“The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips” — EngagingConflicts.com
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I came across Francis Wade’s article at ChangeThis recently. As it says:
As working professionals across the world, we all want the same things when it comes to time management. We want to feel a certain peace of mind that comes from knowing that our affairs are in order and that we’ve not forgotten something that might jump up later to give us a nasty surprise.
This “timely” article urges:
When new gadgets and a new list of tips is presented, the professional should ask herself: “what does this mean for my fundamentals?”
The article warns about destroying personal productivity by chasing after the newest “promise” of productivity, be it gadget or tip, instead of increasing productivity by learning and practicing the fundamentals.
“When Tiger’s game falls apart, he’s lucky– he knows what to do. He returns to the fundamentals and starts to rebuild. If we were so lucky, we would have the following fundamentals taught to us in the 5th grade. It’s late, but not too late to learn them, and to begin our long overdue practice sessions.”
As he says, time management systems are essentially quite simple, and they are easy to understand and to learn once the fundamentals are appreciated. However, the working professional has seldom been taught the fundamentals and so it follows she has never practiced them.
“In time management, there are 7 core fundamentals that all professionals must employ to transform time demands into action: Capturing, Emptying, Tossing, Storing, Acting Now, Scheduling and Listing. To violate these fundamentals is to end up with feelings of stress, overflowing email inboxes, broken promises, late arrivals, forgotten commitments, poor reputations, upset colleagues, a missing sense of accomplishment and more.”
He defines and discusses these fundamental practices:
- Capturing. The capture point of a time demand, be it your inbox, or a piece of paper with a list of items to do later- a temporary storage device.
- Emptying. Empty capture points as often as possible, and make immediate decisions about their disposal on an individual basis.
- Tossing. Aggressively delete items once and for all instead of allowing them to sit in the time management system weighing things down.
- Storing. Keeping key pieces of information for later retrieval. Store only the minimum information, in a place that is fully backed up in case of an emergency.
- Acting Now. Take only 2-5 minutes an item during emptying; if it takes more time, stop and make a decision whether to continue or to plan it for a different time.
- Scheduling. Place time demands in a calendar of events that include solo as well as group activities. Before committing to due dates or meetings, check the schedule.
- Listing. Use lists when it’s impractical to use the schedule to keep track of minute details. Balance listing carefully with scheduling.
Beyond acknowledging fundamentals, and most importantly to me, he stresses the need to recognize that individuals need different systems. As he puts it, any one system being proposed will have either raving fans, or failed adopters. Individuals who pick and chose pieces from several systems, as the vast majority of professionals do, aren’t necessarily helped by that, either– the result can be disastrous because the selection is made without understanding the fundamentals. The resulting system of habits doesn’t work.
One suggestion, from his blog, on emptying an email inbox:
It’s very simple – for every important piece of email, send a reply, even a short one, to say one of the following messages:
- Thanks
- It’s received and will be acted on and here’s the promised due date
- To ask a question
I think that this is a great suggestion, and the idea is to delete the email once a reply has been sent. I’m experimenting with this approach to see what comes of it, once again with the goal of achieving a Zero Inbox.
His bio:
Francis Wade is the President of Framework Consulting, a firm of management consultants committed to solving the most difficult people issues in companies. He holds a Bachelors and Masters in Operations research from Cornell University, and resides in Kingston, Jamaica where he is enthralled and inspired by the difference between his new day to day life, and the twenty years he spent working between New Jersey and Florida. Visit his blog at http://2time-sys.com.
You can find the article at ChangeThis or download it by clicking here: newtime.pdf.
And here’s a link to an earlier post on another Change This article, Making the Most of Your Time: Going Beyond To-Do Lists.
