Last week, I talked about the principles of time management covered in an excellent book: “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey. I went over the four quadrants in which we can place any and all of our activities and how leadership is focused on Quadrant 2 activities (those that are important but not urgent). The book also talks about how we should identify the different roles we have in our lives (e.g. entrepreneur, father, husband/partner, etc.) in order to establish our priorities. We can then identify a few key quadrant 2 activities for each role that we hope to accomplish over the course of following week.
This week, I will summarize the point of view of another great author on the subject of personal productivity. In his book, “The 4-hour Workweek”, Tim Ferris uses an interesting title for his chapter on time management: “The end of time management” (how can anyone resist after reading such a title?). He makes an interesting distinction between ‘being effective’ and ‘being efficient’. Most people are too focused on doing more with less (i.e. being efficient). However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into effectiveness, which Tim defines as “doing things that gets you closer to your goals”. He encourages to keep in mind two things:
1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
We should focus our time and effort on important, ‘mission critical’ activities, something he illustrates using ‘Pareto’s Law’. Vilfredo Pareto was a famous economist / sociologist who made the bold statement that 80% of wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population (this holds true even today, and the ratio is often bigger). Tim believes that this statement can also be applied outside of economics. For example, 80% of consequences flow from 20% of causes; 80% of results from 20% of effort and time; 80% of company profits come from 20% of products and customers; 80% of problems come from 20% of your customers. When coming up with a ‘to do’ list every day, we should focus on the 20% of activities that will really help us move forward.
The author also brings to light “Parkinson’s Law”, another important principle of time management. The law states that “a task will swell in importance (perceived) and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion”. For example, if I gave you 1 week to complete a report, you will find ways to do it in a week. You will probably procrastinate for a few days and then put something together in the last few days. Interestingly, the same will happen if I gave you 24 hours to write the same report. The time pressure will force you to execute and focus on the essentials). The lesson here is simple: shorten your work time in order to be more productive.
To conclude, I would encourage you to use a combination of Covey and Ferriss’ approaches:
1. Create a personal vision or mission statement and identify the different roles you have in life (Covey).
2. Identify a few ‘mission critical’ or ‘Quadrant 2′ activities for each role that you would like to accomplish this week (Covey + Ferris).
3. Plan out your week and schedule these critical activities (Covey). When you schedule the time for these activities, limit the time on each activity in order to be more productive (Ferris).
That’s it for time management. Plan well and move forward!
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