Business focus

The Ugly Truth About Your Time

There are many forms of self-delusion, and “I don’t have time” is among the most common. The truth about how we manage and rationalize our use of time is uglier than Mick Jagger with a hangover on Halloween. Here are some of those truths:

1) You’re not busier than everyone else. Believe it or not, everyone feels time pressure, and in very few circumstances can you claim to be any busier than those around you. If you’re a farmer, or you’re on the London Olympic Organizing Committee, you get a pass. Everyone else needs to stop using, “I’m too busy” as an excuse.

2) Society has not conspired to give you less leisure time. With the exception of the United States, leisure time has steadily increased since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in developed nations. The fact that leisure time is completely overscheduled is an issue of how it is managed, not an issue of quantity. It’s kind of like confusing a Big Mac with actual food.

3) You do, in fact, do what is important to you. I’m always amazed that people claim not to have time to do something “important” like volunteer at their children’s school, but do have time to watch 8 or 10 hours of crap TV shows a week. Ultimately, you do do what is actually important – and it’s reflected in your schedule.

4) You can’t have it all. This is an insidious myth we all use to rationalize each other’s dysfunctional behavior. If you work 80 hours a week, you are missing out on something else in your life – like having quality time with your family. To think that you can dictate “quality time”, is to imply that all the other potential time is wasted, and that somehow you have a magic switch that can mystically transform time into “quality”. These are the same people that put “baby to take first steps” into their calendar for a weekend, when they’re around. You can’t schedule quality time.

5) The world will not slow down. Regardless of how long you think humans have been on the planet, there is one constant: the rate of change has continually accelerated. If anything, the rate of change will increase, so strap in, and wear a cup – it’s rough out there.

If you want to gain control of your schedule once and for all, we can help….but only if you’re ready to face the ugly facts about how you currently spend your time.

The Time Management Skills & Techniques Video and Cheat Sheet combo were just added to the Wily Manager membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now.

In it, we show you why most time management techniques don’t work, and how to ruthlessly zero in on your critical tasks and responsibilities while fearlessly ditch the rest.

Next week we’ll be talking about Quick Decisions, and you’ll learn how to make decisions without regrets when you’re forced to think on your feet. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

You’ll get 8 free bonus gifts worth $187, plus instant access to all the existing tools and advice already available in the members-only area. It’s jam-packed with Videos, Cheat Sheets, and other tools…and new content is added each and every week.

Time Management Skills and Techniques

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Time Management Skills and Techniques are of critical importance to people at all levels of organizations, and are often overlooked when it comes to development. Below, we look at the following aspects of Time Management Skills and Techniques:

Why Time Management Skills and Techniques usually fail.
5 Keys to Improved Time Management Skills and Techniques

Why Time Management Skills and Techniques Usually Fail

Many attempt to improve their Time Management Skills and Techniques, but it often doesn’t work. There are two key reasons for this:

Normally, people attempt to be more efficient with their time, when they should be assessing their effectiveness.
They will be more effective when they do less, as opposed to trying to cram more into their day

5 keys to Improved Time Management Skills and Techniques

Understand where your time is currently being allocated
Be aware of your time wasters
Identify priorities and set goals
Plan your activities to achieve your goals
Take initiative and overcome procrastination

Understand where your time is currently being allocated

The first key to improved Time Management Skills and Techniques is to understand where you currently stand in terms of managing your time. In order to do so, you will need to track your time for a period of two weeks. This will only be meaningful if you are honest with yourself during the tracking.

You do not need to track your time in 5 minute increments, but rather spend one or two minutes twice a day (perhaps once at mid day, and once at the end of your day), and track your activities in 30 minute increments. There are tools available on the Wily Manager website to assist in this task.

Be aware of your time wasters

A key impediment to improving Time Management Skills and Techniques are typical time waster that impact just about everyone. Here are some common culprits:

Email – much of the time spent dealing with email is not value added time.
Many meetings – make sure the meetings you attend are valuable.
Perfectionist tendencies – in some cases an 80% solution might be the best you can afford in terms of time. Perfectionists want 100% all the time, and this is not realistic.
Other people’s crises. Just because someone else is having an emergency, doesn’t mean you need panic as well.
Unclear roles or goals. If you don’t know what your key goals are, then you end up doing a lot of things nobody care about, and have little value. You cannot have good time management without understanding your goals and priorities.

