Walking my dog along the river is a four-times weekly opportunity to (a) moan about the fact it is supposed to be my son’s dog and (b) listen to audiobooks. Today I was re-listening to David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done, the time management classic which is one practical alternative or support to the deeper time management advice provided by Hobbs and Covey in their classics on the subject.

Today I was caught by a comment by Allen about values. He suggests that our focus on values, far from being a route to happiness as described by others, is in fact fraught with danger. It is fraught because that values-focus reminds us that we have so much ‘work’ to do in order to comply with our values – which in turn diffuses that focus and makes us feel as if we are going nowhere. He suggests, I suppose (try concentrating when your dog demands attention), that we should focus on tasks and thus comply with the values, rather than try to focus on the values themselves.

To paraphrase:

  1. Covey/Hobbs: Focus on the values and create tasks and goals that fulfil them.
  2. Allen: Focus on the tasks and hope/intend that they fulfil our values, and therefore us.

In one sense, while both have merit, neither is complete (and I believe neither of the authors would argue differently) because regardless of our values, we live in an interdependent world which won’t allow us to ‘only’ do the things that comply with our values. We have to do tons of things that we don’t w ant to do, don’t like and would avoid if we could. These things are usually known as ‘work’ in the professional sense and ‘family commitments’ in the personal sense. (“Oh, another parents’ evening – joy….”)

Which takes me back to my 26th Feb blog entry, which in a way leans slightly towards the Allen perspective. If you can’t design your life around your values – and few can – then you are compelled to identify ways in which the values you have, serve the tasks that are imposed. That way, if you have a job you don’t want to do, at least in doing it you can comply with your values of Service, Excellence, Duty, etc. This means fulfilment even though, in the first instance, you would not have thought fulfilment possible.

However, you can only know you are doing that IF you know what your values ARE. I have created a new page in which I have re-created that portion of my book which tells you how to do that. Take an hour this week to identify your personal values. It’s incredibly informative.

I very dare you.

Your Weekly Reminder.

05 Sunday Mar 2017

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All too many time management books make two mistakes. They are mistakes that quite probably result in a surprising amount of wasted time, and they are mistakes that quite possibly cause the first stress-virus injection of the of the day. The mistakes are that they:

  1. Advise that one should plan one’s day at the start of each day.
  2. Almost always focus solely on the achievement of the reader’s personal goals.

Those of us in the know have a different philosophy. We plan at the start of the week. There are a few good reasons for this. To stretch the injection metaphor further, let’s call them inoculations.

Inoculation 1. At the start of the week (or, if you are like me, at the end of the ‘old’ week), you set aside a time and place for the planning process. This means that instead of already being in work and surrounded by pressure, you are in a calm place of your own choosing.

Inoculation 2. You look at your set of written down values, your mission statement, your roles and your goals. This puts you in a frame of mind that invites the establishment not just of direction towards achieving your own goals, but also to reminding yourself that in execution of all your roles, your compliance with your personal mission/values will help you serve others in the achievement of their goals, too. Thus, you plan your week in the context of your whole life – work, family, community, etc. In other words, in a whole life perspective.

Inoculation 3. You don’t only make a list of to-dos. That is a way of creating excuses because you’ll do the easier to-dos rather than the effective to-dos. No, what you do first is you decide what goal- and work-oriented tasks you have (and I include appointments as tasks in this context), and then you decide when, in the next week, you will carry them out. You plan the appointments, of course, but you can also schedule those other important to-dos by day, or even by specific time of a specific day. If you routinely do this at the start of the day, each day, what you tend to have is a mental image of a limited amount of time to decide how you’re going to do ‘EVERYTHING!!!!’

Inoculation 4. As far as is humanly possible, do the things you decided to do, when you decided they’d be done.

Having done all of that, think about the result. You have a schedule that you designed, which tells you when you have decided things will be done. Now, of course stuff will happen to threaten the plan, but you won’t have the stress of juggling everything – in fact, you will probably know how to manage that stuff around your set priorities, because of the plan. You are in control, stuff isn’t.

