Ten questions about managing time

Ten questions about managing time

1) Which of your activities give you, and/or your organisation, the greatest return

These deserve the most investment of your time and energy.

2) Which of your activities give you, and/or your organisation, the least return?

These probably don’t deserve your time. Test what happens if you don’t do them.

3) What feedback do you get about the value of the work you do?

If you know what value your “customers” get, you will able to tune your work to meet their needs and be more motivated too.

4) What feedback do you give about the value of the work you get?

If you tell your “suppliers” about what you value about their work, they will tend to give you more of what you want and be more motivated to do so.

5) How do you create work for each other?

A lot of the work you do will be generated internally. Some may be unnecessary.

6) How can you make less work for other people?

If you talk about it, you will be able to make less for others and have less to do yourself.

7) Who is the best person in your organisation at managing his or her time? What can you learn from that person?

There will be someone who is highly skilled at managing his or her time in your organisation. This expertise will be relevant and transferable.

8) Do all the systems you use at work provide more value than they consume? How can you simplify or eliminate systems that are unproductive?

If you talk together about the systems you use, you may be able to eliminate huge amounts of effort and time.

9) How clear are your personal priorities? How well do they support the organisation’s priorities?

You will have a way of setting priorities. It’s useful to be consciously aware of it and share your priorities with your colleagues. How well do they fit together?

10) When you give or get a task to do, how clear are you about the standard required?

It wastes time to have to redo work that you don’t do well enough. It also wastes time and effort to do work too well. Make sure the standard required is clear.

If you would like help using this idea, or have any comments or questions please contact me. Thanks, Nick