Insights For Success

Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

Time Management

An end to multitasking?

Motivation, Organization, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian
Image by John Ragai used under Creative Commons License

Image by John Ragai used under Creative Commons License

Many years ago, I got to the point where I felt overwhelmed by my jobs and all the tasks I had to perform. After a long search, I learned and implemented the concept of Getting Things Done promoted by David Allen. One of his beliefs is that a person cannot multi-task and he built his entire system around this one concept. He preaches undertaking tasks one at a time sequentially.

Working in the computer industry, I could not easily accept this. After all, my Operating System allowed me to run multiple applications simultaneously for a reason. Right? Well not really... Each computer core (think of a core as an individual brain) can only handle one thing at any given time. Manufacturers have implemented time division techniques to make it look like the computer is processing multiple items per core by slicing the time each process has to fractions of a second. This gives the allusion of multitasking.

The Steeve Jobs alarm

In 2010, during a presentation, Steve Jobs presented features the upcoming version of his Operating System called Lion (to be released mid 2011). The one feature that stuck out for me was full screen application support. In this case, full screen does not mean maximized (like in Windows), it means the apps takes up 100% of your screen real-estate. Whether you like or hate Apple, you have to agree that they spend an unholly amount of money conducting usability research. Why would they implement something that seems backwards? That would prevent you from multi-tasking?

The Research The truth is that when we attempt to multi-task, we become much less effective. Modern cognitive research clearly demonstrates that when people multi-task, they perform less work and miss information. Researchers discovered that re-orienting yourself to the task at hand, after a distraction, takes 10-15 minutes. Quantifiably, performance for multi-taskers can drop as much as 40% along with a marked degradation of memory and creativity.

Distractions There are 2 types of distractions :

  • Active disruptive: Distractions you cannot control like someone walking into your office.
  • Passive disruptive: Distractions you cannot control like n SMS, Email, Instant Message, telephone call, etc

This is the reason why many people are more efficient and effective at home. If re-orientation takes 10-15 minutes and you keep getting distracted by Active disruptive then you experience a severe loss in productivity. Working from home means Active disruptive intrusions completely disappear.

Passive disruptive can be controlled and allow you to decide when to engage with them. You can send calls to voicemail, ignore emails and Instant messages, etc. Ignoring these means you are completely dedicated to the task at hand. Go around and ask people where they go to get their most important and productive work done. I have very rarely seen people says the office.

As technology develops, we are seeing more and more companies add technology that is classified as Passively disruptive and this is a good thing.

Practical How To - Find a Time Management Framework that fits your needs and apply it to your everyday life. All of them will bring stability and control to your chaotic life which will in turn allow you to concentrate on one activity at a time.

  • Remember that most people can only concentrate an a specific task for 18-30 minutes before their mind starts to wander. Determine what your personal threshold is and plan accordingly. You may want to create intervals between your productive times by checking emails, picking up voicemails, etc. These are good times to engage with the disruptive activities (pick up voicemails, check emails, etc).

  • Use the closed door policy. Let people know that there are times when you should not be bothered. Close your office door or post a Do Not Distrub sign on your cubicle entrance. Send calls to voicemail and shutdown Instant Messaging and Email. There is a time for all of these but not when you want to be productive.

  • Learn more efficient note taking techniques like Mind Mapping. This means you will spend less time trying to write down notes and more time concentrating on the discussion at hand. Remember we can only do one thing at a time. When writing, you are not listening.

Now go get productive!

Rule 2 of delegation

Management, Team building, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

QuickTip - Setting the right expectations

Early on in my career, I was committed to perfection. Everything had to be done perfectly and methodically. Although the idea of perfection is admirable, you quickly realize that waiting for perfection often means you miss incredible opportunities.

It is often better to get started on the right foot and get it done rather than aim for perfection and miss the bus. How does this apply to delegation? Simple, if you expect perfection from yourself, you will expect it from others. This means you will likely not be satisfied with the quality of the work being performed and will find yourself redoing it all yourself. This will not only frustrate you but steal important time from more important tasks you could be doing. It will also frustrate and demotivate your employees.

If you find yourself questioning the quality of the delegated work, take a moment to perform some introspection.

  • Are your expectations realistic?
  • Are you aiming for perfection?
  • Is the work bad or good? Most often good is the watermark you will have to use to judge most of the activities. Demand perfection only when absolutely critical.
  • Did you properly communicate your expectations?
  • Is the person qualified to perform the work you assigned?

