Time Management

Copyright Spearhead Training Limited & Velag Norbert Muller GbmH

Introduction

Time is viewed by many as being unlimited. In fact we each have 168 hours to spend as we choose each week, no more no less. It is how we spend our time that is important. The difference between those who think of themselves as successful and those who do not, is based upon a perception of how one`s time has been used. Avoidance of this fact will deprive many of the success that they deserve.

We should all care a great deal about the way we use our time. This is life; we cannot extend it. Effective use of our time will lead to a higher level of achievement in our business, social and domestic lives. However, there is a balance to be struck. Some time management systems are very complex. We do not want you to become addicted to form filling. This would only result in the cure being worse than the disease.

There have been many books written about time management, however we have focused on what we consider the most productive material in the years that we have been teaching time management. The topics covered are by no means exhaustive and we recommend that you attend our Time Management training course in addition to reading this material.

Time Management & Success

Millions of words have been written on the subject of time management. One thing is very clear and certain: most experts are agreed that there is an inestimable link between time management and success.

There is a story relating to a survey, which serves to illustrate this link. It was carried out in one of the major American Colleges and clearly underlines the link between time management and success. The survey was carried out on the students who were studying for their MBA.

At graduation, the researchers interviewed all the students. The objective of the research was to establish which of the many hundreds of students who would be leaving that year had clear goals and objectives for the future.

The result of the research showed that only a total of 5% of all the graduates had set goals and objectives, and only 3% had actually written them down.

Twenty years later the researcher found and interviewed the same graduates again. What he found was that 3% of graduates who had defined goals and objectives and had written them down, were worth more in financial terms than the total worth of the other 97% who had graduated from college without a clear goal or objective for the future. The major link between success and time management is the setting of goals and objectives.

The setting of goals and objectives cannot commence until you are sure of what you want from life. Goals must be something you can do, something you can have or something that you can be. They must be something that you desire intensely and they are measurable in time. They have to be under your control, they should be specific and finally, they must be written down as a positive personal commitment.

To set yourself on the road to success, considerable thought should be given to what you want from life. Everyone has an area of excellence. You need to identify this area as this will be the starting point to realising what successes you want in all areas of your life.

Make a start by being aware of the subjects that catch your attention when you are browsing in a library or bookshop. What documentary and informative programmes do you most enjoy watching on the television or listening to the radio? What do you enjoy doing most - in your job, in your social life, in your domestic life? In what activities do you find yourself totally absorbed? When you have written down the answers to these questions, you should select one area of success that means more to you than any of the others. This one area will be your major success area and the most important to you. You should immediately put this at the head of your list of goals?

Achievement is the accomplishment of goals and objectives through careful planning. True, there are other routes to success, other than being a good time manager, but what is success if you lose your health, your spouse and/or your children by becoming a workaholic. Furthermore, the link between peak performers, people of high self esteem and high self confidence comes from achievement.

Efficient time management will help you to avoid such losses; you will only stand to gain more. Time management is an aid to personal success, not a recipe. Time management can achieve success through goal/objective setting, and the accomplishment of those goals/objectives through careful planning.

Understanding the Principles

Understanding and using the principles of time management allow you to access more clearly the potential for making improvements to the way in which you use your time.

The principles are as follows:

1. Goal and objective setting
2. Prioritising goals and objectives
3. Planning to accomplish those goals and objectives
4. Prioritising the planned activities
5. Analysing the present use of your time by time logging
6. Identifying from the time log the percentage of time spent on high priority and low priority activities.
7. Targeting for 50% of your time to be spent on high priority activities.

Understanding the principles of time management will allow you to define and rank, in order of importance, the key objectives to be achieved in your job. You will also be able to assess beyond any doubt whether or not you allocate sufficient time to the key tasks and major opportunities, that will lead to the successful accomplishment of your goals and objectives.

Setting Goals and Objectives

The first step to successful time management is to set goals/objectives. Goal setting cannot be successfully undertaken until you have decided what success you really want to achieve. You may want your bosses job, you may want to be Managing Director of your organisation, you may want to set up in your own business (over 50% of people in employment would like to become their own boss).

Success, however it is measured, is a very personal matter. It is subjective and relative. You may have a host of ideas floating around in your head and that is where they will stay, unless your commitment to what you want is going to change.

Setting goals and objectives takes the guesswork out of achieving. Without clear and specific goals, achieving is haphazard. No group or individual can perform effectively and efficiently unless there is a clear aim.

There is substantial evidence that less than 5% of the population have concrete goals. Many people go through life accepting their fate with resignation; `"What will be will be`"?, `Its fate that I did not get the job, it was not meant to`"?, or `"I`d like to`"?. These sayings are entirely negative. We must move from negative thinking to the much more powerful state of mind of positive thinking; `"I can`"?, or `"I will`"?`"I want to`"?.`"I can`t win`"?, `"I can`t do it`"?, `"It can`t be done`"?, `"It`s too early`"?, `"He`s too young`"?.

