Let’s agree that the 25 hour-day is never going to happen. Getting more done in your day is all about time management; that is to say mainly differentiating what’s urgent from what’s important and focusing on what will take you closer to achieving your goals, personal and professional – the important tasks. I previously wrote about this; now I want to focus on what you can do with the extra time you get by managing your time better, but also how to get even more time to do the important things.
Part of your time management strategy at work, should be to set aside a one-half hour every day. Book 30 minutes with yourself; add this slot into your diary, plan your day around this, put your phone on mute or better still on ‘do not disturb’ mode, make sure your colleagues and your boss are aware that you have an appointment at that time, so that they don’t interrupt you, unless there is a crisis of course - the building is on fire sort of event – put a sign on your office door if necessary.
No, this is not skiving off work, you won’t use that half hour to nap or play solitaire on your laptop. You will use this time wisely and you will achieve much more by not being interrupted by a colleague, answering emails or phone calls.
Half an hour doesn’t seem like much, but that’s about 100 hours or 2.5 weeks over the year. Think about all the things you can achieve or learn. Use this golden half-hour every week to get ahead of the game.
One of the issues we encounter at work is having to deal with little hassles and crisis. And very often these crises are caused by things we did not have time to get done; in other words, we react to problems that spring out, when we could be prepared. This is where that half-hour comes into play.
Remember this half-hour isn’t a break you are taking but a time to do the things you never, or rarely have time to do. You could do the following:
- Think – it is quiet, you are not disturbed so it is the best time to think about concerns you may have, issues to solve before they become a crisis, or be creative and innovate.
- Use the 5 WHYs – on reported problems and get to the root cause of the issue, so that you can put processes into place and avoid repeats.
- Improve processes & systems – pick a current process and map it out, identify areas of improvement, map out the potential process, then test & revise the new process. Later on, you can implement the new process then review it.
- Plan a team meeting – it’s your opportunity to spend time on what important things you want to talk about with them, the questions you will ask them, and think about each team member and what you could do to support and help them reach their full potential.
- Put a new system in place – when you have a repeating problem, simply fixing it won’t do much good; the issue will eventually reoccur. Create a better system which will prevent the issue arising again.
- Learn something – improve the skills you know are your weakest, read a book about leadership development for instance or do a virtual course on a subject you know little about but are interested in. Self-development is essential to everyone, even more so if you are a manager or a team leader.
- Coach someone – pick one of your teams, in turns, and spend time with them. Do a performance review, do some corrective coaching on areas you know they need improving, or explain to them the service behaviours you feel they do not demonstrate enough. Spending some of your time with them one-to-one will show that you value them.
- Train someone up – managers and team leaders don’t always have time to train their teams. Use that half-hour training someone who needs developing further, someone you know has great potential, is keen to learn and take responsibility. Train them so you can delegate something to them, and by doing so, increase their confidence and engagement.
- Plan things ahead– Planning is crucial to ensure effective and smooth running of operations, and yet we don’t seem to have enough time to plan. I’ll just put this excellent, if often used quote by Benjamin Franklin here: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
- Working on your strategy – you will need more time to do this, but you can use your golden half-hour to work on developing it. With no interruptions, you will achieve much more than you think.
- Prepare a survey – ask your customers what they think of your service, what they will be wanting in the future, how you could help them even more. It’s also a great way to build and strengthen your relationship with them.
So many times, you drive home or sit on the train in the evening, thinking about your day. And you realise that you
have achieved little or nothing at all, because you were stuck in your office dealing with crises, answering emails and phone calls all day, like a hamster running around in its wheel. This makes you feel miserable and frustrated. But when you have spent that half-hour doing something tangible and important, you head home happy in knowing that actually, you have achieved quite a lot; ‘That was a good day. I trained Julia up so she can cash up one till from now on’ or ‘I finally found the error with the stock sheets, which gave us an inaccurate total’ or ‘I finally did the short virtual training session on time management I had wanted to do for ages.’
Whatever you do during that half-hour, it will help you achieve more in your day, without having to work later and later, and it will certainly help with your self-development. But you need to be disciplined and get into the habit of blocking 30 minutes each day and keep at it.