To break it down into smaller parts, the plan is:

  1. Get settled, then reconnect to what’s important to you.
  2. Look at all of the roles you perform.
  3. Set goals for each of the roles you intend to perform this week.
  4. Schedule those plans.
  5. Execute the plan.

Sometimes, genuine emergencies will arise, and it is then, and only then, that you should plan every day. Plan weekly, adapt (if you have to) daily.

And at the end of a week, have a long hard look at yourself and decide if it all went as well as expected. You’ll usually find that it did.

For more, get this, HERE.

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Values-based Time Management Means Achieving the BEST Goals.

19 Sunday Feb 2017

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“If a goal isn’t connected to a deep ‘why,’ it may be good but it usually isn’t best.” Stephen Covey

I hereby truly and solemnly declare and affirm that I want to run a marathon.

That is a true statement. Deep down I want to be able to say that I ran a marathon, that I did it in less than 4 hours, and here’s my medal on display in the cabinet with my bronze swimming certificate.*

Yes, as far as running a marathon is concerned, I really want to run one. But I am not prepared to make the effort.

The reason I am not prepared to is because such a goal is often a dream that is planted by the achievements of others, by a desire to demonstrate a high level of physical fitness when such a level is not necessary for achievement of any of my other goals, and ultimately by ego – I want to brag about it.

Let me emphasise – they would be MY motives, and if you want to do a marathon for truly personal, deeply emotional reasons you go ahead and do it, and good luck. I am not here to tread on your dreams.

The point I am making is that achieving someone else’s goals, or seeking achievement for reasons of ego, probably won’t result in the deep happiness that comes from achievement pursued for truly personal, deeply impassioned motives. On the other hand, if achieving those goals is a means to a better end and not ends in themselves, the passion for those longer-term outcomes will help you achieve the smaller steps on the road to that greater success, the success you really seek. And let’s face it, you’ll be fitter and better able to enjoy that success (provided you haven’t crocked yourself in the process). And the greater success will be the one that serves your values system.

Seeing the goal as something which serves your values is the essence of values-based time management. Selecting a goal that doesn’t dovetail your values system is futile – you won’t do it, or you will detest every moment spent in striving for it, and UN-happiness is not a normal pursuit, is it? (Masochists excepted.)

I suspect that a 10k running ability is ample for most of us who don’t enjoy sport for sport’s sake. If you can run 6 miles in an hour and have a sensible diet you’ll be fit enough for most professions. If you want to get fit enough to achieve your other goals, decide on a sensible level of fitness, pursue that, and spend the rest of the time on the actual objective.

Spend as much of your time as you can on getting the result you seek, and a sensible-but-lesser proportion of time on the ‘side-issues’ that serve that objective. Plan your time so that you maximise the likelihood of achieving the (your) Main Thing, without spending too much time on achieving side-goals that will serve the greater objective but aren’t goals in themselves.

It’s a fine balancing act and using a suitable, personal planning system will help. In that, you put your Mission and Goals to the fore, and plan to spend as much of your time not on ‘shoulds’ or ‘coulds’, but on MUSTS. The other two can be fitted in around them.

And be careful that those ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ don’t become excuses for procrastination! (Next week’s subject.)

*I don’t have one of those, either. I am not a fish and if I am going two miles on water, I know people with boats.

 

For more on Values-Based Time Management, go here, or go to the Books page on this site

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The Forgotten Skill.

22 Sunday Jan 2017

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I tweeted a while ago through @3ResolutonsGuy that after you decide upon your purpose, the rest is just well-executed time management and active communication. I have also discovered, with the help and guidance of several highly educated, qualified and wise mentors that ‘time management’, while a perfectly understandable marketing cliché, is better termed ‘self-leadership’. Communication, if you like, comes under the separate heading ‘interpersonal leadership’.