Positive Thinking

We are all born winners, but over the years you have had setbacks which cause you to shy away from challenges when they arise. The negative experiences of the past are seldom forgotten. By restricting our initiative we are causing ourselves dissatisfaction and frustration.

The first step is to decide what you want. There is a process which you can follow to achieve your first success in discovering what you really want from life and how to obtain it. However, before we move into the process of discovery it will be very useful if we look at the reasons why people do not set themselves goals/objectives.

For people who have never set goals, there is no doubt that it is a difficult process. Nevertheless, if we analyse this you will be aware of the difficulties and will then be able to take the necessary positive steps to overcome your inhibitions.

Do not be afraid to discuss your goals and objectives with others who have goals and understand the importance of having something to achieve. Share your dreams and goals with people who share your level of commitment.

Firstly, let us look at the types of goals/objectives that you need to consider. It is very important that you have a BALANCE of goals. You need to have PERSONAL & FAMILY and BUSINESS & CAREER goals. These goals need to be further broken down into SHORT, MEDIUM and LONG TERM goals.

If you do not keep your goals in balance you could lose all by devoting yourself entirely to work goals. Depriving yourself of the company and benefit of your partner, children if you have them, depriving yourself of your necessary hobbies, sports or relaxation, whatever form it takes, would lead inevitably to high level of stress and ultimately a drop in business performance.

Breaking down your goals and objectives into short, medium and long term is necessary as you will almost certainly have things that you can achieve quite quickly. Say, lose some weight which will be a personal goal and to go 5% over sales target for next month which will be a business goal.

Long term goals in business may be to obtain promotion or a substantial rise next year. A long term personal goal could be to take your family skiing to Lake Tahoe next year.

We can look at goals short term, maybe as little as one week to three months, medium term, three months to one year or more, and long term, depending upon your job and lifestyle, anything from one year to five years. Achieving short term goals/objectives can lead to success with your medium and then ultimately long term goals/objectives.

You decide, what is short, medium or long term, nothing is fixed or rigid other than that `Successful Time Management is dependent upon having Goals/Objectives`, and that extraordinary success is dependent upon achieving those goals/objectives.

The next step is to plan to achieve the goals that have been set. Like any management task, time management benefits from using the skills of general management, such as planning, organising, decision making, co-ordinating, and communicating.

Many of you will possess these skills whether you are in business management or not. You will have gained these skills from responsibilities undertaken at school/college/university, socially, or in the home. Skills of general management are not the exclusive rights of business. They are being used in every facet of our daily lives, to a greater or lesser degree.

Many people go through their whole working life without ever taking on the responsibilities of management, but they cannot say in all honesty that they do not know anything about management! In business, we have all been on the receiving end of management, good and bad, and this experience stands us in good stead when we eventually put on the management hat.

Time management is not an isolated skill. It is one of the integral elements which makes up good management.

The Nature and Purpose of Planning

Planning is the most basic of all the managerial functions. It involves selecting goals and objectives and actions needed to achieve them. It also requires decision making - the ability to choose from among alternative future courses of action. Plans provide a rational approach to chosen objectives.

Planning makes it possible for things to happen which would not occur otherwise. Planning and control are inseparable, it is not possible to control without making plans. If we do not know where we are going, how can we expect to get there. A number of future actions are also plans. We therefore must be able to distinguish between the different types of plans: the building of a new factory is a major plan and the planning of the weekly Sales and Management meeting though equally important is on a completely different scale.

The steps of planning are essentially the same, whether you are making a plan to achieve a multi-million pound objective or one which is less costly. Minor plans are usually simpler and some of the steps would not necessarily take as much time as for a major project. A discerning manager would not use £1,000 a time to make a decision worth only a £1! Planning in its most simplistic form is the process of listing the activities or tasks that, when carried out successfully, will lead to goal and objective realisation.

Planning is about organising the future - you determining what should be done, by whom and when, to achieve the pre-set goals. Goals/objectives must be specific, to enable progress to be measured. Priorities should be given to each activity. This enables the correct level of resources to be allocated.

Planning should start with the long term - you should first look at the YEAR.

Having planned your known events for the year, check how many unplanned days are left in the month. It may surprise you how few completely free days are left. However, you must resist the temptation to cancel any days that you have previously reserved.

Check the number of full days that remain unplanned. Reserve days for project development, staff training days, recruitment interviews (other days not previously noted). Keep weekends off for yourself and key staff. It will be apparent to you, by now, how much time is available to manage and to give to your specific goals/objectives.

Next calculate the number of working hours available to you. Allocate day(s) that are to be used for important business. Ensure time is available for unscheduled business or crises arising from mistakes or changed deadlines. Allocate time for that short team meeting or briefing (have it possibly as a working lunch). Plan your week to ensure that people who want to contact you on the telephone know when to do so, thus saving time.

