Manage Time Better
Everyone has the same number of hours to spend during the day, and we make active choices about what to do with that time.
In our experience, the better you are at managing the time you have, the more you feel you accomplish towards your goals.
Here are our top 5 ways to manage your time better.
1. Do less
Yes: the top way to get more done is to do less of it. We are not normally advocates of cutting corners, but it is worth taking the time to review your To Do list and checking what can be done faster or by someone else.
Delegate what you can. Pass off as much ‘busy work’ to appropriate colleagues so you can focus on the tasks that will add most value to the organization. If you need to hire someone to help you with that, put together a case for getting someone else trained up as a Primavera system support administrator for the PMO, for example.
Review what you are responsible for and compare that to what you are actually doing. We meet many project managers who have taken on work that is not really within their job requirements – but someone had to do it. That’s fine for a short period while the project resourcing issue was resolved, but it’s not sustainable long term. If you are taking on someone’s responsibilities, it stands to reason that you will have less time to complete your own work.
Finally, look at what you can deliver faster by accepting a lower level of quality. This might not be appropriate for project deliverables, but perhaps you could speed up creating a report by using a template. Ask yourself: “Will it do?” And if it will, that’s good enough. There’s no need to spend extra time on internal or administrative tasks if what you’ve done meets the basic needs.
2. Prioritize your activities
Having trimmed down your To Do list and delegated some work to others, take a look at what is left.
Use the MoSCoW prioritization technique to plan where you should be spending your time. MoSCoW stands for:
- Must have
- Should have
- Could have
- Won’t have (at this time)
It’s an approach more commonly used for prioritizing project requirements, but you can use the same technique for your own work.
What must you do? These are tasks that are required activities, that you have promised management or that are essential for the success of your projects. Should have tasks are things you can just about get away without, as long as there is an adequate workaround. Could have tasks are the things you’ll do if you have enough time. Finally, the Won’t have tasks are things you choose not to do at all at this time, although you might revisit them later.
3. Set deadlines
With your list of prioritized activities, you can start to plan your time. Some of your work may have enforced deadlines, such as monthly reporting cycles or budget planning meetings. However, much of what you are responsible for may not have a fixed deadline. That’s about to change!
Give every task a fixed deadline and a fixed duration of effort you are prepared to spend on it. This has been the biggest change we’ve seen for some of the project managers we work with: when you create an arbitrary deadline, you deliver to it, even if you know you made the date up simply to have a deadline!
For example, if you have to create a presentation on PMO performance over the last quarter, give yourself a morning to gather the data and an afternoon to write the presentation. If it’s not done by then, you submit what you’ve got.
You’ll be surprised at how much you can get done (and how little time it takes to select appropriate graphics instead of agonising over which chart type to use) when you have a hard, albeit self-imposed, deadline.
4. Work in focused blocks
If you haven’t tried the Pomodoro technique, it’s worth a go, especially if you find yourself distracted by phone calls, incoming emails and people popping by your desk (or into your virtual office via chat).
Pomodoro is simple: set a timer for a fixed time period and work on one thing during that time. It’s a time-boxed activity where you focus on making progress on one thing. Then take a break. We like 25 minutes with a 5 minute break, so you have two work periods and two short breaks in an hour. Experiment with different time periods and see what feels right for you.
5. Take breaks
You are not more productive if you work longer hours. Author and productivity expert Chris Bailey tested this theory in his experiment of working 90 hour weeks alternating with 20 hour weeks. He found he got about the same amount of work done in each.
Schedule time away from your desk – time away from all devices and work. That gives you time to mentally recharge and also allows you to reflect on what are you doing and how you are doing it. Bailey realized that he was working on low value tasks during his 90 hour weeks, but that wasn’t clear to him until he stepped back from work the following week. When you’re full steam ahead, you can’t always see the impact of what you are doing. With a little more time, you might make different (read: better) decisions.
There’s a school of thought that says you can’t manage time; you can only use what you have as effectively as possible. The tips above are things that help us get the most out of the day so we can get on with projects and also get home on time. We hope they help you do the same!