Having said that I prefer the term self-leadership, however, I find myself reluctant to use it because of something else I have observed. And what I have observed is that the proliferation of genuinely great self-help books, having raised the bar in the personal development field, seem to have inadvertently left the science of time management behind.

Some might disagree, but in my view while digitising communication was supposed to make life better, it actually seems to have hampered our ability to communicate using correct grammar, in considered and polite tones, and after deep thought. It even hampers speech. I am heartily sick of asking people why we are conversing text by text, or email by email, when simply speaking on the telephone would take a lot less time, clarify understanding and speed up completion upon what is under discussion.

In the same vein, while the new world of instant communication should have increased our ability to produce, I find people are no longer being taught, properly, how to manage the massive increase in expectations that the new world demands. They have the digital tools to manage time, but not the education that would enable better use of those tools.

Proof? Do you, like my many colleagues in a hugely digital policing world, keep a separate paper to-do list and diary? Yes? If so, you haven’t been taught how to manage time properly. You may think you are, but you’re under-utilising the potential of a proper, disciplined and systematic approach. And don’t think having a digital diary and to-do list makes you any more effective – you may just be digitally ineffective. You may be cutting edge, but just as lost. (See iPads…..)

Another thing I have noticed is that ‘managers’ and ‘executives’ get (some, occasional) time management training while the front-line staff, the ones doing the work and managing the multiple tasks and challenges, do not. How considered is that?

Hence the change of focus for this site. It’s going to be more about productivity and self-management than about self-leadership because most of us now know where we are going, but cannot manage, as well as we could, how we are going to get there. Including me.

I am going to start exploring time management issues, and invite you to read along and see if something I say improves your lot, and whether your alternative perspectives can improve my own. It won’t just be about method. There’ll be philosophy, theory and observational comedy as well.

Follow me on http://threeresolutionsguy.com or @3ResolutionsGuy and let’s see where we end up.

Where HAS the year gone?

08 Sunday Jan 2017

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In a blink of an eye, just over 1/52nd of 2017 has passed by, and we’re already back into the post-holiday routine. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the work that built up while we were in the pre-holidays procrastination period has hit us broadside on – all the stuff people put off ‘because it’s Christmas’ still needs to be done, but now it needs to be done alongside all the new work that has arisen as it always does, and always will.

How much of the stress we associate with the amount of work we have to do is wholly the result of our unwillingness to manage our time – or more accurately, ourselves? I’d argue that one of the major factors in our workload woes is our own resistance to doing things at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way, and to the appropriate standard. To a large extent, all three of those factors are within our Circle of Influence, but many of us – the time-strugglers – are unwilling to buy the book, do the course or just take the time to learn how to manage ourselves and our time to best effect. And it is in ‘post-break’ moments that this situation becomes more stark.

One big mistake is putting off the unrelished 5-minute-but-really-important task. Maybe a telephone call, maybe writing a letter or filling out a form. It’ll be a tedious, hateful job that should take 5 minutes, but because it’s tedious and hateful we keep putting it off. Then it suddenly becomes urgent, or worse it doesn’t get done until it’s too late, and we suffer the stress that urgency or potential disciplinary proceedings that ensue.

And it was all our own fault.

You can’t manage time, but you can maximise the time you have, and one simple strategy is to Do It Now! The time management experts all agree – a short task needs to be done as it arises (wherever possible), because doing so opens up available time for the more important stuff to be done properly. It clears space in your head, and it is an inoculation against the stress caused by procrastination.

Of course, Do It Now is not the cure for all time management ills, but I can state two things from my experience of applying the time management methods repeated in my book Effective Time and Life Management, available from Amazon Kindle HERE.

First, doing the quick things now keeps a desk and a brain clean, tidy, and available for creative thinking, planning and execution. Second, having created that time through applying the Do It Now philosophy and by creating and executing on properly scheduled priorities, life is less stressful and much more productive. Not just in work, but where leisure time becomes available because the work is done. And by planning that as well, life can be great.