Finally, plan each day. First, establish the number of working hours available to you, to plan, determine your work sequence, by allocating time to key managerial tasks (thinking, planning, controlling and communicating). The amount of time that you will spend on the key management tasks will vary, depending on your position in the organisation. For example, if you are at supervisory level it is likely that you will spend more time organising and less time planning that someone at senior management level.

Write a daily list of `"Things to do`"? and prioritise it. Get into the habit of doing this every day without fail. In doing so you will have already taken a giant step forward in the control of your time. Keep your list to a maximum of ten items for the day to enable you to prioritise and slot in jobs arising during the day. Allow a fixed amount of time for each task, you should be able to assess the time required for most tasks that fall into your area of responsibility.

Ensure, if you are in management, that you allow time for MBWA (Management by Walk about). Control that open door approach by developing specific times for people to visit you. If you do not start your day with a plan, it will stay that way, unplanned. When you arrive home after finishing work, you will find yourself saying `"I have been busy all day, and yet I have not accomplished anything`"?. A statement with which many of you are probably familiar.

The completion of your action plan will not be straightforward and you will need help and support to overcome obstacles. The following headings are designed for your guidance:

Names of people who can help you to take this action.
1. What you may need to help you to complete this action
2. How can you use this help?
3. When can you use this help?
4. What it is that may hinder you or get in the way of the completion of your action plans?
5. How you will minimise these hindrances.
6. When you will begin to minimise these hindrances.

The exercise should now be carried out in all the areas where you have set goals (short, medium and long term, personal and family, business and career goals). Each subdivision of your major goal area will need an action plan, laid out as above, to assist you in the achievement of each goal. However, it may be too ambitious to expect you to work on all of your goals/plans at the same time, this is a key area of time management. Time and care should be given to prioritising your goals and the action plans which will lead to their accomplishment.

You should look to be working on two or three goals in the major areas of personal/family, and two or three goals in the area of business/careers. The goals that you have clearly identified as the main priority in these areas, are the goals to which the greatest amount of time should be allocated.

Thereafter, you will easily identify tasks and activities which will be labelled HIGH PRIORITY TASKS/ACTIVITIES when planning your work scheduling and during your work analysis.

From this you will also be able to identify any time which has been spent on LOW PRIORITY TASKS/ACTIVITIES, tasks or activities which does not move you closer to accomplishing any of your goals.

This does not mean that your life will be transformed and that no longer will you have to undertake low priority tasks/activities. What it does mean is that you will become more productive and will be spending up to 50% of your time on high priority tasks/activities. Whereas people who are not able to identify unquestionably their high priority tasks and activities from their low priority tasks and activities may be spending as little as 3% of their time on productive activities.

Surveys have shown this to be true. American expert Dr. De Woot conducted an in-depth survey of business managers with no previous time management training. His research showed quite clearly that they are spending only 3% of their time on tasks which would affect their own optimum performance level.

Analysing Your Time

It is probable that you spend more time at work than you do with your family and friends, you would certainly spend more time at work than you would on your hobbies or sports. This is, of course, dependent to a degree upon the position you hold within your organisation. None of us has complete control over our daily schedule. The hours that we work are laid down in our terms and conditions of employment, as agreed with our employer when we accepted the job.

You may have a very precise job description on just one side of an A4 sheet of paper: on the other extreme, you may have a job description which is in minute detail and covers a number of pages. Which ever it is, you will be required to carry out activities and tasks within the time scales and standards agreed with your employer. However, within this structured time there are opportunities to decide which tasks are completed.

Let us now suppose that you have decided what success you want and have set out clearly in writing your business goals/objectives. Having written down how you are going to achieve those goals/objectives, you must now turn your attention to the third principle of time management.

Analysing the Current Use of your Time

The analysis is carried out by completing a time log on a daily basis. This time log exercise should be carried out for one week at least every quarter (13 weeks), or more frequently if you are determined to really bring about a dramatic change in your work pattern. The setting of goals/objectives, producing plans for their accomplishment, and setting aside time for their completion, will be dependent upon the time available for you. These goals constitute high priority tasks. You can see, therefore, that the importance attached to the breakdown of the current use of your time is truly far-reaching.

People when confronted with the task of completing a DAILY TIME LOG usually throw their hands in the air and say `"How can I afford to spend time writing down everything that I do, I simply do not have enough time now to do all that I need to do`"?. The solution to this problem is to ask yourself two questions. The first is `"Am I really serious about wanting to make better use of my time?`"?; the second is `"Do I want to get off this treadmill that others have built for me?`"?.

The answer to both questions should be a very positive yes! If it is, then you will find that it will be quite easy to act positively towards finding out what you are currently doing with your time. A move towards getting off the treadmill, is to recognise what you are capable of doing and being. Time is not adaptable but people are.

When you have completed the DAILY TIME LOG for your working week, it then needs to be analysed. Do not throw away your TIME LOG SHEETS, file them and keep them for comparison for future analysis.

