Time Management by the Hour Chapter 5 - Speeding Things Up

You should set your own goals for what you want to achieve from time management. For me the goal is to get enough done in the minimum amount of time so I can do things I want to do like write and travel. In an ideal world I'd complete everything before breakfast. So for me getting more done while I'm working is something I take seriously. Here are some of the things I have tried that have worked.

The most obvious is simply to pick up the pace. We all have a natural rhythm that determines how quickly we tend to get on and do things. Mine is pretty slow. In fact it was so slow, it nearly got me sacked from the first job I had. It was in a big laboratory where the managers had long worked out how quickly the routine tasks could be completed. My timings were so off the scale a manager came to watch me to see how it was possible to achieve so little. I was told that if I didn't speed up I would be chucked out.

I speeded up.

It turned out that getting my productivity up was just a matter of paying attention to it. Once I knew the target and that it was achievable it was not too hard to find the ways to drag my performance up from unacceptable to average. Looking back I wonder why I didn't try to go further and actually aim to match the best performers. But I was only 18 at the time. But I did learn that it is possible to ramp up the speed. Once I was used to it I was barely aware of the difference apart from no longer being threatened with the sack.

One thing to be aware of is that most of the time we are not aware of the passage of time and B-) consequently we rarely judge correctly how long it takes to do things. I remember on once making what I thought would be a ten minute phone call to sort out a problem. When I finished I put the phone down imagining it had taken fifteen minutes. In fact it had taken nearly thirty. My prediction was out by 300%. My perception was out by 150%. It is a good idea to keep your eye on the clock when you are working so you don't live with a false idea of how long things really take.

Some tasks are simply impossible to do any quicker. But looking for ways to speed things up is usually worthwhile. One surprisingly effective way to speed complicated things is to chunk them down into individual steps and then write them up into a checklist. I have one for getting started in the morning for example. Step one is changing my date stamp. I can never remember what the date is, so this is both efficient in terms of time and also saves me having to think about it. Next stage is filing my previous day's plan etc.

Keeping standard templates is another great time saver. Having your address set up as a template on your wordprocessor is an obvious example. If you are doing an address label for someone you are going to write to more than once then do a whole sheet.

Another thing that it is very easy to underestimate the power is batching tasks together. By doing similar things at same time you get into the groove of that particular task and can clear the jobs more quickly. This works exceptionally well for me. My work involves both writing and working at a laboratory bench. As far as possible I try and do all writing on 1 day and all my lab work on another. This in fact has a hidden benefit. By planning out my lab work in advance I find that I work out more efficient ways of doing it.

I noticed the way that doing written plans helps first when I made a curious observation when I was managing a laboratory. The most efficient lab technician had a habit of writing out all the formulations she was given to make up. This was despite the fact that I gone to some trouble to print them out in a form that enabled them to be used as they were. Everybody else in the lab took full advantage of this and simply posted them into their lab books.

I was a little miffed at first that my productivity initiative was being ignored. But I couldn't argue with the facts; she was getting more done. After thinking and observing for some time I concluded that because she wrote everything out in advance she was able to plan her work better and so wasted less time. She was quite unconscious of this effect. She just liked working that way.

The message I took from this is we often aren't aware of what we are doing in detail. A lot goes on in our heads without us knowing anything about it. So although it might seem like generating to do lists quickly and efficiently on a computer or a tablet is the quickest way to get it done, this isn't necessarily the case. It might work for a shopping list but it is probably better to stick to pencil and paper for anything else.

But that doesn't mean that technology should be shunned. Far from it. There are new and better ways of working coming out all the time. I have been delighted to discover that the microphone on my new smart phone is of a high enough quality and the software has advanced enough that it is now possible to get a pretty decent draft of a piece of writing done while walking down the street. It won't replace typing for me for access while, but I can already imagine a keyboard free working session. If you spend a lot of time working on computers it is well worth memorising key strokes to avoid taking your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse. Make sure all the websites you use regularly are bookmarked.

The less obvious things to do are to avoid having too many applications running at the same time. Not only will slow down the machine it also has the same effect on your brain as you have created a more complicated terrain to cope with on your screen.  Another area where it is easy to waste time is filing stuff on your hard disk. Scrolling through long lists of files is not just the wasting but frustrating, so make sure you have some kind of system. But don't go too far the other way. If you need an exercise in taxonomy to decide where to put a newly created file you have gone too far.

I find cloud storage to be very effective for me. It means I can find stuff regardless of which device I happen to be working on. It also means I have a backup of most of my important files.

Finding things you need is sometimes difficult on your computer. But you always have the search function if you really get into trouble. I don't know if you've ever wished you had a similar thing for your office. Real things take a lot more work to organise than computer files. Not being able to find a vital bit of equipment or a crucial document can knock your productivity for six. A good idea is to use a day file for correspondance. This requires no thought to keep up. You just put the paper in it in date order. This automatically creates an order. You can often remember where something you filed is just by remembering when it was. Documents inevitably become less important as they get older, so when you need to clear some space you can go hi to the place where the stuff you need least is.

I am a terrible squirrel and my natural tendency is to hoard stuff including papers. I find that scanning in stuff enables me to throw away the original document with less psychological trauma. It is better to have the mental toughness to dispose of irrelevant documents immediately, but at least my way they don't clutter up my work space.

Clutter is the enemy of productivity in general. It is obvious that it stops you finding what you need quickly. It is less obvious that it provides ample opportunities for distraction. But the worst effect is probably the unconscious one of simply making you want to get away from the mess to somewhere more pleasant. The best time to tidy up and streamline where you work is later in the day when you are tired. It ought to be a long term project to create the most pleasant and efficient working environment that you can.

Incidentally one thing that is often asserted to help with productivity is listening to music. I have to say it doesn't generally work for me. It just distracts me most of the time. But I don't ban it. Sometimes you are doing something so banal that it can't hold you back and it might well help keep you at it longer.

Any ideas for getting more done in less time are worth investigating and adopting. The pay off is being able to reduce the number of hours a day you have to devote to meeting your goals.