Buy a book – preferably mine but there are others listed on this site – and apply what is contained therein.

And don’t say you haven’t got time. Read a book one Saturday instead of going to the pub. You’ll probably spend less and will definitely learn something that can improve your lot 24/7.

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Go on – I very dare you. HERE.

Purpose or Process? I know which I need to know first – and better.

09 Sunday Oct 2016

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“Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” Stephen R Covey

Are your working practices dictated in a seemingly endless collection of Codes of Practice, Memoranda of Understanding, Process Documents and Manuals of Guidance? Unless you are the employer rather than the employee, or you work alone, I’d gamble that they are.

I would also expect that many of those procedural guidelines are based on best practices, born of years of experience and the making and discovery of errors. They are created out of a desire to do and be better, or to prevent ‘worse’.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency among managers to look upon these documents as The Holy Bible, compliance with which is expected and deviation from which must be punished.

And the funny thing is that they were created to replace the earlier practices that had equally been the Bible until found to be wrong or incomplete. In other words, for some, the fact that errors can be made in all manner of ways and circumstances, including compliance with current practice, does not stop them absolutely insisting on compliance.

Practices change with discovery, experience and greater learning. Remember that, boss.

On the other hand, and looking at Covey’s quote (above), Principles never change. The purpose behind a Manual of Guidance, which is usually clearly stated on page 1, gets lost in the millions of procedural absolutes that follow. Which is stupid.

Clayton Christensen describes how someone goes to a shop to buy a ½” drill bit. The sales staff discuss whether the client wants a steel one, tungsten tipped, twist-bit or step-bit, brad-point or spade, Forstner or Auger, or Installer.

The client says, “I want to make a ½-inch hole.”

That’s the difference between a practice document, and the ‘job to be done’ stated on Page 1. That’s the simplicity on the far side of complexity – the purpose of the work.

When you know what the job is, the Manual contains guidance and practices that will help get that job done. But life and learning may just provide you with some new information that might make the job get done quicker and better.

And, ironically, it also helps to create the next ‘Holy Bible’……..

Having a change of approach, but not a change of philosophy.

10 Saturday Sep 2016

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“Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect. People want things to be better.” Esther Dyson
Epiphany. Defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a moment of sudden realisation or insight”, and as a religious festival which isn’t quite what I’m looking to emulate. I have been conscious for some time that the terms that Stephen Covey used to describe The Three Resolutions, while profound and appropriate for their time and for his particular approach, may not be the best terms to use in the 21st Century. To an audience of those who need instant understanding and a willingness to participate in what is being communicated, expressions such as ‘self-denial’ and ‘noble purpose’ smack of a monastic approach to life, and that isn’t what The Three Resolutions website is supposed to be.

As from today, while I continue to use The Three Resolutions as my website address (‘cos I paid again for it last week), the tag line is no longer that sourced from Covey. Henceforth the tag line will be a little fresher. Now, it is:

Resolution, Refinement, Results.

If you’ve read my book (now unpublished while I completely review it with this new focus in mind), or the earliest posts when the 3R concept was first put on line, you will be aware that I consider that the 3Rs are a progressive approach to getting results, insofar as self-discipline leads to character and competence leads to serving in a way that benefits us all. That hasn’t changed, only the way I am going to describe it from now on.

Coincidentally, the three words I have now chosen mean the same ‘things’, and happen to fit the 3R logo.*

But make no mistake, the approach is the same –

  • decide what you need to do or stop doing, in order to
  • become the person you want to be with the skills you need to have, all with the objective to
  • ethically go out and make things happen that serves all concerned.

Up the Pyramid of Principled Productivity, so to speak. (Must write that one down. Oh, so I have…)

My focus is now going to be on that review and rewrite, so please watch my @3ResolutionsGuy Twitter feed for interim updates and things develop.