The Golden Rules of Prioritising

During the course of your study so far, you will be aware, from the number of times that priorities have been mentioned, that they are important to your success in all areas of time management. Priorities keep your mind focused on the most important activities that lead to goal/objective accomplishment. What we must remember is that you cannot reach a goal without planning and prioritising.

The greater the step forward to attaining a goal, the more beneficial it is for you. Tasks are important and will always command a high priority.

Everything that we do has some degree of IMPORTANCE and URGENCY. Let us look at the process of setting priorities.

IMPORTANT means `"of great value or significance`"?, while URGENT means `"requiring or compelling speedy action`"?.

Some things are:

1. IMPORTANT and URGENT (mostly originating from customers or the boss.
2. IMPORTANT but not URGENT (arising mostly from customers and from your team.
3. URGENT but not IMPORTANT (resulting from areas other than customer, boss or team, likely to be suppliers).
4. Neither IMPORTANT nor URGENT (from unsolicited mail or phone calls).

It is your responsibility to judge where the most important things, and then make these the centre of your attention, ignoring the others or finding someone else to do them. What ties you to your treadmill is the continual attention to the urgent whilst not being able to recognise and carry out the important.

An accepted method for prioritising tasks and activities is the `A` `B` `C` `D` `E` method.

To complete the work on prioritising we can sum up the need to plan and rank our tasks/activities in their order of importance with the following six rules for time management:

• Rule 1 Use your prime time to think through your forward schedule every day.
• Rule 2 Make a daily list of jobs to be done and allocate each certain amount of time.
• Rule 3. Think in priorities
• Rule 4. Allocate a time to complete jobs which arise during the day, and give them a priority rating.
• Rule 5. Having set your plan and time schedule, keep to it and do not procrastinate.
• Rule 6. Plan some mini breaks into your schedule to assist in restoring your level of concentration.

External Influences that Waste Time

Many time management text books and training manuals advocate the elimination of many time wasting activities. This may work in an ideal situation but is usually ineffective in the real world. The effort expended, in time and energy, to eliminate whatever is wasting your time will probably exceed the time saved if it were possible to reach the point where you achieved elimination. You should be concerning yourself with controlling what you can.

Accept that there will always be an element of non-controllable activity.

Striving for the ultimate level, complete elimination, is perfectionism, and perfectionism is a major contributor to time wasting. `"The desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever afflicted the human mind`"? according to Louis de Fontanes, a French writer and politician of the 18th century. The quotation sounds extreme, but it does carry a powerful message.

Perfectionism is one of the major causes of failure in managers because they continue `to do` instead of `delegating`, being fearful that others cannot do the task `perfectly`.

Identifying Time Wasting Activities

We shall begin our identification of time wasters by looking at interruptions. There is evidence from surveys completed on senior managers that they are interrupted every eight minutes and that each interruption lasts for an average of three minutes. If time is added to allow restoration to their previous level of concentration and picking up the threads, it can be calculated that almost a hundred days are wasted by each manager every year. The interruptions result mainly from people, either by unexpected visitors and phone calls, or an interruption caused by a malfunction of a piece of equipment (perhaps the paper has run out of the e.mail printer or maybe the paper roll is exhausted in the adding machine. You may be faced with many interruptions of this nature throughout a day depending upon the environment of your workstation.

Deciding if an Interruption is Acceptable

You may not be a senior manager, but what ever your level of responsibility in your organisation you will be faced with interruptions. Beware of the financial cost to your organisation, and the cost to you in the time not spent on high priority tasks, which will lead to goal/objective accomplishment.

Not only will you be faced with interruptions at your place of work, you will have to control them in your personal and domestic life, if you are to gain control of your time. How often have you been about to mow your lawn only to be interrupted by a neighbour, or by your children or spouse?

Firstly, you should decide what are acceptable interruptions and what are not. You should accept interruptions from customers and colleagues who are seeking help. Interruptions that have a positive outcome and move you forward in pursuit of your goals and objectives are also acceptable. Interruptions that serve no measurable purpose and have no effect whatsoever on the attainment of any of your goals/objectives, are the ones you should seek to eliminate. You should be working hard to identify acceptable interruptions using your time log analysis; this should enable you to bring them under your control.

You should set your objective between 5% and 10% with the upper figure as your limit on time being taken up with interruptions. The methods used to control interruptions will vary at work depending upon your position in the organisation. If possible do not see any one without an appointment. There will be, as in all cases when rigid rules are set, occasions when you will have to make exceptions. Try to keep these exceptions to a minimum.

Use your time log to keep track of all interruptions

Look at the analysis of your time log. If your interruptions are well in excess of 10% carry out a detailed analysis as to who is making the interruptions. You will almost be sure to discover that 80% of your interruptions are caused by 20% of the people listed on your time log. This is another application of Paretos Principle.