Identify Priorities and set goals

A key part of effective Time Management Skills and Techniques is to make smart trade-offs with your time. It is not possible to do everything, so those that are most successful make the best trade-offs.

Focus on 3 – 7 key priorities at a time. If you have many more than this, you will be setting yourself up for failure.
Your priorities must align with those of the larger organization. If you cannot see a clear line of sight between your priorities, and those of your boss, and the organization, there is probably a good chance you are expending much effort in futility.
Ask “so what?”. If you stopped doing something, who would notice, and how long would it take?
Practice the 80/20 rule. There are times for 100% solutions, but many other times, you need to quickly get a task to 80%, and then move on. The extra amount of effort required to get the last 20% is an overwhelming burden if you have many demands on your time.

Plan activities to achieve goals

If something is truly a priority, then a key part of improved Time Management Skills and Techniques is to allocate time to achieving those key priorities. If you don’t schedule time to advance your priorities, you will be overwhelmed by things that are merely urgent.

As a caution, don’t spend more time planning the work than doing the work.
Plan Action against major goals on a weekly basis. You may not look at each priority every day, but you should not let a week go by without making some progress on important goals.
There is a Weekly Planning tool on the Wily Manager website

Take initiative and overcome procrastination

Be disciplined – sometimes you just need to get things done.
Use to do lists, but make sure they are prioritized. A to-do list is useless if it does not reflect the priority of what you’re trying to do.
Ask why you might be procrastinating. There are a variety of reasons things are put off. Some of the most common reasons are:

Fear
Perfectionist tendencies
Waiting for a deadline, because of the illusion of “working better under pressure”.
Overwhelmed – in some cases, there may in fact be too much to do.

3 Things to Remember About Improving Time Management Skills and Techniques

Time pressure is often a symptom of one or more other problems. If you can figure out what those problems might be, you can begin to address them.
You’ll be more successful when you do less rather than more.
Be disciplined.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Time Management Skills and Techniques (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Project Management 101

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There are many different project management systems. Below we talk about a few simple Project Management Steps:

Project Management Step 1: “What is a Project?”
Project Management Step 2: Before the Project Plan
Project Management Step 3: The Project Plan
Project Management Step 4: Executing Your Plan
Potential Pitfalls with Project Management

Project Management Step 1: “What is a Project?”

Projects are often confused with programs, or simply doing “business as usual. Projects have unique characteristics:

A project is something that starts and ends.
A project may have similar elements to the core business, but is otherwise unique.
A project has a number of interconnected parts that are bound by a common goal

Project Management Step 2: Before the Project Plan

Often people want to jump right into a project plan, but there are some things that need to be addressed first:

Articulate clear and specific goals and objectives for the project.
Ensure all stakeholders agree on objectives.
Identify potential risks to the project.
Identify measures of the project’s success.
Draft the most appropriate members to the project team.
Have a Steering Committee in place, to act as a “board of directors” to the project
Specify scope of the project and the terms of reference

Project Management Step 3: The Project Plan

Building the Project Plan is perhaps the most critical of the steps, but be careful not to allow the writing of the plan to take more time and energy than executing the plan.

Identify major tasks and key milestones
Ensure all tasks have a clear connection to a goal or objective
Assign the most appropriate person to each task
Specify a deadline for tasks to be completed
Track costs and other resources

Project Management Step 4: Executing the Plan

Communicate constantly. A good project plan is a communication plan. The project will not be successful without outstanding communication.
Meet with project team and steering committee at regular intervals
Manage other stakeholders as appropriate
Mitigate risks, and manage issues
Be flexible

Potential Pitfalls with Project Management

Over-planning the project. Ensure planning the work does not eclipse doing the work.
Under-communicating progress and challenges. You need to constantly make people aware of the project status.
Not connecting tasks to goals. A task done in isolation is a task done in futility. Tasks must be connected to higher-level goals.

