|
FROM: MAY-JUN 2009 ISSUE | BY MINDY ABRAMOWITZ
Most of us are all too aware of the distinction between being busy and being productive. It takes a calm, nimble mind to marshal, prioritize, and dispatch an ever-growing to-do list and, unfortunately, as tasks are heaped onto the pile, our focus tends to fracture. Time management gurus advocate for a systematic approach to tackling the seemingly infinite demands on time and attention.
Methods
A wide range of time management techniques seek to tame and sometimes even eliminate threats to productivity and accomplishment. While the philosophies behind them might differ, the qualities that determine their success or failure are consistent: structure, organization, discipline, and perhaps most importantly, common sense. Most of them acknowledge that the greatest obstacles people face in their efforts to deal with a constant tide of competing demands are procrastination, unreasonable expectations, and burnout.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method promotes the ideal of “stress-free productivity” and encourages its users to take inventory of all that needs to be done. Exporting your to-do list from your head to a system of categories and proposed actions and reminders proposes to free up mental capacity and clear the way for creative thought. Rigorous decision-making and a five-step process lead to a streamlined workflow and a more relaxed state of mind. Along the way GTD followers can avail themselves of countless software applications and devices specially designed to accompany the GTD program.
Conversely, the Do It Tomorrow technique recommends the psychological balm of a finite to-do list. It suggests you identify a number of tasks to complete in the space of a day while leaving yourself enough time to address spontaneous demands like phone calls and emails. Then ignore the rest until tomorrow. At the end of each day, Do It Tomorrow followers enjoy the satisfaction of completing every item on their to-do lists.
Tools
From Filofax to PDA, time management tools have evolved and multiplied. A multitude of web applications offer to manage your to-do list, to embed it in your calendar, to deliver reminders to your email inbox, and to share tasks with teammates – in short, to consolidate all of your obligations and commitments for ease of reference. The objective is to make your time management systems accessible anywhere and anytime.
Even a backlash against these systems’ heavy reliance on networks, expensive gadgets, and batteries has produced alternative tools that respect the complexity and sophistication of popular time management approaches. The original Hipster PDA, created by productivity blogger Merlin Mann as a humorous rejection of technological excesses, uses colour-coded index cards and a binder clip to simulate the features of a real PDA: calendars, notes, lists, and flowcharts.
Other Strategies
Productivity experts stress that many of our behaviours can be fine-tuned to boost productivity or at least curtail unprofitable uses of time. Some examples of strategies to help maximize effectiveness at work:
- Schedule communication blackouts: periods of time during which you focus on completing certain tasks without answering the phone, checking email, or engaging in other types of communication.
- Designate one or two tasks to complete before checking email at the beginning of the work day in order to meet a few demands before you are exposed to any new ones.
- Rank the items on your to-do list and make sure to complete tasks in order of importance.
- Make personal appointments for immediately after work to impose a daily deadline on yourself and to provide yourself an incentive to complete tasks in a timely manner.
- Know your rhythm. If you tend to be more energetic and focused in the morning, plan to work on more challenging tasks then, leaving the uncomplicated tasks for later in the day when your energy flags.
- Avoid scheduling your day down to the last minute – build some flexibility into your agenda to allow for breaks and to help alleviate the pressure of unexpected interruptions.
- Say no sometimes. Recognize when a proposed commitment is not germane to your overall mission and turn it down.
Discipline and the right time management tools offer a viable alternative to longer days at the office and last-minute panic before deadlines.
[ TOP ] |