Telephone calls can be a major cause of time wasting

The telephone is, in business (and pleasure) a most cost effective and vital means of rapid person to person communication. It has fast become the main channel of business communication. You cannot eliminate phone calls, so the avenue down which you must go is that of managing the telephone (not letting the telephone control you) and controlling the time that your phone calls take (both incoming and outgoing calls). By achieving this objective you should have more time to spend on high priority activities. In addition, being in control of the telephone will cause you less stress.

Outgoing calls

Whether you are making one call or fifty, there is a minimum amount of planning and preparation to be undertaken. Planning is essential to ensure the time is available to carry out your telephone calls. Will you be phoning every day or just specific days? Will you be phoning in the morning or afternoon? If you have fifty calls to make will you be doing them in one block or splitting them into three or four sections?

Controlling the time spent on outgoing calls is down to planning and preparation

Preparation means having around you all the information that you are going to need to complete your objective. You will need the phone numbers, perhaps written on card indexes if you are phoning people with whom you are familiar; or even held in the memory of the telephone or on a PC. You will need notes to prompt you regarding the subject matter unless you are making standard routine calls. Your personal knowledge of the people that you are calling will assist you in making the minimum of abortive calls, knowing what day or time of day that your contact will be available.

The effective use of time in making outgoing calls will result from working to a plan and carrying out the procedure in a sequential manner.

Getting it right first time by working to a plan will save you and your contact from wasting time in making further calls to obtain information missed on the previous call.

Handling your mail effectively and efficiently

Regardless of the other available means of communicating in business, you are still inundated with the printed word falling through your letter box. How can you handle this effectively?

Firstly, you should look at what is termed today as junk mail. Junk mail can be best described as `anything which is unsolicited`. If you opened and kept all the unsolicited mail that you received in a year you would probably need to rent another building in which to store it! The time management approach to unsolicited mail is to bin it - without opening it.

Good time management practice is not to open your mail during your prime time. This is the time when you are at the peak of intellectual capacity and should be dealing with the important tasks and activities that will lead to the accomplishment of goals and objectives.

Use waiting time to deal with other tasks such as reading

Another area of wasting time is waiting. You will be faced with waiting at some time in your career; waiting for trains, planes, people, meetings, something to finish, something to start. The time you spend in waiting need not be wasted. You can use some of the time waiting for people, to catch up on your trade magazine and report reading. You can use train travelling time to catch up on your report and letter writing. When travelling keep a file of low priority work in your briefcase, work on it at every available opportunity.

Whether you are held up in a traffic jam or just travelling to and from work in your car make every minute count. Keep a micro cassette recorder in your car and use it to record ideas, future plans, and personal items that occur to you. Many micro cassette dictating machines are voice activated so are perfectly safe to use in cars. These notes can be transcribed later when you are at your desk. In addition, there are many good business audio tapes on the market today. Use your car travelling time to increase your knowledge, and improve yourself. Listen to a tape which relates to your work: if you are a salesperson, in addition to listening to tapes on selling, listen to tapes on buying and negotiating techniques. If you are not yet on the management ladder listen to tapes on management.

The office meeting

Time can be lost in two ways; through the meetings you call and the meetings you attend. Whether the meeting is between two people or twenty, it should be treated in the same manner - to produce a result with most economical use of the time of the people who are attending. Meetings are essential. Much of the time at meetings is taken up with discussing the past - yet it is impossible to change the past; there are times when statistics need to be analysed and new plans formed.

The true objective of a meeting is dealing with the future. However, not all meetings are concerned with decision making. What the meeting organiser must do is to make the objective of the meeting quite clear to those in attendance. It could be `to inform`, `to brief people` or `to make decisions`.

What must be done to make your meetings wholly productive?

Coping with a business crisis

Another area that is a continual drain on your time is the crises that arise from time to time in your business life. However good you are at managing, in whatever area you are operating, crises can and do occur. Good management, however, keeps them to a minimum. Whenever you are faced with a crisis, ask yourself `"What could I have done to anticipate this and what do I need to do to prevent this crisis happening again?`"?

Crises arise in a number of different ways; through something that is done badly or from something which is not done at all. Crises arise when you do not act immediately in a situation that demanded instant action. Not doing things at the right time provides a breeding ground for crises to develop.

If you have to deal with an extraordinary number of crises brought on by the mistakes of people in your employment, then you should ask yourself `"Have I done everything in my power to ensure that mistakes should not happen?`"? if you are convinced that you have done everything possible, and your training programme is of the highest order, then you must look carefully at the people whom you are employing. Remember to accept responsibility before looking elsewhere.

An office crisis, no matter how small, will affect your time management.

When crises develop, the impact on your time control is dramatic because the initial response is to put as many hands on fighting the fire as is possible. You should attempt to resist this initial reaction and contain the crisis to the department or person responsible for creating the incident; these people should be the best suited to solving the crisis.

