8. Time Management

» Posted on Jul 3, 2009 in Performance Management | 0 comments

Productivity Principle 8…

Let’s start with an obvious principle of productivity…

…yet something shrouded in misleading information traceable back to the 1930s.

“Time Management”

(if you’ve seen my cover this before, skip to principle 7).

In the 1930s Charles Schwabb made $100m using a technique given by Ivy Lee (pictured) which I have summarised as follows:

Have your Executives  prioritize their tasks and do them in that order.

However…

Prioritizing by urgency or importance in today’s fast paced lifestyle only serves to keep you fighting to stay afloat.

Our professional lives are far busier than they were for 1930s Executives.

And the dirty little secret of almost all time management techniques is that they are STILL based on that one basic idea from the 30s.

This dinosaur of the time management industry results in other such common yet equally disastrous time management techniques:

• Scheduling your tasks to time or
• Using anything like a weekly to-do list

We need something different…

Extend that obsolete 1930s idea of time management by adding 2 more factors: dependence and availability

The New Professional manages time by judging things by:

• Importance – What will have the greatest contribution?
• Dependence – What is necessary to achieve it?
• Availability – What’s possible in my various contexts (at home, commuting, mobile, etc)

Time Management Resources (links open in new windows)

• Use InstaTime for Natural Time Management
• Post: Prioritize by Size in 4 steps
• Post: Schedule by Convenience

Continue to Productivity Principle 7: Getting Organized

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Tags: creative process, ivy lee, time management