3 things to Remember About Project Management

Your project planning methodology matters less than the discipline you apply to it.
Focus matters – the clearer your goals and objective, the higher your odds of success.
Check out: Campbell, Clark A., The One-Page Project Manager

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Project Management Steps (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Get More Done by Focusing on Your Circle of Control

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The Circle of Control, along with the Circles of Influence and Concern are a simple tool you can use to ensure you are applying your focus in the right place. Below, we specifically talk about:

Why You Need to Focus on Your Circle of Control
The Circle of Control
The Circle of Influence
The Circle of Concern

Why You Need to Focus on Your Circle of Control

Because you have more demands on your time than you have ability to fill those demands.
Many people spend far too much time and energy worrying about things they ultimately have little influence over.
Focus on key activities is the single biggest missing ingredient in most businesses.

The Circle of Control

For every activity, and every bit of energy you expend, you need to critically question whether it is in your Circle of Control, or one of the other circles.

The majority of your effort belongs in the Circle of Control, or at the very least with things that you significantly influence.
Do not overestimate or underestimate what you control. Make sure you are honestly assessing what you control and influence. If you over-estimate your control, you will become frustrated by your inability to make progress. If you underestimate your Circle of Control, you’ll end up being far less effective than you potentially can be.
Things in the Circle of Control are how you should measure your success.

The Circle of Influence

If something is not part of your Circle of Control, you can still spend time on them, as long as you significantly influence them.

These might be shared processes or simply things you provide input to.
Work to migrate some of the things in your circle of influence into your Circle of Control.

The Circle of Concern

There are many things that you may be concerned with, that you don’t actual control or influence. This is fine, as long as you realize it for what it is.

Treat the things in your Circle of Concern as a “hobby”.
You can have an interest in things that fall into the Circle of Concern, but be careful as to how much time and energy is spent here.

3 Things to Remember About Focusing on Your Circle of Control

Consider carefully what Circle specific tasks or accountabilities fall into before lending any effort to them.
Don’t under or over estimate your level of control or influence.
Those who focus most on their Circle of Control succeed.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about the Circle of Control (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

The Bureaucratic Decoder — Unveiled

Several years ago I did some work for a large, bureaucratic utility that had only recently been privatized from being a governmental organization. In some ways, they made the transition to a private enterprise well, but many old bad habits from a public sector culture refused to die.

Perhaps most obvious to those of us from outside the culture was the quantity and poor quality of the meetings. It is not an exaggeration to say that many managers spent every day listlessly drifting from meeting to meeting, and occasionally answered an email in between. This was loosely described as “work”.

Most often, when a meeting was scheduled for 10:00, I would be the only one in the room, causing me to behave like Dustin Hoffman’s Rainman, checking my calendar to make sure I had the right time and place, and repeating the meeting request over and over to myself. I quickly discovered that I needed to run all appointments through the special Bureaucratic Decoder. Here’s the formula:

Meetings that start before 9am are entirely contingent upon traffic and weather. If either one is not cooperating, the meeting will start at 9.30 at the earliest, and perhaps won’t occur at all if conditions are adverse.
Normally scheduled meetings between 10am and 3pm will start at fifteen minutes past the scheduled time to allow people time to use the bathroom, get coffee, and arrive at the meeting. There may be some stragglers, so time was allocated to bring all people up to speed as they drifted into the meeting. For those there on time, they may have to listen to the recap four times before everyone is there, so it was generally agreed that showing up on time was a bad idea.
If anyone had a meeting scheduled prior to your scheduled meeting, they would be at least 30 minutes late, because the previous meeting would never end on time, and they need their fifteen minute “transition buffer” (see bullet above).
If you scheduled a meeting for after 3.00pm, it was considered optional. This is because all meetings started late, and ended late, and there was no guarantee that this meeting would be over by quitting time, which was the only appointment that was regularly respected in the organization.

It sounds frustrating, but the spotty attendance at meetings actually worked out well. Rarely were decisions made, and there certainly was no collaboration. The most important thing was maintaining the status quo, and any attempt at the smallest change was put down faster than rabid Rottweiler next door to a daycare.