You can reduce the number of crises that you have to face by:

1. Training and having the correct level of supervision. Ensure that there is adequate monitoring when tasks are delegated.
2. Acting as soon as the circumstances demand and not adding to the situation by delaying. You may have to face another type of crisis, that is a customer generated crisis; it may be an internal customer or more importantly an external customer. Customers create crises by changing deadlines. Such as, `"I want it next week instead of next month`"? or `"I now need 10,000 instead of 5,000`"?. You can easily understand the chaos in respect of your time management that demands of this nature can cause.

You may be faced with a similar demand from an internal customer. For example, you thought that you had three more weeks to complete your departments budget when, out of the blue, the Financial Director tells you he wants it next week - you already have your schedule prepared for next week! This is a classic example of how a crisis can disrupt your time plans. The most effective way of dealing with this is not to submissively accept the change but to request a meeting to discuss the time management consequences of such a decision.

Is it possible to plan ahead for crises? Yes, to a certain degree. When planning a project you should be asking yourself some key questions;

1. What is likely to go wrong? Is there a history of problems with this customer/project?
2. Is the level of communication such that the key people who need to know that there is a problem will find out early?
3. What action will I be able to take to assist in overcoming the problem?

Another important area of time management is successful problem solving. You should have a procedure to follow that will guarantee that the solution that you select is the correct one.

• Step one: Identify the problem - not the symptoms but the root cause.
• Step two: Analyse the problem by gathering sufficient data.
• Step three: You and your selected team generate potential solutions using the data that has been collected. Standard options are available for solving most business problems. What you should be doing as team leader is leading a brainstorming session to generate non-standard options to resolve the problem under consideration.
• Step four: Select the solution from those produced in step three, and plan step five.
• Step five: Implement the solution.
• Step six: Evaluate the outcome and gauge the results.

You must accept that some crises will be beyond your control; people giving you unrealistic deadlines, priorities being changed at the 11th hour, and people making mistakes.

How should you face up to a crisis

Acting in haste could generate another crisis. Assess the damage, the consequences and the cost. Consider as many standard options as possible - also consider some non standard options. If possible, gather round you two or three key people to discuss the options. Depending on the nature of the problem, you may not have time to democratically reach a decision but will be required, as is the way on some occasions, to act autocratically.

The preservation of your plans and the continued successful management of your time in the face of crisis will be dependent upon the manner in which you use the tools that are available to you.

Bad personal habits that waste time

We have spent some time looking at the external and environmental factors that cause us to waste time, and have discussed some methods of overcoming these time wasting activities. You need now to turn your attention to your personal time wasting. There are many time wasting activities which we can generate. You, as an individual, may only be guilty of a few minor ones. On the other hand you may need all the help you can get to improve on your personal performance by eliminating or reducing bad habits which do not allow you to concentrate on the high priority activities which lead to success through achievement.

Bad habits are built up over a long period of time

The force of bad habits is very powerful and strong positive thinking and will-power is needed to conquer them. As Mark Twain once said `"A habit cannot be tossed out of the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time`"?. One of the secrets of success in beating a bad habit is an awareness of the fact that the behaviour is repeated and is not favourable to our progress in achieving success.

Awareness, is the best possible means of changing a behaviour which is, more often than not, negative. Getting to understand the influence that habits can have on you is an essential part of being effective in the way you operate. The following are amongst the most common time wasters that can plague your personal success.

1. Perfectionism
2. Poor organisation
3. Procrastination
4. An ability to say `no`
5. Executive stress (burn out)
6. Negative attitude

Procrastination (not acting immediately)

A trait most human beings have, to a greater or lesser degree, is putting things off. You may find yourself jumping at the opportunity to put off doing something you perceive as boring or routine, difficult or unpleasant. However, all these tasks whatever their nature have to be faced eventually.

Are you a procrastinator? Do you wait until the last minute to complete a project that you have had for many weeks? Do you put off making important decisions that will affect your performance at work and may ultimately lead to a reduction in your living standards through a decline in your income? Or perhaps you put off making decisions that are less significant, but still cause you and others unnecessary stress. Such decisions related to holidays, or weekend breaks, or that important 6 monthly visit to the dentist. Do you always, or just sometimes, wait for the `right time` to make that phone call, or have that important meeting with the boss to discuss that `broken promise`.

As a child, you probably gained a certain amount of satisfaction from `"not doing things when you were told`"?. You were more in control if you did things when you wanted to and not when you were told or asked. However, procrastination in adults is an indicator of internal conflict. You want to do something but you are held back. By what? Maybe you would rather be doing something else; you may need more time to do it perfectly; you may be afraid to accept responsibility if something is not done. However, no one can complain that it has been done incorrectly!

The price of procrastination

What price do we have to pay for procrastination? When we delay in doing tasks we should have completed, we assume an importance that is usually not justified. We then start to worry over the outcome and our thinking time is out of all proportion to the matter under consideration. Any time that is available to us for thinking should be firmly directed at making plans for the future. This important block of time is wasted if we procrastinate. How can you meet the challenge?

