80/20 Strategies for Web Marketing, Business Systems, & Personal Productivity
Time management systems never quite cut it for me. Over the years, I’ve tried out far too many methods to count and have rarely had any lasting success. But this last month, I’ve been working with a new system that has transformed the way I structure my working days, led to greater productivity, and increased my overall sense of “making progress” on my most important projects. I like to call it my “Tomato Sauce Time Management System” and you’re about to find out why…
First, let’s all agree that “time management” as a concept… well, frankly, it’s crap. As many other folks before me have shown, it’s pretty lame to think about *managing time.* As far as business language goes, this one’s pretty crummy indeed.
Instead of thinking about how to manage time, it’s a lot more powerful to think about how you can leverage time to get more results. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term “time management” I get a bit queasy. The idea should be to learn how to get more out of time and learn how to plan your working (and your non-working) hours better.
But let’s really break this down. What’s the point? Put simply, the point is to get more time to do the things you really want to be doing and to spend less time frittering away.
Even though I used the term “time management” to title this article, I want to make one thing very clear — most time management systems only do one thing… they teach you how to work, work, work like a crazy type A personality until you’ve successfully filled up 10 hours of your day with senseless tasks that make you feel like you’re getting somewhere when all your doing is compulsively ticking boxes, obsessively checking email, and unconsciously browsing social networks. Not good.
When you manage time, you work to fill hours with tasks… ANY tasks. But when you leverage time, you make a clear plan to move forward on a clearly defined goal.
When you manage time, you obsess over how long things will take and end up doing too much at once. But when you leverage time, you break things down into clearly defined chunks to get the greatest level of focus and productivity.
When you manage time, you let it control you. When you leverage time, you put it to work for you.
In this article series, I’ll show you exactly how I built a clear, easy, and repeatable system to….
Learning how to get more productivity in your life and in your business is perhaps the greatest lesson we all need to learn in order to make more money AND to enjoy life to the fullest.
Before we move on, I’d like you to do me one small favor. Leave a comment in the box below. Tell me about what, if any, systems you use to manage your time or to plan your working day. It can be systems you use now or systems you have used in the past. List everything you can, whether or not any of it actually worked for you.
This series on Leveraging Time is not just about your work — it’s about your LIFE.
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I try to make lists and cross out the tasks I finish, but then I end up losing the list and it is a big ol’ mess. I also end up spending too much time on one thing, get distracted on the next, and don’t end up finishing what I set out to do.
Great post. I am looking forward to the other parts.
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Exactly! The system I’ve been using helps you do both…
1. Avoid never ending list-making.
*And*
2. Stay focused on your most important tasks.
-Jason
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Excellent distinction, managing time vs. leveraging time.
Sounds like this system may be just what I’m looking for: a sophisticated set of conditions making greater fulfillment, not just greater productivity, inevitable.
Looking forward to the next article.
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This is one of the most challenging aspects to any pay grade above ditch digger. Company cultures and individual styles always struggle to find the right balance between day-to-day tasking and big-picture strategy execution. I took a “time management” course once which encouraged us to put each daily “actionable item” into one of 4 squares: Urgent/Important, Not Urgent/Important, Urgent/Not Important, Not Urgent/Not Important. From there, of course, you concentrate on the first two items and delist the last two. The first two are determined by goals you’ve set for the day, week, month, year.
I was able to do this system for about 4 days. Call it ADD, forgetfulness, or just plain slave to the FIFO (first in, first out) method, I had a very difficult time putting this system in practice. I generally got sidetracked by new, realigned priorities and urgency. These came in the way of a new customer crisis, new opportunity, or other distraction.
I’ve since found that keeping things as simple as possible allows for changing priorities and goals. I start with a list in the morning and work my way through it (good ole’ fashion paper vs. Outlook tasks makes sure I actually look at the list). I keep a separate list of top 10 goals visible on my desk as a constant reminder to apply my tasks toward those goals. For example, I have a goal to call or visit at least two distributor GMs on a weekly basis, just to keep in touch, get an idea of market conditions, etc. It works for me, but I realize some efficiency gets lost in the shuffle. As well, there are days I simply can’t draft a list because of travel or distractions (there are days I’ll be on a series of phone calls or visiting customers straight from 8 to 5).
I like your notion of time leverage. Interested in seeing if there are any other useful methods beside playing four-square.
