A person is hired for his/her skills, abilities, experience, attitude, and other promising factors, but the person is rewarded for performance—or fired for the lack of it. Time management is a critical skill that helps deliver promised performance. Time management is a practical skill and, therefore, any training program, workshop, seminar, or book addressing this skill must use a hands-on approach. This is a practical book. It is not meant to be merely read but to be applied and practiced. This preface states the objective of the course and lays out the manner in which the objective may be met, that is, the target behavior and the methodology by which the target behavior may be instilled.
Around 350 BC, Aristotle stated his concepts of Physics, the general principles of change that govern all natural bodies, both living and inanimate. One of his concepts was that heavier objects fell to the earth faster than lighter bodies. In 1589, Galileo dropped two balls of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to prove that the fall of bodies is independent of their mass. Yet, for over a hundred years more, the University of Pisa still taught their students the Aristotelian version of the principle.
Galileo stated and proved his concept. He did not change beliefs. He did not change behavior patterns.
During the initial years of my corporate career, I took several time management courses and read many more books on the subject. Nothing worked for me until I discovered the true reason why nothing worked for me: merely carrying around an organizer/planner, noting appointments and tasks in it, and hoping for the best does not constitute time management. Unless I changed my behavior, I could only get the same old results. Einstein defined insanity as "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I realize now that my behavior at that time could have well been classified as insanity by Einstein's definition.
Time management is not a skill—it is a pattern of thought and behavior based on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and commitment. Time management training goes beyond stating facts and proving concepts. It involves changing attitudes and behavior patterns.
What changes behavior? Behavior can only be changed through strong motivation that emerges from dissatisfaction with the current state and a deep desire to reach a better state.
This book is intended to help the reader acquire the appropriate beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and commitments required for time management and to bring about the required change in behavior.
There have been references to proper use of time in all ancient texts and philosophies. Roman Senator and Philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) said, "Remember that man's life lies all within this present, as 't were but a hair's-breadth of time; as for the rest, the past is gone, the future yet unseen."
Benjamin Franklin is considered the father of time management. He eschewed wasting even a moment. His writings have several references to time management. His posthumous autobiography shows his system for the pursuit of "Order." In a small book of his own making, he assiduously tracked each day's activities.
Modern time management dates back to the 1910 classic How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. In this, Bennett urges salaried workers to claim extra time and use the extra time to improve themselves and to really live as opposed to merely existing.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "The more important an item, the less likely it is urgent, and the more urgent an item, the less likely it is important." He used an importance/urgency matrix to classify tasks and identify the one(s) that required immediate attention.
In 1973, Alan Lakein brought forth his classic, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. He is credited as the creator of Lakein's Question, "What is the best use of my time right now?" His A-1 technique is still the most powerful prioritization technique for ensuring that time is effectively used.
Hyrum W. Smith founded the Franklin Quest Company in 1981 and created the Franklin Planner. In 1997, he merged his company with Stephen Covey's Covey Leadership Center to form Franklin Covey, one of the world's leading providers of time management training and planner/organizer products.
David Allen brought his perspectives on productivity to Lockheed in the 1980s and went on to create a time management program called Getting Things Done in 2001.
In 2002, yours truly, the author of the book that you hold in your hand, created a game called Bank Your Time to teach time management to teens and youths. The game became a popular time-management training program in several corporations. What you hold in your hand combines traditional time management concepts with ideas from the Bank Your Time game.
Let me introduce you to the concept of "indirection." There are several ways of getting a task done:
Do it yourself
Delegate someone else to do it
Forbid your children from doing it!
Levity aside, when you delegate a task to someone else, you are creating a level of indirection, that is, you get the results not from direct action but from indirect action. Now, if that someone further delegates the task, there is another level of indirection created. With each delegation or level of indirection, you get farther removed from the ultimate action and you have less control over the process. How do you ensure that the task is completed to your standards? The solution is to give up control and grant power (empowerment) while stressing the benefits of the action and the value it provides.
Why am I belaboring this point?
Let us take the subject of teaching. When I teach the material covered in this book, I have control over the process. I impart knowledge (content) through instruction presentation, examples, analogies, stories, activities, and exercises. With this Workshop in a Box, I delegate the teaching to you and introduce a level of indirection. I grant you control over the process. How can I influence the way that you teach?
I could put on my professorial face and pontificate as to what you MUST do in order to teach this material. Rather than that, allow me to advise you. Let me share with you my knowledge, experiences in teaching this material, the stories and illustrations I use to get the point across, and the activities and exercises that I use to drill the students in the concepts. In short, let me share with you my content, my lesson plans, and my teaching methodology.
The strength of this book is that it exists at two levels—concepts and teaching aids. At the first level, I give you material for you to use in training your students. At the second level, I show you how I train my students so that you may use the same approach in your workshops.
What is the process of effective teaching? How does one learn a skill? Can one learn to play soccer by merely reading a book or attending a workshop? While the intellectual aspects of the skill—the concepts—may get absorbed into the conscious part of the mind from a book or a workshop, it will not become integrated into the person's behavior except by application.