1. Be aware that you may be using distractions as an excuse not to act immediately.
2. Be specific in setting start times and finishing times when writing your daily to do list. Resist the temptation to be overgenerous in the time you allocate to complete a task.
3. Be aware that meeting deadlines that you have set is an admirable time management practice and leads to success.
4. Create a reward system for yourself. Promise yourself a cup of coffee When you have completed that onerous task, avoid the temptation to say `"I`ll have a cup of coffee before I make a start`"?.

`"If I spend as much time doing the things I worry about getting done as I do worrying about them, I wouldn`t have anything to worry about`"?.

Saying `"No`"?

When others ask you to do things for them, whether it is your manager, or colleagues or staff, or even if it is in your personal world; the chances that you will refuse are quite remote. You are likely to continually say `"Yes`"? even though you know your work schedule is already full. And you will not be able to complete what they want done in the time available.

Do not be afraid to say `"No`"?

The reason for this is that you are afraid of upsetting or disappointing people, which you believe will lead to them rejecting you or not respect you. You may also think that you might want their help sometime in the future. Not being able to say `"no`"? in a non-aggressive and inoffensive way can stem from a lack of self-confidence. Gaining confidence will only come from becoming skilled in the art of saying `"no`"?. Learning to say `"no`"? in a non aggressive manner, and declining to act submissively by saying `"yes`"? all the time can only come from practice. It will be difficult at first but you will improve.

There are a number of ways to say `"no`"? and the art lies in not making excuses or giving long winded explanations for your refusal. Suggesting an alternative course of action, is usually quite acceptable. Additionally, you should act confidently and maintain good eye contact when communicating.

What you are trying to do is to keep that workload workable. You want to manage your time to allow you to spend a larger proportion of it on high priority tasks which lead to goal and objective accomplishment. To achieve this you will need to stand up for your rights and express your feelings, thoughts and needs in a straightforward and honest manner. Learning to say `"no`"? will help to improve your confidence.

In addition to maintaining good eye contact, your tone of voice is extremely important and the gestures that you use will emphasise and support the words you use. Learning to say `"no`"? is not about dominating or humiliating other people who do not see things the way that you see them. Whenever conflicts of needs arise, solving them by better communication with the people involved is the route to take. However skilled you become in communicating with others, you must realise that you cannot guarantee getting your own way all the time. However, you will gain self respect and develop greater confidence from saying what you feel and think without fear.

Executive stress (burn out)

What is stress (or burn out as it is now called)? How can it affect you achieving success through the control of your time? The straight answer to the second question is that people who are `"burnt out`"? waste a great deal of time. They are unable to organise, plan and control to the high degree necessary to lead successful lives.

The Oxford Dictionary of New Words defines burnout as: `"physical or emotional exhaustion, usually caused by stress at work; more generally apathy, disillusionment or low moral. The `"Burnout`"? syndrome, which is thought to be a direct result of the high stress lifestyle of the past two decades, was first identified in the mid seventies. It is no longer the preserve of those in jobs which require a high level of emotional commitment, and can affect management and almost anyone in a responsible position. The term used in the past to describe this problem were either depression or nervous breakdown`"?.

The latest Government figures show that stress is going to cost British Industry £3 billion this year and around 17.6 million working days - a quarter of all working days lost - were lost through stress-related absenteeism.

Stress can be defined as the demands that you place upon yourself which exceed your capacity to respond. Staying late at work every night to solve business problems only creates more problems, but of another kind. Stress manifests itself by causing a feeling of continual exhaustion; the sufferer often feels irritated, overworked, depressed, tense, and disappointed.

You may become over-sensitive to criticism, your sleep pattern can be seriously affected and you may have bad dreams. Your productivity will most certainly reach a very low level. So you can see that to ensure your time management is effective, you must get stress under control. It is negative and it can take over your life. However, it is possible that some of the symptoms listed are not apparent to you but they will have a dramatic affect on the people with whom you are in close contact.

The first step is for you to become aware that you are stressed. Many people do not recognise the symptoms; only when they perhaps suffer a complete nervous breakdown do they become aware of the seriousness of their problem.

You could not envisage a greater waste of valuable time than spending many weeks recovering from something that was preventable in the first place.

Here are some activities which will be within most people`s resources to bring stress under control: take up some form of physical exercise if it is not already being done; join a class on relaxation techniques at your local college; start a study course in a subject our activity you have always wanted to do. If that is not possible, seek advice or help from a professional counsellor.

Stress is not just negative. You have stress in you all the time; it helps keep you alive, which is extremely positive! You should compare it with your body temperature, for when you say `"I have a temperature`"? you mean that you have a temperature in excess of 98.4 degrees. Likewise the practise is today to accept that when a reference is made to stress it should be taken as meaning `"burnt out or over-stressed`"?.

