Author: Francis Wade

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The Wisdom of Taking Time Off

This article on taking time off caught my eye on Twitter, and it seems to run counter to the general practice of working as hard as possible until you drop.

It gives the example of a top management consulting firm experimenting with the idea of giving their associates scheduled time off.

I have worked alongside one of the top management consulting firms, and I’ve had a short dose of near all-nighters, working until 3 a.m. on PowerPoint presentations for 8 a.m. meetings.  Sometimes, it would all be for naught. The unsuspecting client would cancel the meeting without realizing all the hard work they were negating … ouch.

Here is an excerpt  from the article:

It’s important to recognize that our experiments are not about reducing professionals’ commitments to their work and clients. We understand that the success of professional services firms depends on hardworking people who value the intensity of the work and are committed to their clients. They relish being in the thick of things, with all the learning and adrenaline buzz that engenders. What professionals don’t like is the bad intensity—having no control over their own work and lives, being afraid to ask questions that could help them better focus and prioritize, and generally operating in ways that are inefficient. Still, professionals accept the bad intensity without hesitation, believing it comes with the territory.

This only perpetuates a vicious cycle: Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people are “always on,” responsiveness becomes ingrained in the way they work, expected by clients and partners, and even institutionalized in performance metrics. There is no impetus to explore whether the work actually requires 24/7 responsiveness; to the contrary, people just work harder and longer, without considering how they could work better. Yet, what we discovered is that the cycle of 24/7 responsiveness can be broken if people collectively challenge the mind-set. Furthermore, new ways of working can be found that benefit not just individuals but the organization, which gains in quality and efficiency—and, in the long run, experiences higher retention of more of its best people.

Click here to be taken to the article: Making Time Off Predictable and Required.

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Vid – Why Most People Fail

Here is a brief video I did that explains why most people fail in their efforts to implement new time management systems.

I posted an article with some similar ideas over at the Stepcase Lifehack website, and I received a comment from a user who called the idea of upgrading rather than replacing a “gentler approach.”

Wow.

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GTDer Audio and Videos

If reading isn’t your thing, then my e-book for GTD®ers need not be the point at which you give up and go no further.

Once you download the book, you can also gain access to the full audio version plus a six-part video series hosted here on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/groups/6mistakes

Not to be a tease, but you do need to download the e-book to get the password (at the moment). As you might expect, it’s free.

 

Mission Control Productivity, FranklinCovey, GTD and Getting Things Done are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company (davidco.com.)  2Time is not affiliated with or endorsed by the David Allen Company, Mission Control Productivity or FranklinCovey.

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Scoring 100% in Time Management

istock_000004921432xsmall.jpgAn article I wrote over at Stepcase Lifehack received a nice thank-you comment.

Scoring 100% in Time Management is all about implementing time management systems and mistakenly thinking that we can implement ALL of the habits and practices built into the approach.

This is a mistake in our thinking that produces stress, and it causes too many people to abandon GTD® and other systems too early.

 

Mission Control Productivity, FranklinCovey, GTD and Getting Things Done are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company (davidco.com.)  2Time is not affiliated with or endorsed by the David Allen Company, Mission Control Productivity or FranklinCovey.

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A Message for All GTDers

6mistakes-cover-2.jpgActually, this is a message to the users of all time management systems: there are some mistakes that people often make when they try to learn Getting Things Done (GTD®), Covey, and all other systems developed by another person.

It’s all detailed in my new report, The Six Surprising Mistakes that GTD®ers Make.

At first blush, you might think that I’m taking a swipe at those who use GTD®. That’s not my goal.

I did, however, make a bunch of mistakes when I tried to implement it a second time. Now, I have the benefit of some insight that tells me I’m not the only one who tries to make GTD® and other systems do what they cannot do — and get stuck as a result.

For more, download the report and have a read. It also comes in an audio format and has its own follow-up video series.

Click here to go to the download page at http://2time-sys.com/6mistakes

 

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Note:

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Mission Control Productivity, FranklinCovey, GTD and Getting Things Done are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company (davidco.com.)  2Time is not affiliated with or endorsed by the David Allen Company, Mission Control Productivity or FranklinCovey.

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Upgrade, Don’t Replace Your Time Management System

In the past week, I had a revelation that’s led me to abandon the idea that people could create and implement their own time management systems.

Now, it’s clear to me that the word “create” is a poor one to use, simply because no one creates a time management system from scratch (except teenagers).

Instead,  we all have time management systems that have worked for us to a point, and then failed because of some change in our environment.

For example, I just read a tongue-in-cheek article claiming that people who don’t have kids have no reason to lack time for anything.

Obviously, the author feels that having kids  is major life change that introduces a slew of new time demands, often resulting in feelings of being overwhelmed.

It may feel to overburdened parents as if there is absolutely no time management taking place, but that’s actually not the case. It’s more accurate to say that their system is being overtaken by the reality of having a newborn.

If that’s the case, then we make a terrible mistake by trying to learn a new time management system as if nothing already exists. We might be unaware of our system, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is in place.

Conducting an upgrade to a house is a very different activity from building a new house from the ground up.  A critical new activity comes into play — surveying what currently exists in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how we must work with it, work around it, and use it.

To make anything better, it’s critical to understand what currently exists. This is a basic principle of continuous improvement that seems to be obscured by almost all the time management approaches that I’ve ever seen.

This leads me to think that the vast majority can only upgrade their time management systems, and that only a few people have the discipline (and luck) to be able to replace an already existing system with another.

