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Do it, diarise it, delegate it or ditch it just don’t try to do everything now

The phrase “there aren’t enough hours in the day” is as old as time itself and, in an increasingly busy world, time management is critical not only to business leaders, but also directly and indirectly to those they employ.

Sometimes, the myriad of things which need doing can not only lead to longer working days and an imbalance in life, but it can also create a brain fog which slows down your thoughts and actions, making you less effective. What is worse is that a leader who fails to correctly manage their time can miss important details. This can be because their focus is in the wrong place, and they can pass these bad habits on to others and set a poor example.

Time management is critical to efficiency and effectiveness throughout any business or organisation.

Take the case of a middle manager in a company I work with. He was regularly finding himself swamped with how much he had to get through in a day. At the end of each day, he would set himself a list of tasks for the following day. Then, 24 hours later, he would do the same again, transferring those jobs he simply didn’t have time for, or which were not completed, along with new tasks, to the day after that. The problem came about because each of these lists would contain every job he had to do and there was no filtering process.

Inevitably, each day started with a lengthy “to do” list, which instantly fogged his brain and inhibited his ability to work effectively. On top of this, delegation was an issue.

The results of this lack of time management and control issues were a substandard service to clients and stress for the person involved, a nasty combination which becomes something of a vicious circle.

Now, it seems obvious that the two things he needed to do more of were planning and delegation.

A solution presented itself in the principles of Covey’s Time Management Matrix, which played a large part in shifting the pattern to make his workload more manageable. The matrix is based around prioritising each task, focusing upon their importance and urgency. The matrix ranges from “do it” jobs to those which can be filed under “ditch it”.

The top priorities – those which are both important and urgent – are the ones which go under the “do it” category, followed by those which are important but not urgent, which can be diarised.

It can be argued, almost perversely, that the way you handle this second category, not the first, is the most important. Because these jobs are not urgent, you can put them into the diary in a way which helps your planning. They are very valuable activities, in that taking them out of your immediate clutter frees up time to focus on the important activities which need to be done more urgently.

Lower priorities are the jobs which are not important, but are urgent. These can be delegated, which helps to deal with that inefficiency. Those which are neither important nor urgent are those which can be “ditched”.

These principles of do it, delegate it, diarise it and ditch it, can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of an individual at any level of an organisation, starting at the top where the “to do” list is generally the longest.

A leader who plans time more efficiently will not only lift a load off their own shoulders, but also create time to be more effective in the way they work with and help those further down the ladder.

As with many improvements to the way you work, self-discipline is at the heart of time management and effective leadership, and there are simple methods of instilling it within your work without adding a time-sapping process.

Sue Alderson is a director of Azure Consulting, a Yorkshire-based specialist in leadership development. www.azure-consulting.co.uk. 01924 385600. www.twitter.com/azureconsult

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sue Alderson .