Office Time Management - Distractions Abound!
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Office time management - how to get nothing of value done at work
Why is it that engineers spend just 15 hours per week "engineering" and senior executives spend just 3 hours per month on strategic matters? Engineers are paid to engineer and senior execs are paid to provide strategic direction. The answer lies in the subject of office time management.
A few years ago, a study was conducted on practicing engineers to see what they did with their time. Amongst other things, the study showed that the engineers only spent 15 hours per week "engineering" (doing engineer work).
In 2004, a study was conducted on senior executives (CEOs, COOs, CFOs) of Fortune 500 companies to see where they spent their time. It showed that the average time spent by a senior executive on strategic matters was 3 hours per month.
Do you find the results of these two studies surprising?
If you do, then you probably do not work in an office. Anyone who works in an office today knows that distractions abound in the office. To get work done today, people look to get away from their office.
If you do not believe me, go to a Starbucks in a business district close to you and notice how many people are conducting business there. Go to any hotel in a business district and notice how many business people are working there by themselves or maybe with another work colleague.
What follows commonly passes for work and office time management today.
Too many people define work as spending a certain number of hours on the job
doing "things". Those things may be reading all newly arrived email messages
as soon as they arrive, replying to them as soon as possible, and taking
action on any emails that request your action as soon as possible. This
is interspersed with attending those meetings in their calendar and receiving
and making telephone calls. This is what they do every day. At the end of
the day they often feel tired. At the end of the week they often feel exhausted.
Dare they ask themselves the value of what they produced at the end of the day or week?
A few years ago, a study was conducted on practicing engineers to see what they did with their time. Amongst other things, the study showed that the engineers only spent 15 hours per week "engineering" (doing engineer work).
In 2004, a study was conducted on senior executives (CEOs, COOs, CFOs) of Fortune 500 companies to see where they spent their time. It showed that the average time spent by a senior executive on strategic matters was 3 hours per month.
Do you find the results of these two studies surprising?
If you do, then you probably do not work in an office. Anyone who works in an office today knows that distractions abound in the office. To get work done today, people look to get away from their office.
If you do not believe me, go to a Starbucks in a business district close to you and notice how many people are conducting business there. Go to any hotel in a business district and notice how many business people are working there by themselves or maybe with another work colleague.
What follows commonly passes for work and office time management today.
Too many people define work as spending a certain number of hours on the job
doing "things". Those things may be reading all newly arrived email messages
as soon as they arrive, replying to them as soon as possible, and taking
action on any emails that request your action as soon as possible. This
is interspersed with attending those meetings in their calendar and receiving
and making telephone calls. This is what they do every day. At the end of
the day they often feel tired. At the end of the week they often feel exhausted.
Dare they ask themselves the value of what they produced at the end of the day or week?
Your value to your employer
- Why did your employer hire you?
- What are you paid to do for your employer?
Why listen to me
I have been a time management coach and trainer for the past 20 years. I have trained more than 2000 managers on time management.
I begin every time management program by asking each delegate what they most want help with. They verbalize their answer to the others in the group. 98% say dealing with their email.
I then have each delegate write a summary of their job description. What are you hired to do? What are you paid to do? I have each delegate verbalize their answer to the rest of the group.
It has never happened that a delegate says
"I am paid to read every email as soon as it arrives and reply immediately to every email"
I point out to all the delegates that noone has said that the purpose of their job is to read every email as soon as it arrives and to respond immediately. Yet this is what so many people do at work.
I begin every time management program by asking each delegate what they most want help with. They verbalize their answer to the others in the group. 98% say dealing with their email.
I then have each delegate write a summary of their job description. What are you hired to do? What are you paid to do? I have each delegate verbalize their answer to the rest of the group.
It has never happened that a delegate says
"I am paid to read every email as soon as it arrives and reply immediately to every email"
I point out to all the delegates that noone has said that the purpose of their job is to read every email as soon as it arrives and to respond immediately. Yet this is what so many people do at work.
Office time management - doing "things" vs doing valuable work
What is the difference between spending a certain number of hours on the job
doing "things" and doing valuable work?
When work is spending a certain number of hours on the job doing things, you
may be receiving somewhere between 30-70 emails a day. You may even be receiving 100-200 per day.
- Perhaps half of them are not addressed to you. You are cc'ed
- You are struggling to read all of them and reply to them
- Perhaps only 10-15 of those emails are relevant to your job or
your objectives or what you are paid to accomplish. The remainder may be a
complete waste of your time - You are either working many more hours than you care to work or you are
not executing your objectives/priorities on time or to the required standard. Either
way, you are probably experiencing stress
When you are doing valuable work, you are spending the maximum amount of
your time executing your objectives/priorities.
- You view email as a tool to help you with this
- Your work is not continuously driven by the next email to arrive in
your inbox - You know which emails relate to your job and your objectives
- You do not waste needless time on all those emails (many of them ccs) that are not relevant to your job and objectives
Office time management - the first thief of your time.
You are paid by your employer (or in the case of self employed people by your
clients or customers) to deliver certain key tasks and projects to a certain standard
by an agreed date. Therefore, the maximum amount of your time should be
spent on this work.