Personal Update Bit

One of my philosophies on life is that service to others does not necessarily have to involve self-sacrifice. It can also include doing something you love doing, in a way that others also benefit. This week I passed my Institute of Advanced Motorists ‘National Observer’ Qualification which will allow me greater opportunities to engage others in enjoying their driving while doing it better, safer and for the particularly adept, faster (but within legal limits, I stress).

And there is absolutely NOTHING in the 3R concept that disallows preening once in a while.

*(That took AGES to work out, finding words that meant discipline, character/competence and service, but which started with the letter R. I have new respect for advertisers……)

 

Time LEADERSHIP – doing the right thing.

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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“The key is your ability to discern between two activities and determine which is more important at the time.” Stephen R Covey

Just a quick on this week, because I have just returned from a holiday and have a million and one things to do, as you can imagine having experienced that yourself. One of the priority items is you – you’re reading this because I consider my readership to be important.

That’s not to say that this was the first thing I did on my list, because a daily plan may not permit the most important to be done first – less important things may have a time element that promotes them. A quick but less important telephone call may have to be made when the intended recipient is available, and leaving it until after the most important task may render the call pointless.

People routinely make the mistake of thinking that because something is urgent, it is by definition also important. More often than not – and I mean that most sincerely, folks – the urgency is not commensurate with the importance. In fact, it often isn’t urgent at all.

I recall one day in police world when someone said I had to attend a report of an overnight burglary ‘now’ because it was urgent.

My response was ‘Why, is it going to be un-burgled if I go in 20 minutes?’ was met with open-mouthed shock. It WAS important, but dropping everything that instant was not necessary – I had time to organise other stuff, and even do a small task or two, before dedicating two or more hours to one project. (Dead bodies, on the other hand, we go NOW.)

When assessing what task to start, and when, the criteria ARE importance and urgency. But plumping for either of those without due consideration means risking a wrong decision – putting off a telephone call because it isn’t urgent only to find that it becomes urgent because we miss the recipient, is pointless. And while we can’t do something important like attend an appointment until the appropriate moment, its importance does not justify sitting around doing nothing else.

The right thing, in the right way, at the right time. That’s the key to effective productivity. Takes thought, that.

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For more on time management, go to Amazon, HERE

Some things can’t be put off.

03 Sunday Jul 2016

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“Almost always, there IS one thing among all others that must be done first.” Stephen R Covey

And more often than we’d care to admit, said ‘one thing’ gets demoted to ‘lower than the quick, convenient or more pleasurable thing’. How do I know this?

I know this because I procrastinate for Wales. As the national team strives ever forward towards whatever level of success their skills, self-belief and luck dictate, I find that when it comes to putting things off – even the things that I consider to be important – I am Gold Medal Standard.

I am currently involved in a project that I consider to be very important, even ‘legacy-related’. It is something I believe in, wholeheartedly. It relates to the provision of Third Resolution service and it requires Second Resolution competence in communication and time management. Unfortunately, sitting down and getting on with it requires First Resolution self-discipline, and like many procrastinators, that is where lies any failure to get on with it.

Which is not to say that I am not making progress. In recognising that I have a tendency to procrastinate, I also realise that this tendency also creates the ‘opportunity’ to exercise self-discipline and get on my arse and do it. (Deliberate choice of words, it involves sitting at a desk.)

Once a day I have to sit at my computer and do what I both want and have to get done. In our digital world this presents a challenge, because just as the average worker sits at that screen, a tumultuous number of ‘alternative opportunities’ not only arise, but actually demand a change of attention.

The ‘ping’ of a new email, the potential new ‘Breaking News’ which requires repeated visits to the Interweb, only to discover that said Breaking News is, in fact, the same news you heard about an hour ago but which now has a journalist in place confirming that what he said just now was still the case. The stimulus on the screen which sparks in your memory the existence of a ‘to-do’ you had not realised you had, er, to do, until the screen/noise/presence alerted you to it.

All of those things can take seconds to address, but their presence and ‘in your face’ nature pulls you away from that original commitment, and getting back to it takes effort.

