How long, literally?
Years ago I was in a long and mostly-pointless meeting that had gone past its allotted time. The crowd was getting antsy as the speaker droned on. Then the senior executive in the room raised her hand and said, “How many more MINUTES will this meeting go on?”
Emphasis very much in the original. The exec understood that time is money — plus productivity and, in that case, widely distributed frustration — and she wasn’t afraid to call the speaker to task for the literal number of minutes being wasted for all the many people sitting in the meeting.
You’ll see above a snapshot I just took of the stopwatch on my computer desktop. I’ve gotten in the habit of starting it up first thing in the morning to see how long it takes me to get down to my most important work, which is writing this blog (and related goodies) for Hoover’s. Usually, I do better than this.
Mind you, during that hour and 43 minutes, I did other good things — cleaned up the blog comments queue, edited a press release, talked with a couple of colleagues — but I think it’s important that we all get a clear understanding of how we work, and especially of how long it takes us to do the various parts of our jobs.
When we don’t pay attention to the literal numbers, it’s easy to come to the end of the day, say “Where did the time go?,” and promise ourselves (often vainly) that we’ll “have to get to the Big Stuff tomorrow.”
Probably tomorrow (well, Monday in this case) will be a lot like today. Maybe we’ll encounter one of those magical uninterrupted spells that sometimes arise . . . but that’s not the way to bet. Probably we’ll face just as many chances for interruptions and distractions, just as many opportunities to “turn aside from one’s main purpose to serve a job here and there.”
And on Monday — or Tuesday, or a Tuesday next March — we’ll still be saying “Too much to do, too little time.” Which, as we just discussed yesterday, is a mug’s game.
Set a timer. (The one I use is TimeLeft.) Figure out where your time goes. Take steps to ensure that more of your time goes where you want it to.
How many more minutes will it be before you take charge of your working day?
Category: Productivity, The working life
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Busted!
I have spent last 46 minutes pittering around, meanwhile whining about my crushing book deadline.
Damn you for calling my bluff!
:)
-Pam (writing now)
Ditto on “busted”. I need to get back to my using my timer more often.
Every day @ work I have started keeping track of my progress and this encourages me to outdo myself each time I come back in! The trick though is uping the quantity without sacrificing the quality of the work. Of course as I become more specialized this kind of outcome is expected, but it does help to motivate me and use my time in the most productive way.
Spot on!
Years ago a mentor of mine had me read Drucker’s classic the Effective Executive.
Drucker starts where you do — know thy time!
Thanks for supplying a healthy dose of “conviction” this Friday afternoon.
Keep creating…productive days,
Mike
Like Pam. I spent most of the day “pittering” around. But sometimes, pittering leads to productivity (she says, convincingly!)
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