6 time wasters in consulting companies

Over the past 14 years I‘ve worked in a crap-load of different offices. As an avid people watcher (which sounds less creepy than starer), this has given me great opportunity to notice how professionals spend, and waste their time.

1. ABSENCE OF PLANNING AND FOCUS

While we all try to sound really smart by talking about the importance of planning, much like eating healthy and going to the gym, very few of us really do it.

When it comes to planning, most of us skip it and stumble through our day reading emails as they arrive, fighting fires and doing a random series of tasks that we convince ourselves are important. No optimisation, and often no prioritisation. This leads to a lack of focus and wasted time, as we spend a shit-tonne of time constantly identifying new tasks as we finish the old ones.

The interesting thing is that because most of the time nothing catastrophic goes wrong, it doesn’t seem that bad.

Trust me when I say taking 10 minutes at the start of your day to plan, will make a huge difference. Actually, you already know this, so just do it. Don’t just plan to plan, commit to it for the next 2 weeks.

2. RELATIONSHIPS

This may seem ill-placed in a list of time wasters, but hear me out. When I list relationships as a time waster, I’m really only referring to the poor ones. And we all got a lot of those.

The fact is, sometimes you just work better with some people. As a result you can blow a lot of time on those you don’t work well with because of:

• miscommunication — because you don’t understand each other, miscommunications can lead to rework plus all the hours spent gossiping and whining to the guy next to you.
• conflict — if the relationship is particularly shitty, you can waste a lot of time managing conflict. Do this well and the relationship improves, do it poorly and future dealings will be more difficult. Conflict and difficult colleagues can also waste your time in a less direct way: you end up spending longer reviewing emails to them, or thinking through interactions to try and avoid arguments.

Assemble teams that work well together. This seems obvious, yet in large organisations this rarely happens.

When conflict arrises, and it will, address it promptly and with courage.

3. LACK OF PROCESS OR CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF EXISTING PROCESSES

Most professionals would argue that they are burdened with too much process rather than too little, but a well constructed process should save you time and stress.

But there in lies the catch, it must be a well constructed process.

For example, quality assurance processes in you company are aimed to give you clear direction on how to achieve the expected quality of product, saving you the time of having to come up with your own process and the stress of worrying that your product does not meet the expected standard.

The biggest problem I see is that most processes are rushed together, poorly explained, and are rarely if ever reviewed and optimised. Regardless, to avoid wasting time, make a decision to either trust the processes in place, or if you believe it is ineffective, express your specific concerns to management. Better still propose a more effective process that can save everyone time. If you truly believe your way is better, stick to your guns — too many people simply conform to poor processes because of laziness.

Remember it’s entirely possible that the best solution is actually to remove a rigid process.

4. OVERTHINKING

Overthinking a task can create an endless amount of unproductive and demoralising hours.

Often this is because of a culture that fears failure, leading to people who prefer to avoid starting something rather than risk failing at it. The result is people spend too much time trying to perfect a skill in their head rather than in practice.

The key to saving wasted hours overthinking, is to jump in as quickly as you can, no sooner, but also no later, don’t fear failure, and be willing to learn from your mistakes. You will find you learn a lot quicker.

5. PARKINSON’S LAW

For anyone unfamiliar Parkinson’s law, as explained by Wikipedia, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Magically, no matter how many hours you have allowed to do something, that’s how long it takes. Sometimes even more, but rarely, less.

To avoid this, break tasks into discreet and specific sub tasks ideally between 20 minutes and a few hours long. Then with a sense of urgency go about completing those subtasks within the allotted time.

6. CONTEXT SHIFTING

Context shifting occurs when you are focussed on a specific task and then move on to another unrelated or loosely related task. An example is working on a technical design of some sort, then shifting to budget maangment. You may not notice yourself doing it, but shifting context too often can cause distraction, prevent you getting into any kind of flow, and ultimately wastes your time.

Plan your day into chunks of 20 to 60 minutes, where you don’t answer the phone or look at emails. Stay super focused on the specific task, and observe how much more effective you can be.