The first thief of your time is the way you think about and deal with email. It has to do with the importance that you place on email.
Email is just a tool to help you do your valuable work. Email is NOT your valuable work.
Why then do so many people hover over their in box at work pouncing on the next
email to arrive?
YOU SHOULD VIEW YOUR IN BOX AS YOU VIEW YOUR MAIL BOX AT HOME.
At home you do not hover by your mail box when you know it is time for mail to
be delivered. You get on with your life and what is important in your life. It should be the same at work. You get on with what is important. You should go to your in box a few times per day.
Here is another killer of office time management in connection with email. Many of us have a "ping" feature on our computers to signal to us when a new email has arrived. Disengage that feature. Turn it off.
Too many people at work interrupt themselves to read the newly arrived email, when they hear the ping, even if what they are working on is high priority and due imminently. Their work is driven by the pinging sound of their computer, as opposed to true priorities.
clients or customers) to deliver certain key tasks and projects to a certain standard
by an agreed date. Therefore, the maximum amount of your time should be
spent on this work.
The first thief of your time is the way you think about and deal with email. It has to do with the importance that you place on email.
Email is just a tool to help you do your valuable work. Email is NOT your valuable work.
Why then do so many people hover over their in box at work pouncing on the next
email to arrive?
YOU SHOULD VIEW YOUR IN BOX AS YOU VIEW YOUR MAIL BOX AT HOME.
At home you do not hover by your mail box when you know it is time for mail to
be delivered. You get on with your life and what is important in your life. It should be the same at work. You get on with what is important. You should go to your in box a few times per day.
Here is another killer of office time management in connection with email. Many of us have a "ping" feature on our computers to signal to us when a new email has arrived. Disengage that feature. Turn it off.
Too many people at work interrupt themselves to read the newly arrived email, when they hear the ping, even if what they are working on is high priority and due imminently. Their work is driven by the pinging sound of their computer, as opposed to true priorities.
Office time management - the second thief of your time
Too much communication at work will destroy your ability to manage your time. Communication will come at you in the form of email, phone, and voicemail and text messages.
The way in which you deal with your email (and voice mail and text messages) may be the first thief of your time. The way in which you deal with meetings comes a close second. For some people, it may be the primary thief of time .
There are two points to understand about office time management in connection with meetings, if you want to gain control of time at work and make yourself and others productive (doing value added work).
Point one - there are too many meetings in offices everywhere today. Not only are these meetings unproductive, they are counter-productive in the sense that they deprive people of time to do the work that really adds value. As a result, the valuable work either
- does not get done at all, or
- or is rushed and results in poorer quality of work, or
- requires long working hours to get the work done. If this is the norm, this will ultimately affect the quality of output as it damages work life balance
If you find yourself in a meeting in which you are bored, or you are agitated because you have a time sensitive piece of important work to do, and you cant wait for the meeting to end, you should not be at that meeting. It is counter-productive to you and your organization. You need to find a way to excuse yourself from such meetings.
Here are some reasons why you may find yourself in such meetings
- the person running the meeting does not know how to run a meeting
- the person calling the meeting is procrastinating. They need to make a decision and rather than just deciding, they call a bunch of people together to discuss the matter
- the meeting may well be relevant for some of the attendees, but it is not relevant for you
- the meeting is being held because someone thinks there should be such a meeting or "we have always had this meeting" - ie- team meetings or 1:1 catchup meetings. The person calling the meeting and those attending fail to question and evaluate the value of the meeting.
Point two - meetings, in themselves, do not directly produce anything of value. There are two types of meetings
- information exchange meetings
- meetings in which action points are agreed
Neither meeting, in itself, produces anything of value directly. Value from a meeting in which action points are agreed, comes only after action points have been actioned.
Therefore people who manage their calendars in such a way that they are attending "wall to wall" meetings throughout their day are producing nothing of value. To be productive, they must allow time in their calendars to execute the action points from the meetings.
Your effectiveness at work
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Sources of Information that will help you to be more effective managing your time
- Take Back Control Of Your Time And Life
- An e-manuel that provides 139 ways to deal with the tyrannies of office life - excessive email, paper, meetings and phone calls.
- The Time Commandments
- An audio tape programme that provides a system by which to manage time that has been used by successful people from all walks of life.
- Manage Your Time Now
- An e-book with action lists on how to tackle specific areas of time management difficulties. Specific attention paid to combating procrastination.
- Stop Procrastinating Today
- A CD program based on the work of a renowned success and productivity coach who works with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies including Disney, AT& T, Xerox, and IBM.
- How To Get More Done In A Day Than Most People Accomplish In A Week
- How to increase your personal productivity, written by a mother of 6 who is a successful internet entrepreneur.
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ChrisDiamond
Sep 18, 2011 @ 2:54 am | delete
- I think we need more people on this lens! You have some good info here. Just liked it +1!
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by Master-Of-Time-Management
Hi
I have been a management consultant, executive coach, and management trainer for the past 24 years. My area of expertise is time management....
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