3 reasons great leaders rock in time management

There are two kind of people: The ones, who you never see, with their calendar always full and never on time in meetings (if they even join), let’s call them phantoms — and the the ones, you’ll always see, you’ll always find a free slot in their calendars and are always on time. The difference is not the workload and not the position, because I saw top managers having much more time and giving much more care than regular employees. So what’s the trick? Let’s have a look on three essential rules in time management.
1) They focus on what matters
How often do we hear “I don’t have the time for going to the gym three times a week”, or “I don’t have time for lunch because I’m full of meetings until 6pm”. Sure, if you work as a firefighter, there is the uncertainty of important work you can’t postpone, but most of us don’t. The reason is priority, what is important to us and on what we focus. Surely everyone would find an hour per day to go to the gym, if wanted — but in most cases we focus on something more urgent, like a situation that came up today and will introduce the end of the world, if not solved immediately.
2) They know the difference between urgent and important
I think one of the best examples to differentiate between urgent and important is health. Going to run once, or eating something healthy for dinner will not change the way we feel, it’s not urgent. But going to do sports regularly and taking care of eating habits is important. It’s long-term.
We don’t experience an immediate impact on long term changes, that’s a reason why we don’t do them so frequently. The relation to time management here is easy: we have to focus on things while they are important and not urgent. Because if they get urgent, normally it’s too late.
Example: Having a “good” relation with employees and to really take care of them is very important. I had several bosses who often had no time and they did not care about me, so obviously the first thing I did when I became a manager is to not make the same mistake. Taking care and being very honest ist essential, but in that context not urgent. To keep moving 1on1s week by week is a sign of “to many urgent things”.
Every Friday I try to plan the upcoming week. Now, there is never enough time to make space for everything, but saving some time for non urgent things is never a mistake.
3) They know the difference between being efficient and effective
Before reading on, try to think about the following question for a second: What did you do recently efficiently and what effectively? If you struggle, here is the definition:
- Effective (adj.) — successful in producing a desired or intended result.
- Efficient (adj.) — achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
Being effective is about doing the right things, while being efficient is about doing things right.
While in production focused industry efficiency matters a lot, in IT projects effectiveness plays a bigger role. Developers are not measured by lines of code they write (if you do that, please rethink your business), but more in terms of impact of the products and features they create. Doing the right things even less efficient can increase the business a lot.
Back to time management, we should not always try to be as efficient as possible but rather focus on what matters most. Try to answer the question: How can I bring the most impact for the company?
Some rules I follow in terms of time management:
- a to-do list with a maximum of 10 items.
- to-dos that can be done in 2 minutes are done immediately.
- to-dos that are postponed three times are deleted.
- I put ideas on an idea list, not on the to-do list.
- I reserve time for the big rocks (the important, non urgent things).
- I reserve some time for unexpected, adhoc events (you can never avoid).
- I learn to anticipate things while they are important, not urgent.
- I strive in moving “the bottleneck” away from me, either by delegating or empowering others.
You might have and create your own rules, because we all have a different way of working (which is a good thing!). How are you managing your time? What are your learnings?