If this sounds like your organization, then you better hope you don’t have to compete in the open market. You’ll be put out of your misery faster than the dog I mentioned above. In many cases, meetings are a necessary evil at best, and don’t do anything to move the business forward.

Governmental organizations and big utilities may be able to afford such excess… your organization probably can’t.

Conducting Effective Meetings

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How much time do you waste in meetings every week? Conducting effective meetings is a critical leadership skill that needs improvement in just about all organizations.

Conducting effective meetings is easy with a few guidelines:

Have a defined purpose and clear objectives with a written agenda
Members have prepared in advance and are engaged
Balance of discipline, flexibility, diplomacy and determination
Members have defined roles and respect established ground rules
Efficient, result focused, and ultimately save time and effort
Result in a series of tangible action items
Capture insights and enthusiasm
Motivate people to specific action
Efficient and result focused
Are documented and summarized with commitments well understood

On the other hand, not everyone is good at conducting effective meetings. Many meetings:

Lack participation
Dominating leader or member, unbalanced involvement
People don’t listen to each other
Stays off track too long
Inefficient, results unclear
Ideas and different views are criticized or squelched
Action assignments and outcomes are not clear

There are four steps you need to follow when conducting effective meetings. Here’s a brief introduction to the four steps:

Step 1 – Prepare When Conducting Effective Meetings

Ensure the purpose of the meeting is well understood. Ask what would happen if this meeting did not take place.
Prepare the agenda in advance.
Ensure that the desired outcomes of the meeting are articulated in advance.
Make sure all the participants are prepared in advance.

Step 2 – Communicate When Conducting Effective Meetings

Inform all participants well in advance of the details of the meeting; the purpose and outcomes; and, preparation required.
Circulate agenda in advance, as well as any other reading material

Step 3 – Control When Conducting Effective Meetings

Start on time
Review ground rules and assign roles
Use a “Parking Lot” to keep on the agenda

Step 4 – Document and Follow-up When Conducting Effective Meetings

Record main discussion points and decisions for future reference. This list becomes your meeting minutes.
Clarify actions and assign names and deadlines to them.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Conducting Effective Meetings (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Get the Complete ‘Conducting Effective Meetings’ Topic Bundle:

The ‘Conducting Effective Meetings’ topic bundle includes:

Effective Meetings Cheat Sheet (pdf)
Effective Meetings Booklet (pdf) containing:
- In-Depth Topic Overview
- How to Get a Meeting Back on Track
- Role Definitions for Effective Meetings
- Effective Meeting Preparation Checklist
- Worksheet for Effective Meetings
- Meeting Rating Form
- Types of Meetings and Tips for Success
- Recommended Resources – where to find out even more about Effective Meetings

Easy-print versions of the tools contained in the Effective Meetings Booklet (pdf)
Effective Meetings Video (mp3)
Effective Meetings Powerpoint Slides (pdf)

Don’t Fear Your Numbers

Twenty or so years ago, organizations would hire guys like us to come in and help them define metrics and measures. Often times there were not adequate data collection and storage systems, so we ended up counting a lot of things manually, and then getting our crayons out to hand draw graphs to represent these indicators.

Skip ahead in time a couple of decades, and organizations are still hiring guys like us to help them with the measures and metrics, but now its usually because they have thousands upon thousands of data points, but no ability to turn this data into wisdom, and ultimately better business decisions.

Blame Microsoft. They made it easy to have powerful spreadsheets and databasing capability on every desktop relatively cheaply. Now the guy who runs the janitorial service at the office has a PC with more computing power than the Space Shuttle, and 500 indicators he’s tracking. Bad news – if you have much more than half a dozen metrics you’re following, that’s not a scorecard… that’s a laundry list.

We also see it in any professional sport. Did you know that in games that take place on the road, in the Central Time Zone, on odd-numbered days, in the same month as the coach’s birthday, when the starting line-up all had chicken for the dinner the previous night, the team has posted a win 58% of the time?

Now that’s valuable data.