It just seems as if it’s too tall a change to ask most people to make — and a possible recipe for failure.

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Higher Skills and Better Results in Scheduling

clock-sfe-wall-clock-35.jpgI found an interesting article on the power of rituals at the Harvard Business Review publishing blog.

I took the excerpt article from the post entitled “An 18 Minute Plan for Managing Your Day.”

It talks about  the power of scheduling and moving from a Yellow Belt to a White Belt in the practice of “Scheduling.”

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. According to the results, 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did the exam.

In another study, drug addicts in withdrawal (can you find a more stressed-out population?) agreed to write an essay before 5 p.m. on a certain day. Per the results, 80% of those who said when and where they would write the essay completed it. None of the others did.

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you’re going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

The success of these individuals is simple to explain. A schedule that has clear commitments, including time estimates, works far better than a mere list of activities for those who frequently have days in which everything that’s on their list doesn’t get accomplished.

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Assessing Your Time Management Skills

basketball-skill_levels.jpgA key part of the 2Time system is a notion I created of different skill levels.

Many  people think that you either have time management skills or you don’t, and that it’s an all-or-nothing phenomenon.

Few, including the time management gurus, talk about having a range of skills and working continuously to improve them over time.

Of course, in the sporting world the idea is an old one.

One of the first things that a coach does is assess his new coachee’s skills in the sport, either through testing or observation. After the assessment is done, they sit down and look over the big picture to see what the coachee’s goals are and how they can be accomplished over time.

An athlete who wants to have some fun on weekends is not given the same plan as one who wants to be world-class.

I did some searching on the Internet and picked up some assessment tools that illustrate how they can be used to assess performance in the following sports:

Baseball

Basketball

Swimming

It’s interesting to read these, because I stumbled into creating a similar assessment for time management without knowing that I was doing so.

If you click on the link for articles above, you’ll be taken to my first attempt to create an assessment tool for each of the 11 fundamentals that I’ve discovered. Each fundamental is described in a separate post, along with the habits that can be observed at each belt level (White, Yellow, Orange, Green).

While the tool I use two years later has changed a great deal from what’s presented here, the basic idea remains. But, to be honest, I never set out to create an assessment tool. My initial idea was to break up each of the skills in a way that could indicate to users what they should focus on at each stage of their development.

I don’t intend this to be a rigid test in any way. In fact, there are probably better ways to describe both the fundamentals and the idea of moving from one skill level to another.

So far, though, I haven’t found anyone who has used the basic idea. As far as I know, I’m alone in thinking this way and writing about it.

But I do hope that that ends soon!

P.S. For anyone interested, the diagram above comes from the Noah Basketball website. They’ve done some major research in the fundamentals of basketball, and this shows the kind of thinking that I wish someone would do on time management. Against the stuff on this page, sites on “basketball tips” look a little silly.

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Stickking to New Habits

stickk-logo.jpgWhile I’m happy with the ideas on this blog, and I truly believe in the power of Time Management 2.0, I still have the feeling of being stuck in Habit Changing 101.

In other words, I’m still not satisfied with the speed and ease with which I’m able to change habits.

This is THE critical point when it comes to making a change in a time management system. All the theory that I’ve addressed on this site is useless if it’s impossible for users to change their habits to implement them.

What I do know is the following:

1) Habit changing is an individual phenomenon. Each person must work with himself or herself to find the right cocktail of methods that succeed. In my case, it seems that I even need to change my approach over time, as what used to work in the past no longer works today.

2) Finding the right “cocktail” takes extraordinary self-awareness and no small measure of patience.  What we often call “laziness” and a “lack of discipline” are often not these things at all; they have more to do with a lack of awareness than a personality defect. Most people try to double their determination, and they vow to “get more serious” with themselves. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that habits have a “muscular memory” that often defies grim demands I make of myself, so that rarely works.

Last week, a partner of mine referred me to a new site — Stickk.com — and it truly struck a chord with me as a tool that could be added to my blend of reinforcement techniques.

The idea is simple. You create a goal, and then set up human and monetary supports to help accomplish it.

The human supports consist of people who are on, and off, Stickk to hold you to account in accomplishing it.

If that doesn’t do it for you, then here’s more — you can actually put some “cold, hard cash” at stake, so you forfeit it if you don’t accomplish your goal.

As a triathlete (and someone who’s known to be thrifty/cheap), I know that there’s a difference between the races I think about doing and those that I actually pay to do.

For example, I have a race to complete on October 31 in Montego Bay, here in Jamaica. I paid for it in July, and it’s made a tremendous difference to my training to know that it’s coming. As a result, I spent 90 minutes in the pool this morning swimming almost 3,000 meters, in my least-favored sport of the three.

I know that when I put enough money down for a race, as I did for an Ironman in 2005, I increase the odds that I’ll accomplish the goal.

In an earlier post, I shared that I used a Habit Tracker as my daily tool to perform the daily practices I’m likely to forget. One of them is particularly difficult to do each day: “Do One Thing for My Wife that’s Unseen.” I’ve been failing at this new practice in spectacular fashion, and I’m thinking that I should try the Stickk approach to see if I can “help” myself make it happen.

Maybe I live without having to be more serious, determined, or disciplined.

P.S. If you’d like to be one of my “referees” or “supporters” in working on this goal, simultaneously with testing out Stickk, shoot me a message from my Contact Page. Tell me a little about yourself and why you’d like to participate in this particular experiment.
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