In the old view of education, the teacher was the active participant and the student a passive participant in a process that broadcast knowledge. In the current view of education, both the teacher and the student are active participants in a partnership that transfers knowledge. In other words, in the old world, teaching was done to the student. In the new world, learning is done by the student. Therefore, I begin every one of my workshops by introducing the students to the concept of active learning and teaching them how to learn. The ability to learn is very useful. The students can then go on to quickly absorb other skills from other teachers. Indeed, this is the first benefit my students receive even before they learn the actual skills contained in my workshop.
In the following section, do note that I am indifferent as to the subject or discipline that I am teaching and helping my students learn. I use the same methodology in all my workshops, be it a workshop on time management, problem solving and decision making, project management or management tactics.
How does one learn a skill? Can one learn to play soccer by merely reading a book or attending a workshop? While the intellectual aspects of the skill—the concepts—may get absorbed into the conscious part of the mind from a book or a workshop, it will not become integrated into the person's behavior except by application.
There is a five-stage process for effective learning. The concepts in this book are presented in such a manner as to move the reader along the five stages and acquire this skill. The stages are: preparation, presentation, processing, padding, and propping.
Stage 1: Preparation
In this stage, the individual's mind is prepared to receive the concept and skill. This stage has three activities:
Motivation
Why should you acquire this knowledge, skill, or habit? What is in it for you? The human mind is much enamored by the WIIFM (What's In It For Me) factor. When an individual knows the benefits, their mind is eager to acquire the skill and reap the benefits. Motivation overcomes barriers to learning such as resistance to change and the fear of stepping outside the comfort zone.
Positive mental attitude
It is said that if you think that you can do something or if you think that you cannot do the same thing, you are right. It is the belief that you have in yourself that helps you achieve—or not achieve—whatever you set out to do. Even if the reader has the motivation, if they do not have the faith that they are capable of learning a concept or skill, no amount of effort will enable them to learn. It is important to be confident in one's ability to learn. A positive mental attitude overcomes barriers to learning such as doubt ("I am not smart enough to learn this", "This is too complex", "I don't have the background for this material.")
Receptive state
After motivating the individual and creating the positive mental attitude, it is important to put them in a receptive state. You must be relaxed, ready, confident, and eager to learn. The two techniques I use for this are meditation and positive affirmations. A receptive state overcomes barriers to learning such as self-sabotage.
Stage 2: Presentation
I have seen the following words on a poster on a teacher's wall:
"Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I may remember
Involve me and I will understand."
How can you involve everyone? What captivates and captures attention such that teaching is almost automatic? There are four general attention grabbers:
Stories
Never underestimate the power of a story. Aesop's Fables have been used to instruct children in values and morals for millennia. Plato's Dialogues show that Socrates used this technique to teach philosophy. The Bible and other religious texts contain many stories that communicate certain truths about the religion gently and subtly. Bruce Barton, American marketing legend, set out all his marketing messages as parables. Shakespeare said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is true of static pictures that only require words of static description. However, words that tell a story paint dynamic pictures in the mind. These require action words and dynamic descriptions. Such stories are often worth a thousand pictures.
Games
How did you learn as a child and toddler? How do children in pre-school, kindergarten, and Montessori schools learn? Games are an essential part of early learning but are largely ignored in later education. I introduce some concepts through games, role-playing, and enactment.
Challenges
The human cannot resist challenges, more so when some rewards are promised to the winner. I often divide the participants into groups and play them against each other to meet some targets (the first to enumerate all benefits of …, the first to demonstrate …) and award the group with the highest score the promised reward.
Arguments
It is said that you learn best when you teach someone else or when you defend a position or point of view. I pick some students and play the devil's advocate. In convincing me that I am wrong, the students learn the concept.
Another aspect of presentation is that people use different learning styles. Some are visual learners, some auditory, some tactile/kinesthetic, and very few are olfactory or gustatory. It is necessary to present the same concept in different modes so as to fit all learning styles. You cannot show an auditory learner, nor have a tactile/kinesthetic learner listen to something. Using multiple modes of presentation also serves to reinforce the concept.
Stage 3: Processing
In the Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning, Benjamin Bloom defined six stages in the process of learning:
Acquiring information and remembering, wherein the student merely memorizes the concepts without really understanding.
Paraphrasing, wherein by stating the concept in his/her own words, the student begins to understand the concept.
Applying, wherein the student puts the concept to practical use and relates it to real world context.
Analysis, wherein the student breaks down the concept into constituent parts, makes inferences and finds generalizations.
Synthesis, wherein the student combines the concept with prior knowledge and skills to rearrange, adapt, formulate, and create extensions to the concept.
Evaluation, wherein the student judges the value of the materials and critiques and supports and reframes the knowledge.
In my workshop, I encourage the students to follow the taxonomy by paraphrasing, relating to real-world examples (application), and moving on to analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The last, evaluation, is the most important: by assigning value to the concept and relating it to the motivation, the circle is complete and the purpose of the learning is established. For example, in this workshop, many of my classroom exercises involve discussions to analyze and evaluate the concepts covered.