Stress can be defined as the way your body responds to the demands that your work/lifestyle makes on it - how your body responds to the `"wear and tear`"? of daily life. Stress is not a mental state, but largely a physical condition.

The positive aspects of stress are vital to our lives. It is essential to our performance. What ever our activity, stress plays an important part in our achievement of goals which leads to success.

Take the example of a top athlete. World records would not be set by an athlete who was totally relaxed and laid back. You only need to watch a world class athlete in action to see that considerable stress is present in the effort being made to achieve a record. So the same is for you, the effort required to be successful is considerable.

Awareness is 90% of the solution.

How then do we maintain our stress level at its optimum so that we are always at the peak of physical fitness and thereby in control of our time? By continuous expert planning, organising and controlling?

Here are some examples of the effects of being over-stressed. o you suffer from any of these problems?

1. Short temper
2. More frequent mistakes
3. Less flexibility
4. Loser behaviour
5. Bad smoking, eating and drinking habits
6. Reduced concentration
7. Increased forgetfulness
8. Poor judgement
9. Feeling of tiredness

You now need to identify what is causing the stressful behaviour. Perhaps you are already aware and are taking action.

Identify your particular stress factors and set yourself some new objectives and a time scale in which you will reduce the effect of them on your performance.

The methods you can use to reduce stress are numerous, but the most important is the use of time management principles. Look again at the six rules of time management. Check that your goals conform to the `"SMART`"? rules, as unrealistic goals can lead to an `"over-stressed`"? situation.

Organising each working day will work for you. Do not stop at the end of the day - organise some leisure activities in the evening. Success in many people can be attributed to what they do and how they spend their leisure time. There is a definite link between success and having out of work interests, be they outdoor pursuits, indoor hobbies or attending a non-work related course at a college of further education.

Making the most of the time you have saved

When you have been implementing the professional time management methods advocated in these notes for a period of time, you will be delighted at the improvement in your productivity. You will be able to set new goals and objectives in your life and start to do those things that you always wanted to do `"but never had the time`"?.

No longer will you be on a treadmill of doing just what is urgent. Your attitude towards work, social and domestic situations will be much more positive and effective. You will be in control of your time, and your life. This will allow you to undertake activities which you previously thought were beyond your reach. It will also help to improve immensely the activities that you had formerly been performing at a low level.

Communication

Firstly, let us look at the area of communication. In many companies, when mistakes are made or tasks and activities do not work out as planned, you will often hear someone say, `"We have a communication problem`"?. You communicate for approximately 70% of your waking time. Your productivity will be affected by the nature of your interpersonal relationships at work: keeping conflict out of your working relationships through good human communication skills is a way of keeping a very high level of motivation in your group or team, and this automatically produces high productivity. Communicating well saves time. This extra time can be devoted to developing your skills, be it at work or in your personal life.

Relaxation

Another area is relaxation. This is an activity which many busy people say they do not have time to do. In reading these notes you will know how important it is to find time to relax and become immersed in things other than work. Without an element of relaxation built into your daily or weekly routine, you could find yourself on the slippery slope to stress. It is very difficult to say what you should do to relax: relaxation means different things to different people. A broad definition is `"rest or refreshment after work or effort`"?.

Reading

Reading is another area of importance to the successful time manager. Reading is the route to successful self development. Here at Spearhead we are aware many more delegates on our public training courses would read to increase their knowledge `"if only they had the time`"?.

Reading for knowledge is completely different to reading, say a novel, for pleasure. Take for example management techniques. There must be tens of thousands of books published on the subject, and if you wanted to broaden your knowledge of that particular subject it would be necessary to read a great number of books by different authors.

Career planning

Career planning, for yourself and others, is a fourth possible use of your time. Having time to plan your career will stop you from drifting aimlessly through the waterways of business life, and will help you to steer a course which will arrive at the destination of your choice.

One of the most beneficial ways you can spend your time is in thought. Think about the future and plan how to utilise your skills and others` to eveyone`s mutual benefit. Time should also be given to initiating and planning change, introducing new methods and innovating.

Thinking

Thinking is a skill. As with any skill when you first learn about it, it is difficult to do, so you need continuous practice, and time in which to practice. Thinking should not be viewed as a `one off` or as a filler or stop gap in waiting time. Thinking should be done in your prime time when your mental alertness and creative ability is at its peak.

There are many good books on thinking and one of the leading writers on this subject is Edward de Bono. One of de Bono`s original contributions to the power of thinking was establishing the theory of `"Lateral Thinking`"?. He identified that most people thought `"vertically`"?, in a uniform manner and could easily identify the `"Standard Options`"? available to solve a problem or exploit an opportunity. His lateral thinking would produce `"New Options`"? to solve problems.

These are just some of the activities you could undertake once your time management skills begin to show results. There are many more, and you will have activities in your mind that you personally want to undertake once you have the time.