Niels
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Jason Clegg Reply:
January 26th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Niels,
Thanks for this awesome comment! It’s always interesting to see how other people go about their workday (and hopefully useful for you to explain it too).
I’ve read/heard about the “four square method” before but never put it into action myself. One thing I find compelling about it, though, is its power in helping clarify between urgency and importance as factors for Getting Things Done.
As you’ll see in my later posts on this topic, *urgency* very often does NOT translate into importance. As what Peter Drucker would call “Knowledge Workers,” we spend a lot of our time struggling to keep up with the constant bells-and-whistles of modern life (email, web browsing, smartphone, chat pings, etc).
Thanks again for your feedback!
-Jason
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Time management, that elusive bird. Two things stand out as red flags telling me I haven’t mastered this one yet: First, I always assume that whatever I’m going to try next will likely break down at some point, necessitating that I always renew my faith that TM will work sometimes, for some time and then go until it fails like a ’78 Datsun. Second, when I hear the words “time management” I also hear the words of my previous boss: “I wake up every day and ask myself, ‘What am I going to suck at today?’ and then get on with the other stuff instead.”
The general TM plan I’ve used involves plugging everything I want to do into my iCal, sticking to about 60% of it about 60% of the time, and still finding that daily flow determines my actual behaviour far more than that calendar unless it’s something I’ve committed to someone else to do.
Yet I never miss checking facebook updates at least once a day. Hmm.
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Jason Clegg Reply:
January 27th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“Yet I never miss checking facebook updates…” Classic! And oh so true.
Man do we love the time wasters.
But it’s ok. It should be right? Obviously we value sites like Facebook and Twitter for connectivity, otherwise we wouldn’t give them so much power.
As I point out in Part Two of this series, a good solid working TM system (or TL system) will actually allow for these things to happen in a guilt free way.
Thanks for the comment, Asia!
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I really need to start doing this. I’ve found myself doing all sorts of tasks that I don’t need to just to fill the time I have set aside to do them.
In fact sometimes I end up browsing blogs … oops
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My biggest “time” related issue is that I have soooooooooo many projects on the go at any one time they are almost impossible to juggle, and to “manage” them all in any sort of thorough and systematic way, I just end up spending all of my time PLANNING to do things without ever actually DOING things.
My best method for working right now is a combination of two things; the first is to consciously choose every task I take part in. Everything I do, I stop first and ask myself; “what am I doing, and why?” This is because I have a chronic habit of distraction and procrastination; for instance, I might be planning to wash the dishes, so I go through the house collecting the dirties to be washed, just to remember that the toddlers bed desperatly needs a wash that day because they spilled milk in it that morning, so I strip the bed but realize there’s not enough to fill a wash so I have to find something else to fill it, but there are clothes not in the laundry basket so I start sorting out the laundry on the floor, and uncover another box of wool that hasn’t yet been put away since we moved in three months ago…I trust you get the idea. Consciously stopping and thinking about where I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m going is stopping me becoming de-railed so much.
The second task that’s working for me is to work out, on a scale of 1 to 10, the financial cost and payoff of something, it’s time cost and payoff, and it’s “ease” cost and payoff, which covers how much I consider it hard or unpleasant work. Take the cost from the payoff and add 10 points if it’s urgent (i.e. a work project that needs to be in real soon) to see how much a project is “worth” in extremely simple terms. This is something I can do in 10 seconds flat and jot on a bit of paper, and it allows me to analyze at a glance how important something is, and from there, what I should focus on at any given time.
Another tip that I’ve found useful is to strive to do 5 “things” every day; no more, no less. A “thing” is defined as something that has a high payoff in at least one area (money, time, or enjoyment) and takes about an hour to do. A general tidy up of the kitchen including washing the dishes, cleaning the sides, and spot-cleaning whatever stuff needs doing that day is a “thing” for instance. Sorting through my son’s wardrobe and identifying what clothes to keep and which to throw out; another “thing.” Taking an hour at work to finish up some figures, another “thing.” This way you aren’t delegating any more than 5 or 6 hours a day to certain projects, but you are definately getting things done and, ultimately important to me, they are measurable, defined, and given their little slots in your day as you already know they will take about an hour.
Anyway, I think I’m rambling (and I know I’m procrastinating) so I’ll wrap up. Bye!
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