In the final analysis, however, it is the execution of self-discipline that cures all this. Turn off the pings, resist the desire to ‘just check on’ the BBC News, shut your office door (a surprisingly effective anti-interruption technique that costs nothing), and GET THE HELL ON WITH IT.

And get on with it particularly if what it is you have to get on with is important, whether to you – or to someone about whom who care.

That last caveat also means that when your wife appears over your shoulder, you really, truly ought to change your focus from the screen to her. Your loved ones should always, ALWAYS be first. If only because, life being what it is, suddenly and unexpectedly they won’t be there to be first anymore.

Which brings me back to procrastination.

I really must stop putting her off when I’m busy ……….

 

For more on Time and Life Management, go HERE for the Kindle book, or HERE for the paperback version of my book.

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The Natural Limits of the Day need confronting!

01 Sunday May 2016

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“Scheduling forces us to confront the natural limits of the day.” Gretchen Ruben

I tend to seek sanctuary in bookshops, and professionally and personally that sanctuary is most often found in the personal development and/or business sections of said bookshops. That’s where I will find the things that inspire me to action, or which absolutely shine a laser-beam focused light on my inaction. This morning, awaiting the relatively good news about my son’s Citroen C3’s MOT roadworthiness certificate, I was in Cardiff’s Waterstone’s branch.

(By the way, for the staff of Waterstone’s and any other mainstream bookstore, I am guy taking photographs of the cover so I can go home and order the book half price or less on Amazon ‘New and Used’.)

Anyway, that’s where I picked up the above quote, from US lawyer Gretchen Ruben’s latest book, “Better Than Before” (which is £8.99 but I have just ordered for £6 including P&P as described), and I think it very succinctly expresses the essence of what personal time management is all about. It’s making sure that we maximise the available 16 or so hours a day we humans choose to use when we aren’t asleep.

The availability of ‘just’ 16 hours is the first restriction mentioned by Ruben. The second restriction is imposed upon us by the ‘working day’, those hours within which we are expected, more often than not by others, to do ‘work’. Now, the shape of those ‘working days’ has been irrevocably changed by the mobile telephone revolution but the expectation remains. The existence of that restriction creates another, which has various titles but which essentially covers those off-duty hours, where we decide what to do – but even then, our hours are restricted by the needs of others – our clubs and other commitments occur when it suits them, for example.

And after all the ‘responsibilities and commitments’ have been acted upon within their restricted schedules, we can be ourselves. If our families allow!

In other words, the restrictions create “the imposed limits of the day.”

I have had some clients that resist the input on time management, on the ground that it ‘restricts spontaneity’; those same people expect others to do what they need done when it suits them, and not when the provider is being ‘spontaneous’. (Talk about double standards!) Imagine a train driver turning up spontaneously? Or a plane taking off and landing when the pilot felt like it?

As Gretchen’s quote implies, having a plan, a schedule within which all we have to get done in any time is listed, helps us avoid making the mistake of discovering that there are (to steal a cliché) more tasks left at the end of the day than time. Scheduling partly ensures that we do the right thing, in the right way, but at the right time. It means that remaining time genuinely is free for spontaneity.

Surprisingly, as most of us underestimate how much time we have available in any workday (or conversely overestimate how long any job will actually take – ask any mechanic) having a schedule/plan like that means we can be productive, and still have plenty of time left to be spontaneous. It does this because we comply with ‘our’ plan (provided we made it, not quite so good with imposed schedules) if we know what it is.

Proof? If you have a to-do list, I bet you tick off each job on completion. Yes? Thought so.

What happens if you do a job that isn’t on that list?

I’ll tell you. You add it to the list and cross it off, that’s what you do!

Why not, then, start your day with a long list you can hack at with the ‘Pen of Done’, and enjoy the time you free up afterwards?

Create your daily or weekly plan and set about it. Then fill the saved time with meaningful activity that you select, rather than someone else.

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For input on a system for maximising YOUR use of YOUR time, go to AMAZON HERE and buy this book.