Leaders Are the Absolute Worst at Time Management

Where Does the Time Go?

If you're in a position of leadership, you probably complain more than anyone else about the shortage of time. You obtained your position of responsibility because you were deemed to be more effective than others, so why are you experiencing more time-related stress?

The answer is simple. If you have responsibility for the work of others, you take ownership for their effectiveness. When you come across something that's happening, but you know a better or more effective way, you see the opportunity for creating value and you jump in. Most likely, you'll offer your ideas and suggestions about how to improve the process. You'll quickly give up your own time to help others. In large part, you are expected to do this. But then something strange happens.

Until we've trained ourselves otherwise, the opportunity to help out in a way that we are familiar with is too difficult to resist. It feels good to show others what we know. But the responsibility of a leader is to teach others how to learn, not to teach them how to do – smart people can do this on their own. It takes a lot of persistence to retrain ourselves, but this is perhaps the biggest time hole that leaders come up against. Our goal should be to help others become more effective. In the process, we win doubly because our staff end up more efficient, and in the process of teaching them, we re-learn and review for ourselves.

Another time consuming issue that leaders confront on a daily basis is that of motivating others. It's not possible to plan when you should motivate others, but you know at the time when you need to do it – and you can rarely avoid or ignore the need. Motivating staff is an essential task that leaders need to be responsible for. It's something we need to do spontaneously.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward

We all need to take review courses from time to time. Leaders are no different.

While the college student needs to learn to differentiate the fun activities from the serious work activities, the executive needs to learn to differentiate the urgent issues from the important issues. If you find that you're sucked into the time hole of urgent issues, you need to learn to starve them, or at least delegate them. Spend your time on the more important strategic issues that prevent the urgent ones from coming back over and over again. This should be your number one priority.

Differentiating important from urgent issues is made much easier if you have drawn up your own goals. Your goals should be written down and looked at regularly during the course of the year. There are many strategies and systems for putting together your goals, and while "goal setting" sounds a bit silly, or maybe even childish, it's a very useful personal management tool. Draw up your goals for the year, and then draw up sub-goals for each month. Finally, figure a way to create goals for each week, and if necessary a way to come up with goals for each day.

Actually setting goals of what you want to accomplish during any period, and forcing yourself to prioritize the important issues that are thrown your way each day two of the most effective ways of managing your time.

Do Things That Need To Be Done

Most of us have a considerable amount of freedom in choosing what projects to work on each day. We have the choice in doing the things that we want to do, or enjoy doing, or those things that we know need to get done. I'm sure that in the back of your mind you have a list of what's important and needs to be done.

Effective people know that some things just need to be done.

We probably spend more time mulling over how we're going to do something than we would if we just jumped in and started doing it. The old adage "getting started is half the work" really is true! There have been so many projects that I've found were far smaller and quicker to do than I thought they'd be, but I put them off for what seemed like ages because I expected them to be huge time consuming projects when they weren't

To Do Lists

Failing to plan is planning to fail. We all have heard this many times, but I continue to meet high level executives who don't write up a daily or weekly "to do" list. No wonder people can't get things done! Devise a system of recording every little task or project you think about during the day. Then modify your system so that you have a way of dealing with it. Is it low priority? Is it important? Can it be delegated? Can it be ignored? Has it been completed already? Do you need to consult with someone before making progress?

Everyone should have their own system of tracking these tasks that keep piling up all day long, every day. Your system should include a regular look at your list of goals. Are sub-tasks that lead up to your goals included in your daily to do lists? They better be! Don't just do the things that pop-up on a daily basis! This is bad time management. You should be moving to the point where your long term goals are more important in guiding your daily activities than all the little pop-ups that get thrown at you.

As you create your system, make sure you have a technique for reinforcement. I have one client who writes little boxes next to his to do list items so that he can check them off as he completes them. I just cross my to do items off with a big black line. But if I have a project that I've started, and need to come back to later on, I put a big black dot just to the left of it. When it's finished, I cross it off the list.

I also make sure that if I haven't dealt with something for a while, I need to think again whether it's really all that important or not. Some items get carried over from one list to the next, but sometimes I just let the idea die.

I begin each week with a single sheet of A4 paper with two columns and in addition to the regular "process" activities which I don't put on my list, I can claim that I get well over 100 tasks done each week, most of which get me a little closer to achieving my long term goals.

How about you?