If you want to make a difference in the workplace, you need to use your time effectively.

Finding a Moment to Change the Future

hese days its common to hear people lament about being overbooked and not just a tiny bit. With the demands of work, family, outside activities, and a multitude of other commitments, we are trying to learn how to stretch every 30 minutes into an hour. Under those circumstances, it may seem ridiculous to propose investing some time in improving our personal capabilities, as well as those of our associates, and to do so in a way that simultaneously improves our organizations. With the current struggling economy and high rate of unemployment, its easy to forget that the future is likely to be more challenging than the present and that only well prepared individuals and organizations will survive and prosper. Thats why the editorial team of The Journal for Quality and Participation decided to sponsor this issue on Making a Difference in the Workplace, and we felt we should begin it with a brief introduction to time management techniques. We hope youll find the information presented here beneficial. In fact, we hope theyll open up enough extra time in your hectic schedule to give you the time to make a difference in your workplace and your life.
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Concepts of Time Management

Time is a non-recoverable asset. We cannot save it today for use tomorrow. Instead we must make the best use of every minute as it occurs. Beyond that reality, however, is the fact that we really cannot manage time because we have no ability to control it. Time is a steady-state event that moves forward despite our best efforts. If this is true, why are there so many books and courses on time management? Given that we cannot change the way the clock ticks off the minutes, our only option is to change the way we manage our processes and focus on improving our efficiency. By using the time that is available more effectively, we can become more productive and have a greater opportunity to incorporate new activities into our schedules. The key to improving time utilization is balancebalancing the time invested with the expected tangible and intangible results. Suppose you were interested in learning a skill and wondered how much time and effort you should invest to do so. The three questions below would be useful for planning your process: What exactly will we get back for our work?

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 What process steps are necessary and sufficient to achieve those results? Will you feel drained or energized when youve completed that process? Fundamentally, a lean mentality is the key to time utilization. Keep your process as straightforward as possible, ensuring that every step adds value. Perfectionism may be necessary if youre learning to perform cardiac surgery, but its certainly not necessary for planting rose bushes. This doesnt mean you should be careless or slovenly, but it does mean you need to use some judgment when planning.

information you need to make a decision or take action, and focus on providing only the specific information others need. Address less urgent matters later. Many people who organize their time most effectively find that they do best if they address high-priority messages twice each dayfirst thing in the morning and mid-dayand lower priority messages as the last task of the day. Youll have the most important information available when you need it and still have the ability to deal with less important items within a reasonable timeframe. Dialogues and meetings. Theres no doubt that you need to be involved in these activities on a regular basis but probably not as much as you have participated in the past. Once again, prioritizing and focusing are key methods of limiting time invested in these activities. On many occasions you will receive invitations to meetings for which you have little to contribute. You feel you must attend because youve been invited. The key question, of course, is whether the time youll spend in the meeting will equal your contribution to the discussion topic. A willingness to provide specific input without actually attending can save you a great deal of time, but it requires trust on your part that the other participants will apply your input in a way that will satisfy. Attending every meeting to which youre invited is a subtle, but insidious, form of attempting to control the participants decisions and actions. Ask yourself whether you actually need to help shape the discussion or whether you just want to push for adoption of your preferences. If your honest assessment leads to the latter conclusion, communicate your information and perspective to the meeting leader and respectfully decline to participate. When you do this, however, be prepared to accept and whole-heartedly support the participants decisions. With a bit of practice, youll learn to walk away from many discussions that would consume your valuable time, and youll gain a reputation as a willing contributor who actively supports your associates work. Paperwork. Do you find yourself shuffling piles of paperwork? If you do, you havent considered the time it takes to do so, as well as the mental noise generated when you move a pile without handling it. Although you need to prioritize and focus, you also need to set aside small blocks of time to get lower-priority work out of the way. During those scheduled periods, handle your paperwork and then archive the associated documents appropriatelyin the file cabinet or
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Time Wasters and Their Cures

Do you feel that you already utilize your time wisely? Do you doubt that you have a significant opportunity to change your processes? That may be the case, but youll never know for sure if you dont gather and analyze some data to prove it. Make a simple log, such as the one shown in the online supplement to this article, and track your time for about a week, following the instructions included with the form. If possible, include work and nonwork timeboth weekdays and weekends. Then see if the time invested was merited by the outcomes you achieved. If not, consider which of the time wasters described below undermined your efforts. Telephone, mail, and e-mail. Most people are surprised to see how much time they spend talking on the telephone (or listening to voice mail) or reading and responding to mail/e-mail. There are two primary tactics for mastering these potential time wasters. The first involves prioritization; all messages are not equally worthy. Contrary to social wisdom, it is not inappropriate or rude to ignore some messages until you have discretionary time available. Deal with messages that relate to urgent work or issues; set all others aside. Furthermore, prioritizing also involves deciding how often and when to check for and respond to messages. There is little to gain by having e-mail messages interrupt your workflow when they arrive; let them build up in your inbox and deal with them once or twice a day. The same logic applies to your cell phone and voice mail messages. If you truly are waiting for an urgent message, make special arrangements for its receipt, such as setting a specific time when you will be available to address it or having it come to a support staff member who can notify you when it arrives. When you do deal with messages, apply the second tacticfocus. Focus on obtaining only the specific

