3 tips to take back control of your time
Everybody wants to get time from you. Your manager, your direct reports, peers, vendors…
It’s easy to end up jumping from one Zoom call to another, trying to answer everbody on Slack as fast as possible, reaching inbox zero 100 times a day, and thinking that it’s ok because your job is to enable others.
It’s the default approach to time management, and at some point it won’t work anymore. A few ways to notice it:
- you are not making progress on your long term goals
- your week is full of meetings scheduled by others
Tip #1: take the time to plan using your calendar
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Schedule planning time in your calendar. During this planning time, schedule production time in your calendar where you will fully dedicate yourself to a specific task you want to achieve in order to reach your long term goals.
I am doing this both weekly and daily, using google calendar: once a week I schedule production time for the following week, and I also revise my daily schedule every morning.
Separating planning from production will help you be completely focused on the task at hand during production, instead of constantly re-evaluating if you are working on the right topic.
Using your calendar, instead of some kind of to-do list, avoids having two backlogs to pull your work from. It also gives a heads-up to the colleagues that would like to book time with you.
Note that this only works with the following prerequisites:
- you have long term goals
- you have tasks that will help you reach them
Tip #2: keep some time to answer emergencies
“Shit happens”
Don’t overdo it and fill your calendar with planning and production time. Keep some room to be able to react to emergencies, the same way you would add a buffer when planning a project.
This buffer might be big at first: reducing it to an acceptable level could become one of your long term goals!
I keep 20% of my time for this.
Tip #3: take the time to reflect
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — not Albert Einstein
Was the past week a success? Or not? Why? What gave me energy? What drained me? What do I want to improve next week? What should I try?
Schedule time in your calendar to ask yourself these retrospective questions.
I dedicate 1 hour each week to this activity.
Take away
Time is your most precious resource, don’t let others dictate how you should spend it.
What about you, how are you managing your time? Share your experience or any other feedback and questions in the comments!