Rule 1 of delegation

Management, Team building, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

An important tenet of efficient and effective time management is the art of delegation. Anytime I talk about delegation with an executive, they either support it or avoid it like the plague. Their reaction is predicated on past experience.

When delegating a task, executives often forget the first golden rule of delegation: training and communication. In order for the work to be performed to your satisfaction, you need to ensure that you communicate your requirements and expectations to the other person clearly and concisely.

Taking some time upfront will save you tons of frustration and having to redo the work in the back end.

A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Tickle your way to better organization

GTD, Organization, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian
We live in an era of information and often times it may feel like we are being overwhelmed by information. Many years ago, I reached an inflection point in my career. I had reached a point where I was constantly overwhelmed with my tasks and information. I did not know what to do, how to handle it and often felt like my work life was out of control. I decided that I needed to find better ways of doing things and so I embarked on a multi year journey to study and learn as many time management, work management and information frameworks as I can. I bought dozens of books, CDs and software.

I found my information management solution and will be writing articles about them in 2011. The first topic I am covering is something called a Tickler File. It is a super simple concept that can be immediately implemented without “practice”. Once you learn about it, you can use it immediately.

What is a Tickler File
A Tickler File is a series of folders labelled by days and months. It allows you to file documents, bills, letters according to a future date at which they will have to be handled.

The daily folders are numbered from 1 until 31.
The monthly folders are from January to December.

How do I sort a Tickler File
Let’s say the date is January 1, 2011. January has 31 days so I would place all of my folders labelled with days in the front and then the folders labelled with the months right after. Since we are already in January, you would sort the folders from : February to December and place the one labelled January right after.

How do I use a Tickler File
Since it is January 1, the first thing you would do in the morning is open the folder labelled “1”. You take out all of the items from that folder, place it in your inbox for action today and move the [now empty] folder after the one labelled February.

Anything you take out of the folder should be handled that day. Pushing an action back should be an exception.

Now on January 2, you would do the same except with the folder labelled “2”. If you are going on vacation or won’t be in the office for a couple of days, look ahead in the folders (for the days you will be missing) and make sure you either take off the items or “reschedule” them to a later date.

Let’s say it is now January 31, you should have used all of the day folders (which are now behind the month folder labelled February). On February 1, you first take a look at the Folder labelled February and must decide on what to do with the items in it. Once you have taken care of those, you move the folder labelled February to the back (exposing the daily folders you moved here in January.) Since you are February 1, you open the first folder labelled “1” and moved the folder behind March.

What goes into the monthly folders?
The contents of the daily folders are easy to understand but you may be asking yourself what goes into the monthly folders.

You use the monthly folders for tasks that must be handled in a future month but do not necessarily have a drop dead date. Let’s say you have a software license that expires in March but you know it will take you a couple of weeks to renegotiate it and you tell yourself you should look at it “sometime in February”. Then you would place the contract with a note in the February folder. When you get to February 1, you open the February monthly folder first, find the contract and decide which day it should be handled within that month. You sort it in the day folder and you’re done.

What about digital?
What we have just talked about can be done physically for paper type work (invoices, contracts, etc) and/or can be implemented digitally. It is so simple, you can easily implement this on any platform using the Operating Systems folder structure. Just create the appropriate folder structure and voila.

After years of searching, I use a tool called PersonalBrain (http://www.thebrain.com) for all my digital filling and time management. I have actually implemented a tickler file in there in addition to a customized version of the ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology. I will write about PB and GTD in a future article. Right now the important thing is for you to understand that you can implement this without any expensive or fancy software.

The challenges
The system itself is super easy to implement and use. After reading the above, you are a pro at it already. The real challenge comes from starting it and committing to use it. Old habits die hard. At first you have to remember to put info into the system and remember to check it every morning (first thing).

Having taught this to hundreds of people, I noticed that the more people used it, the more useful it became and the more committed they became to maintaining it. So the important step is to use it. Use whatever mechanism you want to remind you [at the beginning] that you need to check and maintain the system. Some people have put Post-it reminders on their coffee mugs, others have set-up reminders in their calendaring system, etc.

The tickler system should be easily accessible yet not in the way. I have both a physical tickler and a digital one. I maintain both because not everything I work with can be digitized and kept digitally yet (legal reasons). My physical one is in a filling cabinet that I can access by swivelling my work chair and my digital one is in a top level structure in my main Digital Brain (i.e. PersonalBrain software).