The late Randy Pausch’s presentation on time management is one that every executive should see to improve their management of our most important scarce resource. Pausch points out that most people don’t equate time to money, but it is simple to get a fairly accurate idea of what an hour of your time is worth. If you are spending your time on low value activities, then you are not maximizing the use of time. An important tidbit of advice is to allocate more time to activities that help accomplish urgent and important goals, though a lot of people spend too much time on non-urgent unimportant goals. That’s probably part of the reason the typical office worker wastes 2 hours a day. Learn more by checking out this great lecture.
Randy Pausch’s Top Time Management Tips
1. Do the ugliest thing first.
2. Focus on the important urgent tasks.
3. Think about time in terms of money.
4. A filing system is essential.
5. Use multiple computer monitors.
6. Have some system to know where you have to be when (it saves brain power).
7. Get a speaker phone for your desk.
8. Stand during phone calls.
9. Start by announcing goals for the call.
10. Call people right before lunch or right before the end of the day.
11. Learn to say no.
12. Find your creative/productive time and defend it ruthlessly.
13. Find your dead time.
14. Turn phone calls into email.
15. Monitor where your time is going. Keep a time journal.
16. Make up a fake deadline and act like it’s real.
17. Empower those to whom you delegate.
18. When you delegate, do the ugliest job yourself.
19. Treat your secretary well.
20. Give people objectives, not procedures.
21. Have someone record what was decided at the meeting and who will do what when.
22. Take away everyone’s Blackberrys.
23. Require meetings to have an agenda.
24. Don’t delete emails.
25. If you want something done, don’t send it to 5 people.
26. Don’t watch television.
27. Eat, sleep, and exercise.
28. Renegotiate deadlines you can’t make.
29. Recognize most things are pass/fail.
30. Get feedback loops.
Image courtesy of gadl