There are dozens of poplar time management books. Today I would like to point to my favorite. It is not considered a time management book at all. It fact it is my favorite management book of all time. To quote from the preface. “Management books usually deal with managing other people. The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness. That one can truly manage other people is by no means adequately proven. But one can always manage oneself. Indeed, executives who do not manage themselves for effectiveness cannot possibly expect to manage their associates and subordinates. Management is largely by example. Executives who do not know how to make themselves effective in their own job and work set the wrong example…Without effectiveness there is no “performance,” no matter how much intelligence and knowledge goes into the work, no matter how many hours it takes. Yet it is perhaps not too surprising that we have so far paid little attention to the effective executive.” The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker, 1967. I mention the year for impact.
So many things go into effective time management. Most of us have one system or another. Smart phones with calendars and time management applications, Franklin-Covey planners and on it goes. This will be short and to the point. I will quote from one passage in the book and then give a few procedures that you may find helpful.
Know Thy Time
Effective executives start with their time.
“Know thyself,” the old prescription for wisdom, is almost impossibly difficult for mortal men. But everyone can follow the injunction “Know thy time” if one wants to, and be well on the road toward contribution and effectiveness.
Most discussions of the executive’s task start with the advice to plan one’s work. This sounds eminently plausible. The only thing wrong with it is that it rarely works. The plans always remain on paper, always remain good intentions. They seldom turn into achievement. Effective executives, in my observation, do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units. This three step process;
- recording time
- managing time
- consolidating time
is the foundation of executive effectiveness.
Here are some recommendations that may prove helpful. Track your day. It is best to have some printed form that have each hour broken up into a minimum of fifteen minute increments. Then religiously, without trying to control what is happening, record where your time is being spent, e.g. a twenty minute telephone call, someone stopping by your office to chat, meetings, etc. Do this for at least four weeks. (I strongly recommend that you do not use this technique on your employees to track their time.) This will yield to you a valuable trove of information as to how your day is consumed. And will give you helpful insights on how to better manage your day. If you are like most of us you enter your day in a whirl of activity and by the end of the day can hardly remember what you accomplished. In my next blog I will give several additional, simple strategies for far more effectively using your time.