Professional Sports organizations are very fat with cash – they can afford to waste some on useless statistics. Your organization probably can’t.

You need to figure out what results your organization is trying to produce, and then determine the key drivers of those results. For many organizations, the goal is to make money while minimizing various forms of risk. What are the simple key drivers of these things?

Many managers are scared away from data because their accountant and their stats professor from college teamed up to make sure that any numbers were completely incomprehensible to the average human (and thereby keeping them both employed).

Yet, taking just a bit of time to better understand the key numbers in your business is time extraordinarily well spent. And a fringe benefit is taking those numbers (that you now understand them) back to your stats-prof, or your accountant, and truly baffling them.

Scatterplot Graph: A Simple Decision-Making Tool for Managers

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The Scatterplot Graph is a simple technique that is not often used to help managers make better decisions. Below we talk about the following aspects of the Scatterplot Graph:

Why would I use a Scatterplot Graph?
Types of correlations
Two Examples of how to use the Scatterplot Graph.
How to do a Scatterplot Graph

Why Would I Use a Scatterplot Graph?

The Scatterplot Graph can test for possible Cause & Effect Relationships. There are a variety ways to do Cause & Effect analyses, but the Scatterplot Graph is a good place to start if you’ve got some data.
A Scatterplot Graph can be used for predictive action when the is a strong correlation between variables. This is explained in further detail below.

Types of Correlations in a Scatterplot Graph

When gathering data points, a pattern may or may not emerge. Here are how we label those patterns:

Positive correlation. If two things are positively related, there will be a visible pattern on the Scatterplot Graph, that moves from the Southwest quadrant to the Northeast quadrant of the graph. If you drew a line between the Scatter plots, most of the data points would be very close to the line.
Possible positive correlation. This looks much like the pattern above, but the data points are a bit further from the trend line, and it is not as clear as to whether the variables are correlated.
No correlation. The pattern of the data points on your Scatterplot Graph appear to be random.
Possible negative correlation. If two things are possibly negatively correlated (ie: more of this is a cause of less of that), then the pattern on the Scatterplot Graph will generally move from the Northwest quadrant to the Southeast quadrant. However, the distance from the trend line may make the pattern less distinct.
Negative correlation. If two things are negatively correlated, the pattern will be the same as the one above, but will be much more easily recognized, and tightly connected to the trend line.

The R-Squared

Excel makes it easy to determine a trend line for any Scatterplot Graph. Excel will also provide an equation for the line, and an R-squared statistic. The R-squared stat measures the collective distance from the trend line of all the data points. If something is highly correlated, the R-squared number will approach 1. If the data points are not at all correlated, the R-squared number will approach 0.

Example 1

This is actual data from an industrial operation that was testing a theory that their production was largely based on the output of one machine. After tracking their overall output, and the availability of the machine for 30 days, this Scatterplot Graph was produced, showing very little correlation between overall production, and the availability of the machine in question:

Scatterplot Graph

Example 2

This is actual data from a retailer that was trying to predict soft drink sales based on outside temperature. As you can see, the Scatterplot Graph shows a very tight, positive correlation between the outdoor temperature, and the volume of soft drink sold. As a result, the retailer could use the equation on the trend line to predict volume for inventory control purposes.

Scatterplot Graph

How to do a Scatterplot Graph

Some people will avoid doing a Scatterplot Graph because they think it is time consuming or difficult. It is neither. Here’s how to do it:

Determine what you are trying to test. What two variables do you want to test a correlation for? The examples above should provide some ideas.
Gather data (the more points, the better). Ideally, you will want to track 30 – 50 data points as a minimum.
Put it into a spreadsheet.
Create a scatter graph. This can be done with the “charts” function in Excel.
Ask for a trend line. This is in the “tools” menu.
Ask for the equation. You can do this by right-clicking on the trend line.

