Get It Done

Have you paid attention to all the media attention about the shortage of time? This theme reverberates throughout our society on TV, radio, and all the other arms of the worldwide news system. Dr. Phil, Oprah, and every other celebrity who has a show has addressed the problem on numerous occasions. Why is this lack of time so important?

Well, how much of it do you have?

Do the math. Here’s how much time everyone has:

525,600 minutes per year
8,760 hours per year

At birth, assuming you live 80 years, you have 42,048,000 minutes, which is just 700,800 hours.

Most people reading this are at least 20 years old, meaning they have only 525,600 hours (or less) left!

This is all the time anyone will ever have. Even if they manage to live a bit longer, they are adding fewer than 9,000 hours for every extra year. Time is very limited, so that makes it a scarce commodity and therefore extremely valuable. I’m struck with how little time we really have.

Then we must consider how this time is used by a typical person in today’s hectic conditions. Our discussion here is centered on a single person who may or may not be a parent, who has a home to maintain, and who is dedicated to keeping a career going.

Consider this for a typical 24 hour day, five days each week:

• Personal care—1 hour
  
• Commuting to and from work—2 hours
  
• Meals—2 hours
  
• Normal work—8 hours
  
• Extra work—1 hour
  
• Education or training—3 hours
  
• Home maintenance—3 hours
  
• Social communication (spouse, significant other, friends, family)—2 hours
  
• Sleep (studies say 8 hours are required)—8 hours
  
  Total—30 hours

WAIT A MINUTE! 

There are only 24 hours in a day! There’s not ever enough time. Our weekend schedules are even more demanding as we try to cram everything we couldn’t do while working into two too-short days. And what do we do with vacations? Our laptops and Blackberries go with us everywhere, making any “time off” a working vacation in reality. Cynthia Shapiro, in Corporate Confidential, goes so far as to say companies expect employees to stay in touch when they are away, even if for illness or family leave. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone wants to work under this pressure unless they have to. I’d be looking for ways to add enough income so I could quit! But that’s another subject. 

Many people think they are happy climbing the success ladder, and so they use their time unwisely as we have seen. Family life is neglected, often leading to a break-up. At the very least, all the wonderful things children do are forgotten. Nannies and play schools are left to rear our offspring. Could this be contributiing to the high teen suicide rate? In all cases the time struggle leads to frustration and very high stress. Often these contribute to serious health problems. So what is the answer?

An entire industry has grown up around “time management” and all the “expert” gurus who know about the best way for people to extract more time from their allotted 24 hours. Many of these ideas can certainly help, but many times they require much time to construct—time you already don’t have.

If you want to commit the time and effort to rearrange your time according to knowledgeable people, may I suggest these few books arranged in order of popularity at Amazon at the time when this article was written:

1. Allen, David. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Paperback). Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (December 31, 2002). This book is currently very popular at #49 on the Amazon sales list. It was published in 2002, so this continuing interest may speak to the usefulness of its content. The author advocates taking every scrap of paper from your work area that you feel can’t be discarded, as well as every undone project rolling around in your mind, and throw them all together into one large in-box. While going through this hodge-podge, you can prioritize important items and completely get rid of others. Sounds good to me.
   
   
2. MacKenzie, R. Alec. The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management (Paperback). American Management Association; 3rd edition (July 1997) .This book has been the recognized authority on time issues since it was written. It still ranks #6,175 in sales at Amazon.
   
   
3. Griessman, B. Eugene. Time Tactics of Very Successful People (Paperback). McGraw-Hill 1st. edition (June 1, 1994). This book is unique because it shows the actual time management tactics used by such high achievers as Malcolm Forbes, Jr., Ted Turner, and Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus. This information is presented in small “bites” for easy digestion by all the people with no time in today’s world. Entrepreneurs will benefit from these ideas. Sales at Amazon rank it #8,135.
   
   
4. Morgenstern, Julie. Time Management from the Inside Out, second edition: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule—and Your Life (Paperback). Owl Books; 2nd edition (September 1, 2004). This book ranks #8,237 and is shown here because it was purchased by some buyers of the more popular books above.

Because many readers are already frustrated, stressed, and short of reading time, going through the learning curves necessary to apply the principles in these books may not be the answer. There is a quicker way to gain some control of your time. You will use some common time management ideas, but you don’t have to do the extensive list-making required by most experts. Just making and analyzing a list requires considerable time; if you do it daily you’re just adding to your already impossible situation. So here are a few things you can use to quickly help you.

At the end of each day think about what you simply MUST accomplish the next day and make a short list. You can do this by remembering the Pareto Principle which says, in our case, 80% of a person’s time is consumed by just 20% of the things that need to be done. What this means is the three or four main problems going around in your mind that you simply MUST do are going to consume most of your next day. So concentrate on those few things and make a very short list. If you finish all of them tomorrow make another short list of the next few things that are of the most concern to you. If you list everything you can think of you will include many things that you will never do. By making a very short list, you will just discard things that were of low value and you can stop worrying about them.

Even though your list is short, you must determine a priority for each item and begin to work on the most valuable one first. Two things will become evident now. First is that each job may have several parts that must be completed one before the next, so you must identify the parts and begin to work them one at a time, always finishing one before going to the next. I have always told people working for me, when they complained of having too many things to do, “Finish what you are working on and then go on to the next thing.” You must stay focused and finish one thing at a time rather than trying to go in all directions, working on many projects and getting nothing done.

The second thing is that often more than one task must be accomplished at about the same time as others. In this case, the way to accomplish all this is to complete the part of one project you are working on and then go to the next most valuable thing and work on a part of it. When that part is finished go on to the next and so on until you arrive back at another part of your first task. Continue this process until you complete all the things that must be accomplished at approximately the same time. If you have time left, go to another short list. 

A similar procedure may be applied to employees if you have any. Organize office tasks so each part may be accomplished before moving on to the next required part of the task. This technique is particularly useful at time when unusual activities may be required almost simultaneously like the Holiday season, year-end, end of quarter, Easter, and other busy times.

You don’t need to become deeply involved in time management theory to better organize your life and perhaps free a bit of time for things other than work. There’s no way to force one to take non-working vacation time, but it’s important for everyone to have a few consecutive days of complete downtime several times each year. 

Take care of your health. If you lose that, you’ll be able to make no money and your career will suffer.