Time Management Flashcards
Discretionary Time
Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units.
Completing Tasks
Yet most of the tasks of the executive require, for minimum effectiveness, a fairly large quantum of time. To spend in one stretch less than this minimum is sheer waste. One accomplishes nothing and has to begin all over again.
Effectiveness
To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks.
Delegating
Getting rid of anything that can be done by somebody else so that one does not have to delegate but can really get to one’s own work—that is a major improvement in effectiveness.
Time-Wasters
The first task here is to identify the time-wasters which follow from lack of system or foresight. The symptom to look for is the recurrent “crisis,” the crisis that comes back year after year. A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again.
Reccurrent Crisis
A recurrent crisis should always have been foreseen. It can therefore either be prevented or reduced to a routine which clerks can manage. The definition of a “routine” is that it makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took near-genius to do before; for a routine puts down in systematic, step-by-step form what a very able man learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis.
Team
One should only have on a team the knowledges and skills that are needed day in and day out for the bulk of the work. Specialists that may be needed once in a while, or that may have to be consulted on this or on that, should always remain outside. It is infinitely cheaper to go to them and consult them against a fee than to have them in the group to say nothing of the impact an underemployed but overskilled man has on the effectiveness of the entire group. All he can do is mischief. Kindle Edition.
Studying at Home
One of the most effective executives in Professor Sune Carlson’s study, mentioned above, spent ninety minutes each morning before going to work in a study without telephone at home. Even if this means working very early so as to get to the office on time, it is preferable to the most popular way of getting to the important work: taking it home in the evening and spending three hours after dinner on it. By that time, most executives are too tired to do a good job.
Procrastination
The reason why working home nights is so popular is actually its worst feature: It enables an executive to avoid tackling his time and its management during the day.
Employees
The executive who is concerned with what a man cannot do rather than with what he can do, and who therefore tries to avoid weakness rather than make strength effective is a weak man himself.
Indispensible People
They have learned that there are only three explanations for an “indispensable man”: He is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands; his strength is misused to bolster a weak superior who cannot stand on his own two feet; or his strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.
Initiative
While the others complain about their inability to do anything, the effective executives go ahead and do.
Work Programs
Effective executives periodically review their work programs—and those of their associates—and ask: “If we did not already do this, would we go into it now?” And unless the answer is an unconditional “Yes,” they drop the activity or curtail it sharply.
Priorities
Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities: Pick the future as against the past; Focus on opportunity rather than on problem; Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon; and Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is “safe” and easy to do.
Decisions
Unless a decision has “degenerated into work” it is not a decision; it is at best a good intention. This means that, while the effective decision itself is based on the highest level of conceptual understanding, the action to carry it out should be as close as possible to the working level and as simple as possible.