circular file can. Remember that you dont need to make every paperwork task your lifes signature work; avoid over-documentation and provide the most concise response possible. In many cases, attaching a photocopy of another message or document and attaching a Post-It note to explain its relevance will suffice. Delegation. Another sign of distrust is a failure to delegate assignments to appropriate subordinates. For managers, the negative consequences of this approach go far beyond the time lost in your schedule. Learning to delegate and provide supportive coaching to help your associates succeed is far more beneficial; it frees up your time, increases the experience of your subordinates, and expands the organizations capabilities. Its the only approach available that converts a routine task into an opportunity to generate a lasting improvement. Analysis and decision making. How much information and analysis do you really need to make an appropriate decision? Is it necessary to gather that information and/or conduct the analysis yourself? Are you the best person to make the decision? What is the risk to the organization if you make the wrong decision? These are the critical questions you must consider when determining how much time to invest in the process. Clearly, the ability to set reasonable boundaries for the time you spend on a particular decision requires a thorough understanding of its ramifications and a conscientious adherence to the concept of balancing time against results. Personal style issues. You may feel a bit defensive when you read this section because it involves the time wasters that we have accepted as inevitable because they are ingrained in our personal approaches. For instance, you may find that your day frequently is disrupted with interruptions. They distract you from planned activities and destroy your schedule. Your mental perspective is that they are unavoidable, but the reality is different. You control how to handle the myriad unanticipated items that occur each day, and you do not need to process them as interruptions that require your immediate attention. Simple approaches, such as making it clear to associates that you prefer to receive updates by e-mail or the telephone and dealing with those items during scheduled time blocks will help. Scheduling a mid-day 15-minute quarterbacking meeting
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with staff and key associates is another good way to gather all the late-breaking news and issues and expeditiously determine how to handle them. If your personal style thrives on being the best firefighter, however, prepare to suffer the consequences of constant interruptions. Another similar area relates to how you deal with gossip and rumors. People tend to react in one of two ways to these situationseither becoming part of the chain or feeling the need to stop the flow immediately. Once again, which approach comes naturally reflects your personal style. Unfortunately, gossip and rumors can be major time wasters if you allow them to distract you from planned activities. The best approach from a time-balancing perspective is to establish guidelines for acceptable behavior and train subordinates on how to resolve conflicts. Empower people to handle these disruptions without your intervention or involvement. When you do need to get involvedas a conveyor of pertinent information, do so during scheduled staff meetings or brief messages. Dont confuse prioritizing with procrastination. The first is a strategy for effective time utilization, but the second is a personal style that undermines effectiveness. Determine the root causes of your procrastination and devise ways to handle the associated tasks expeditiously. Bear in mind that it isnt unfair to delegate a task you hate to someone else who can do it more capably and with less angst.

Summary
As the Rolling Stones sang many years ago, Time Waits for No One, and it wont wait for you either. It is possible, however, for you to analyze your work processes and implement new scheduling approaches that will help you accomplish your work more efficiently. Succeeding in this endeavor requires a commitment to changing your personal habits and style, as well as keeping a tight rein on balancing the time invested against the outcomes attained. Learning to utilize your time better will make it possible for you to make a difference in the workplace and your own life, so it definitely warrants the investment of some up-front time.

More Online
To learn how to evaluate and improve your time-utilization practices, check out the worksheets and instructions online at www.asq.org/pub/jqp.

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Improving Your Time Utilization

The simple process described here will help you gather data on how you currently use your time, identify time wasters, and develop a plan for improving your effectiveness and efficiency.

Follow Up
1. Implement your change plan and do your best to adhere strictly to it over the next month. 2. Make appropriate adjustments in your change plan, but remember that appropriate adjustments do not include giving up or backsliding. 3. Implement and adhere to your revised plan for an additional month. 4. Repeat the data gathering and analysis process for another week. See what you have gained. Hopefully, your originally identified opportunities will no longer warrant additional attention, and you will be ready to work on the next three opportunities.

Data Gathering
1. Use the Time Utilization Analysis worksheet to log your activities for at least five days. Include weekdays and weekends, if possible. Also include activities that occur before and after work, if possible. 2. Record your planned activity/activities for each hour as it begins. Activities descriptions should be brief, such as write report or take a nap. There is nothing to gain by describing your planned activities in detail. 3. Note what time wasters occur during each hour. You may choose to include notes on what, who, why, etc., your activities did not proceed as planned, but dont go overboard. 4. Be ruthlessly honest as you record data in your log. It is for your eyes only, so you have nothing to fear. If you dont capture your time wasters accurately, you wont be able to eliminate them!

Thought to Remember
It takes only a few days to develop a new habit, but it takes 27-30 days to replace it with a better habit. That change process takes much more energy than forming the original habit did. Changing the way you utilize time is a process that involves changing ingrained habits, so be patient, but persistent in your efforts, and you are sure to attain your desired improvements.

Analysis
1. Tally up the number of occurrences of each time waster and record its frequency in the appropriate row of the Process Change Analysis worksheet. 2. Look across all the days and time slots for patterns in the time wasters. Do they tend to demonstrate a pattern? If so, note that pattern on the Process Change Analysis worksheet. 3. Identify your three greatest opportunities for improvement. These may be your highest frequency time wasters, ones for which there is a clear pattern, or ones that combine a relatively high frequency and a pattern. 4. Develop a change plan for those opportunities and jot it down on the worksheet.

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Time Utilization Analysis

Time 5:00 a.m. 6:00 a.m. 7:00 a.m. 8:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. Noon 1:00 p.m. 2:00 p.m. 3:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. 9:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m. Activities

Date: ObservationsTime Wasters

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Process Change Analysis

Time Wasters Telephone, mail, and e-mail Frequency and Patterns of Occurrence Plan for Change

Dialogues and meetings

Paper work

Delegation

Analysis and decision making

Personal style (interruptions, gossip and rumors, procrastination, etc.)

www.asq.org/pub/jqp