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Stay In Charge of your Time
By Arthur Cooper
(c) Copyright 2004
Are you in charge of your own time?
Think about what you did last
week at work. Were you in control of your time? Or did it seem that your
time was being controlled by those around you? Are you pleased with what you
achieved, or do you think you could have done more if only you hadn't been
constantly distracted from your main task?
Did you decide what you
did and when?
If not, then it is time to get a grip on your timetable.
Start by noting down all those things that you have to do each and
every week. Things such as read and answer your mail, attend regular
staff meetings, produce a progress or status report. These may be big
things or they may be little things, it really doesn't matter. The
important point is that they are regular and repetitive and therefore must
be done each and every week.
Chose a time in your weekly calendar to do
each one of these jobs and keep these time slots reserved. Reserve them this
week, next week, every week. Let you colleagues and your staff know that
these times are sacrosanct and resist all attempts to get you to weaken in
this resolve.
Clearly you have to be sensible about the times you
pick in the first place. It is no good picking a time in the middle of the
morning when meetings have traditionally always been arranged, or that you
know is the only time when certain people are present. And it is unrealistic
never ever to be flexible over the times you have selected. But once the
word is out that during certain times you are not available you will find
that others do not try to fix meetings at those hours any more, or phone you
up during these periods. They will try to fit in with your availability
before contacting you. It costs them nothing, and they know that you will be
more amenable.
Once you have all your regular weekly tasks allocated to
particular times you can do the same with your repetitive monthly tasks. Get
those down as well. They have to be done, so they need to be down in
your diary.
Make sure you set aside a regular time each week for
the unexpected but essential. In other words build in some scheduled slack
time, some recovery time. It may be that one week dealing with your mail
takes longer than usual. It must be done, but you overrun your allocated
time slot. That's OK. Use your scheduled slack time. Another week it may be
that your progress report takes longer than usual. Never mind. You have your
scheduled slack time to make use of.
If you don't set aside this extra
time you are almost certain to
be scrabbling around for time in amongst all
the other jobs that have come in on an irregular basis. But of course if you
find that one of your scheduled tasks, dealing with your mail for example,
regularly overflows into this extra time slot then you must allocate more
time to that task in the first place. The recovery time slot should never
be constantly filled by the same overflowing task each week.
Once
these regular tasks are scheduled in you are free to accept all the other
demands on your time – the discussions, the meetings, the seminars, the
requests for special reports, the demands of your staff, whatever it is –
without worrying whether the routine but essential tasks will get done or
not. You will no longer have that worry in the background. Your available
time will be under your control again.
Don't underestimate the
stress-reducing effect of being master of your own
time.
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Arthur Cooper is a writer and publisher.
To
receive his articles by email send a blank message
to: acarticles@arthurcooper.com
To read them online go to:
http://www.arthurcooper.com/
For
articles ebooks and courses go to:
http://www.barrel-publishing.com/
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