Stage 4: Padding
We all have different experiences, and relate differently to the same information. A friend of mine stated it very succinctly, "We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are." Therefore, even with the foregoing steps and learning, students will have gaps in their understanding according to their experiences. Prerequisite knowledge forms the basis or platform of understanding upon which new concepts can be built. This includes enough information such that there is no misunderstanding or miscommunication. It allows new concepts to be linked and anchored to the platform through associations.
The human brain is a pattern making and pattern recognizing system. It builds the patterns through associations. Incomplete information or lack of some prerequisite knowledge reduces some of the associations, which may lead to bias, prejudice, or dogma.
As Alexander Pope wrote:
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring
where shallow draughts intoxicate the brain
and drinking largely sobers us again"
After the presentation phase, it is useful to explore how well a student has understood the concept, to identify gaps in understanding, and pad the gaps so as to complete the picture. Padding is the process where the gaps in understanding are closed.
Stage 5: Propping
When a young tree is transplanted, stakes are driven into the ground next to the tree and lines are securely tied from the stakes to the tree. These stakes remain in place until the tree takes root and is able to stand on its own. Similarly, new concepts are anchored to existing concepts with associative links such that the power of association holds the new concept in place until it takes root. Association is a very powerful way to learn new concepts.
Propping or association is a very powerful way of creating new habits. By always linking one action to another such that one automatically triggers the other, behavior patterns are created and strongly established. Therefore, in order to take on a new habit it can be anchored to an existing habit through forced links. This was the mechanism used by the great Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov used to create conditioned reflexes. His famous experiment with the dog and the bell wherein he rang the bell each time he fed the dog such that just by ringing the bell he caused the dog to salivate speaks for this mechanism of association as a way to change behavior.
The book is laid out in nine chapters as described below.
Chapter 1, What is Time Management?, sets the stage for the rest of the workshop. The term time management means different things to different people. This chapter lays a common frame of understanding by exploring what people believe about time management, enumerating the benefits of time management, formally defining the term time management, briefly going over the history of time management, and showing how time management can lead to success.
Chapter 2, Setting Goals, sets a clear direction by establishing values, visions, and goals. When values, visions, goals, and actions are congruent, the results will be in line with expectations.
Chapter 3, Task Management, is the cornerstone of time management. Earl Nightingale said that time cannot be managed except through the control of activities. This chapter shows how activities can be managed by making lists, prioritizing, and pruning. This chapter also shows how dependent actions and sequences of actions can be managed together.
Chapter 4, Schedule Management, shows how to use planners and organizers. Schedule management is another key concept in time management. It promotes punctuality. Schedule management involves keeping track of appointments, meetings, and deadlines in a daily planner and to set yourself reminders to meet these expectations. A reputation for punctuality leads to a reputation for responsibility, reliability, and accountability.
Chapter 5, Managing Daily Tasks , shows how to manage the day's activities. It is important to know how much time is available and how long any task will take in order to make a realistic list of tasks for the day. This sets achievable expectations.
Chapter 6, Deadline Management, focuses on getting things done on time. It is the complementary concept to schedule management. While schedule management ensures that you be somewhere at a given time, deadline management ensures that you do something by a given time. Deadline management addresses issues and obstacles that prevent on-time completion of tasks. These issues include Parkinson's Law, procrastination, Murphy's Law, and risks.
Chapter 7, Overcoming Obstacles to Productivity, covers tactics to get work done quickly and with fewest errors. This includes dealing with interruptions and distractions. It also covers areas of self-discipline such as preparation, organization, delegation, and accepting responsibility.
Chapter 8, Measuring Your Time Management Skills, shows how to measure the effectiveness of time management. It is said that if you cannot measure it you cannot manage it. The metrics covered in this chapter show productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, and quality. Metrics boost self image and allow you to take pride in your achievements.
Chapter 9, Tools, introduces tools that may be used to implement time management concepts and actions, including calendars, to-do lists, reminders, and alarms.
Note
Make a note
Each concept in every chapter going forward is laid out in the following manner:
Concept definition
Benefit, that is, value or motivation
Prerequisite knowledge, if any
Presentation materials, for example, stories, analogies, games, and so on
Application of the concept, that is, how it relates to the real world
Associations
Exercises
Each concept can be independently learned and linked or associated to previous concepts.
This is an action-oriented book. Its purpose is to influence behavior and produce results. While some theory and history where relevant are given, actions are the biggest takeaways.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of this book is in the improved productivity that will be seen in every individual touched directly or indirectly by this book.
Most, if not all, businesses rate time management as one of the most important skills in their employees. Good time management leads to better productivity and profitability. Training in time management will enable businesses be more efficient and effective. This book is targeted at three groups of individuals. It is designed to bring a new employee up to speed in time management. It will also help managers guide their teams, especially new hires, in time management just as a master craftsman guides apprentices. Finally, it will serve as reference material for trainers and coaches who offer time management courses.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold.
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