Book Image

Time Management for New Employees

By : Prakash V Rao
Book Image

Time Management for New Employees

By: Prakash V Rao

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Activity management


Let's explore further the previous definition of time management. At the highest level, there are three key words to inspect: activities, events, and control.

I use the term "activity" to denote something that requires action or something that is done. The subject is "active." Thus, activities include tasks, chores, duties, and routines. I use the term "event" to denote something that happens. The subject is a participant in or is affected by events. Thus, events include meetings, appointments, and group activities. For the purpose of this chapter, I will use the two terms interchangeably. The rest of this chapter is focused on the concept of controlling both activities and events, the concept of event control.

Event control

Peter Drucker, the noted management guru of the 20th century, famously said, "If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it." We will be discussing time management metrics later in this book. For the present, let's look at identifying what we need to measure in order to control activities. The operating word here is "control." If you do not control the events in your life, the events in your life will control you.

The alternative to controlling events in your life is to be blown in any direction the winds of fate take you.

As mentioned before, you control the activities in your life by choice. The first choice is to decide what events and activities you permit into your life.

To what extent do you control the events you permit into your life? And how do you exercise the control? In other words, let's consider what events to control and how to control them.

There are several kinds of events:

  • Events that are totally out of your control: These include the weather, the stock market, the economy, and so on. These also include situations that depend largely on the decisions and actions of those whom you cannot influence.

  • Complex events: There are events wherein there are too many individual things that happen. You do not have the brainpower to consider them, let alone control them.

  • Events wherein your intervention would have negative consequences: For example, just because you can control something does not mean that you should control it. For example, you need not exercise control over how your children behave every moment of the day. Only by letting children be children can you allow them to grow into wonderful beings.

Therefore, the first step is to identify different classes of events and decide how you will deal with them. In other words, if you can control certain events, decide whether it is worth doing so. If you cannot control certain events, decide whether it is worth the frustration of fretting about them or better to accept them and respond appropriately. For example, even if you cannot do anything about the weather, you can keep track of the forecasts and dress appropriately, carry an umbrella when needed, or lock down in anticipation of a severe storm.

How does one identify different classes of events? Every individual is subject to a different mix of events and event classes. The following section describes a process of identifying event classes and the time spent in each class of events.

Dividing the pies

There are 24 hours in a day. While what you do with these 24 hours on a particular day cannot be predicted to any accuracy, the average use of your time can be extrapolated from past experience.

In the world of finance, there is the concept of a budget. Every individual has a different apportioning of his or her salary depending on the gross amount, tax bracket, rent/mortgage, cost of living in a particular neighborhood, number of earners in the household, number of mouths to feed, and so on. Let's say that a representative gross salary allocation looks like this:

Activity

Allocation

Taxes

33.33%

Rent or mortgage

33.33%

Food

8.33%

Clothing

8.33%

Entertainment

8.33%

Discretionary cash

8.33%

This is extremely simplified in order to illustrate the concept. It does not, for instance, address savings or tithing. Nevertheless, the point is that an allocation or apportioning of income according to individual preferences exists. A further point is that unless you determine where your money is going, you will not have any control over your expenses. Therefore, the starting point is to keep track of your expense categories for a few months in order to understand your spending pattern. I call this post-ante division of the money pie.

After you have captured this monthly information for a few months, you can then decide that you are spending too much in on category and not enough in another. You may not have too much control over what you spend in some categories such as taxes or rent or mortgage unless you take significant steps such as tax strategies or downsizing your residence. You will much more control over categories such as entertainment, savings, and discretionary expenses. You can then create a new allocation/apportioning table that you feel is more suitable for your temperament. I call this ex-ante division of the money pie.

The term ex-ante refers to doing something in advance, and post-ante refers to doing something afterwards.

Let's apply the same concept to time. It is useful to know where your time went (that is, ex-post) in order to estimate where your time will go (that is, ex-ante). A representative post-ante division of time may look like this:

Activity

Allocation

Sleep

33%

Work

33%

Personal grooming

8.33%

Commute

8.33%

Chores

8.33%

Discretionary time

8.33%

Again, as with the money example, you can capture this information over several days and analyze the data to determine how you will change the allocation. For example, you may decide to reduce your sleep time and spend some time in working out. You may decide to be efficient in personal grooming and reduce the corresponding allocation. You may find a new route or public transportation option in order to reduce the commute time. As you can understand, you can manipulate this allocation table in a multitude of ways after you know where your time is going. The first step is to understand where your time is going right now.

Exercise

Your first assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to keep an honest time log for 10 days. Keep track of everything you do. Classify each activity so as to only track aggregates, that is, roll up the time spent to the categories. Therefore, you will not need to know that you spent 25 minutes on a train and 30 minutes in a bus if you know that you spent 55 minutes commuting.

Actually, to make things more interesting, predict what you expect the results to be. Create a table or pie chart with categories and estimated time usage in each category. Do this before the first day's activity log.

This exercise is one of the most difficult things to do because it requires you to be totally honest with yourself. Please do not sweep dust under a rug and pretend that all is well. If necessary, take steps to ensure that no one else can see your log if doing so gives you a certain level of comfort.

Brutal honesty is the only way to know yourself best.

The second part of the exercise is to analyze the time log. After you have kept a time log for about 10 days, create a representative table with the 10-day average for each category. Compare this with the prediction you made before you began to log your activities. What are the differences? What are the surprises? Are you pleasantly surprised or horrified?

You will be astonished by some of the ineffective things you do right now. I certainly was when I first went through this exercise!

I still go through this exercise periodically to make sure that I am not slipping into old bad habits. I also take the opportunity to review changes in my routine due to changing demands on my time. For example, when my older son obtained his driving license and I got him a car, I did not need to shuttle him between his activities anymore. This freed up some of my time and allowed me to take on more activities.

The third part of the exercise is to create a new time budget. Now that you know where your time is being spent, bring some of the areas under control. Eliminate some of the categories and reduce the time allotted to some of the others. Peter Drucker said, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." You can also increase the time allocation for the better categories. For example, spend more time on improving yourself.

Finally, after you have created the new time allocation chart, follow this chart rigorously for at least 21 days. There is scientific evidence to show that the human body takes at least 21 days to adapt to a new routine and make it the norm. Therefore, force the new routine until it becomes the habit. Then you will not have to consciously work on it anymore.

Discussion and illustration

If you are conducting the preceding exercise in a training session, to encourage participation, ask the trainees to present their views on time management, list the problems that they face due to poor time management, and list the benefits of good time management. Throw out definitions of time and time management and invite their comments. Take a contrarian position, that is, benefits of poor time management, and have them argue with you. Keep track of the responses and comments. The same discussion may be repeated at the end of the workshop to see whether there is any change in position as a result of the workshop.

Illustrate the concepts with stories of successful people. Show how proper time management was the key element that vaulted their heroes to the top of their careers. Take examples from different industries and cultures.