Three Things to Remember About the Scatterplot Graph

Lies, damn lies and statistics. You can probably find data to support anything, so make sure you leave your mind open to what the data you have is telling you.
This is easy – do it once. It is easy to dismiss this if you aren’t comfortable in Excel or with statistics. It is actually very easy.
Find someone you work with who is good with Excel if that is what it will take to get this done quickly.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about the Scatterplot Graph (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

How to Take Meeting Notes: Save Time With These 2 Unconventional Methods

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It might seem easy, but how to take meeting notes is a valuable and under-rated skill. Below we talk about:

Why Meeting Notes Matter
The Basics of how to take meeting notes
Symbolic Method of taking meeting notes
Quadrant Method of taking meeting notes

Why Taking Good Meeting Notes Matters

Taking good notes makes the rest of us think you are on top of your game.
Good meeting notes help you stay on top of what decisions were made and who agreed to do what by when.
Good meeting notes are a historical record of
- decisions or agreements that were made
- why they were made
- who is responsible for what.

The Basics of How to Take Good Meeting Notes

Don’t record everything that you hear or see. Focus on topics, decisions, actions and maybe only the important facts that led to these.
Listen for clues and cues, and ask for clarity.
Leave lots of white space for later additions to your thoughts.
Use positive language.
Be objective. Avoid inflammatory or personal observations. The fewer adjectives or adverbs you use, the better.
Boring writing is the key to appropriate notes.
Notes should consist of key words, or very short sentences
Have a uniform system of punctuation, abbreviation and symbols that will make sense to you.
In most situations, you will want to take notes with a pen and paper, not a laptop.

The Symbolic Method of Taking Meeting Notes

Indent the pages of your notes in from the left margin. Then, use a simple system of symbols to categorize information types in the column space left in the margin.

[ ] A square checkbox denotes a to do item

( ) A circle indicates a task to be assigned to someone else

* An asterisk or star is an important fact

? A question mark goes next to items to research or ask about

After the meeting, a quick vertical scan of the margin area makes it easy to add tasks to your to do list and calendar, send out requests to others, and further research questions.
(This method is the brainchild of Michael Hyatt.)

The Quadrant Method of Taking Meeting Notes

Split your note-taking page into quadrants and record different kinds of information – like questions, reference and to-do’s – into the separate areas on the page.

3 Things to Remember about How to Take Good Meeting Notes

Be attentive. Make sure you pay attention
Look to be as brief as possible
Be action oriented.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to Take Meeting Notes (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Note to Self: Take More Notes

A couple of thousand years ago, Socrates was lamenting the fact that writing things down was an intellectual crutch that was making the youth lazy. Or it might have been Plato – I really can’t remember because I failed to write it down.

It seems that as every year passes, I am able to hold less and less in my head, and rely more and more on writing things in a notebook. I have attributed this to the same reason my computer slows down after a few years – more and more bits of (mostly useless) information is taking valuable disc space away from what I need to remember most recently.

Case in point – I went to the grocery store looking for five items last week. The first four, I recalled without difficulty. The fifth item, however, completely eluded me to the point where I was wandering up and down the aisles with my mouth open, and eyes squinted hoping that item number five would magically jump off the shelf and into my basket.

I left the store with four items.

On the way home, there was a radio trivia contest asking about the actor that played the role of Skipper on Gilligan’s Island in the 70s. Any thinking person would tell you that it’s the legendary Alan Hale. Likewise, if you want to know Marsha Brady’s first boyfriend’s name (Harvey), I’m the guy you want to call.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I could take out a Craig’s List ad as the phone-a-friend guy for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” contestants for anything that happened twenty or thirty years ago. Just don’t ask me who won the 2010 World Series. I remember watching the game, I just didn’t write down the winner.

I first started thinking about this blog post in the car, and had something really clever to say. Unfortunately, I couldn’t write it down, so you might have to check back every few days to see if I’ve remembered.

Note to self: Take more notes.

The Ugly Truth About Your Time

Time Management Skills and Techniques

Project Management 101

Get More Done by Focusing on Your Circle of Control

The Bureaucratic Decoder — Unveiled

Conducting Effective Meetings

Don’t Fear Your Numbers

Scatterplot Graph: A Simple Decision-Making Tool for Managers

How to Take Meeting Notes: Save Time With These 2 Unconventional Methods

Note to Self: Take More Notes

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