Author: Francis Wade

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Perfect Time Management

perfect-cover-v1.jpgI have come up with a working title for my book — “Perfect Time Management.”

Where did that particular name come from?

I have been scratching my head for a few weeks thinking about this as I work on it, trying to imagine what the ultimate and ideal result might be for someone who reads the book.

I finally decided that a user who takes the steps to design their own system would design one that is “perfect.”

It can’t be bought off the shelf and be copied from others, any more than a dream home or a custom hot-rod can come from anywhere else other than the mind of the creator.

However, like a home or a car, it must follow certain design principles or it just might not work.  Hence the need for a certain kind of guidance, but not a prescription on what the system should look like.

It would be “perfect” because  it would match the lives that they live, versus someone else’ life.

My goal is to give readers a way of thinking about their time management systems that will provide a new level of empowering awareness.  The ultimate result I want is that a lot more professionals take charge of this important part of their lives, using the advice of many, but never relinquishing the ultimate responsibility.

Once published, this book will provide the help I was looking for when I started writing about time management 3 years ago, after I was dumbstruck at the books and blogs I read that made the implicit assumption that systems designed in Denver or Cambridge could work here in Kingston.

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Escalating Interrupters

check.jpgOnce I was late for a call with former coach.

What made it more significant  than just ordinary lateness was the fact that this was the first call we had arranged.

Her response was even more drastic, to my mind.  She put a clause in our contract that stated that if I were late for another call, the rate I as paying her would go up by 50%, and if I were late again, it would go up by 100%.

Needless to say, I was never late again!

This simple system of escalating reinforcement got me thinking.

Lots of people try to motivate themselves to develop new habits, but fail to create mechanisms that are designed to kick in when their commitment fails.  I’m not sure how this would work for getting rid of bad habits like smoking, but here is an idea of what it would look like for someone who wants to commit to exercise, for example.

Write a series of checks to a work-out partner (e.g. for US$50 each.)  Tell them that for each week that you keep your commitment to turn up at the gym, they are allowed to destroy one check.

If you don’t keep your commitment for a week, they are allowed to cash the check and spend the money in any way they decide.

Then, the game continues, except that the stakes are raised to US$100 per week instead.

The wonderful thing about this is that there is an actual cost for not showing up at the gym — the cost to one’s personal health.  So, in a way it’s just a vivid reminder that skipping a workout does not take place without a cost.

I think that many people would refuse to agree to this kind of self-reinforcement, simply because they are not serious, and would prefer to keep up a pretense of being committed.  If that were to happen, I think it would be a good thing, as it would separate serious commitments from casual, feel-good promises that we often make to ourselves.

What do you think?

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Inspiration from Total Immersion

total-immersion.jpgIt’s funny, but over the past week or so I have been picking up the original threads of thought that inspired me to think that there was a better way to think about time management.

The first indication occurred when I read the book “Work the System” by Sam Carpenter.  I discovered how much I had been influenced by Michael Gerber’s books, starting with “The e-Myth Revisited.”

The second indication came as I started to prepare for my next triathlon, which is some four months away.  I am only a proficient swimmer because of the work I have done over the years on my freestyle stroke, based on the work of Terry Laughlin at Total Immersion.

I picked up his book for triathlon swimmers once again,  so that I can begin to work on my stroke and efficiency.  I was quite surprised to see how much of his ideas had seeped into my subconscious, at a few levels.

One level is related to the actual content of the book, which has presents a whole new way of thinking about swimming that flies in the faces of conventional  wisdom.

The other level has to do with the emphasis on continuous practice, in order to eke out small gains and improvements over time.  Terry encourages swimmers to change their thinking from “doing laps,”  and instead to think about their time in the water as “practice time” — an opportunity to ingrain into their bodies a specific new movement, position or tweak.  Each session must have a plan, and the swimmer shouldn’t end the session without being a better swimmer in some small way.

This focus on developing small, seemingly inconsequential habits is the key to becoming a better swimmer who is more streamlined in the water, uses less energy and therefore performs better on the bike and the run, which together take up much more time than the swim.

My hope in developing this blog, and the thinking behind 2Time is that users will come to see that it’s possible to improve their time management skills by taking a similar approach.

If they are able to figure out the simple changes in practice that are needed to happen, then it’s possible to make them a reality with a focus on changing small habits, or practices.

A top swimmer  cannot escape the requirement of ongoing practice, if they hope to improve.  A professional is no different. It’s crazy to think that there is some way to implement new habits of time management without practicing them over and over again until they become second nature, and greater productivity and peace of mind is the result.

The one thing that I wish I could recommend to each professional is a way to practice the skills each day.

Going to the pool to work out before a competition is obviously the time that a swimmer sets aside to get better.

Where or what is the equivalent time for a professional?

When do they get the opportunity each day to practice new skills?

What would be an easy to structure to add to one’s life in order to try out some new approaches?

I have an idea that there could be time set aside each day to do the following:

1. look back at the previous day to see what can be learned

2. decide which new habit to implement that day

3. set up any supports that are required to ensure that the new habit is fully supported

This practice could be repeated each day, until a new habit has become second nature, and does not require conscious attention.

This is a pretty simple example, but as far as I can tell, it’s the only way to ensure that the time is spent actually practicing the new habit.

Now that I look at it, I realize that  I have been using this process each day myself for over a year, but my focus has been on building my scaffold for the day.

While there are a few gifted swimmers who can immediately implement a new suggestion, most need to invest hours of pool time to gain a fraction of a second here, and a fraction of a second there.  Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps spend months of practice to do just that, and they are perhaps the most gifted athletes of all in their disciplines.

The same applies to working professionals. A few might be able to instantly apply the “top 100 tips,” but for most there is a yawning gap between understanding any given tip and turning it into a new habit.

Thanks to Terry Laughlin for not just making it clear that there is only one way to get better, but also for making the path clear for those (like me) that look at Phelps and have no idea, or the wrong idea, of how to climb the learning curve.

I hope this blog, and the products I produce, do the same.

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Instant Time Management Improvement! With No Effort!!!

freebies.gifI have become an avid, daily user of Twitter, and from TweetDeck  I have an ongoing search that updates itself continuously, letting me know when someone has tweeted using the phrase “time management.”

I just checked the results of the latest search, and found that 3 of the first 14 posts actually used the phrase “time management tips.”  This echoed a trend I have noticed lately — there is a great deal of interest in “tips” in the area of time management.

As I have said in earlier posts, there is nothing wrong with  tips per se.  According to Dictionary.com, a tip is:  “a useful hint or idea; a basic, practical fact.”

However, it seems to me that when someone is looking for a time management “tip” they are looking more for a “hint” than a solid “idea.”  In other words, they are looking for an easy-to-implement piece of advice that requires little effort on their part to implement.

For example, a simple-seeming enough tip could be “purchase iPhone.”  Seems easy enough, as long as the price isn’t an obstacle…  but as I point out in an earlier post, the choice of which technology to implement turns out to be quite an important and difficult one, when seen correctly.  When it’s just  a matter of logging on to Amazon and using a credit card to order a gadget, however, it looks very, very easy.

When I wrote the free e-book  offered on this website I used the following by-line: “Toss Away the Tips, and Focus on the Fundamentals.  At the time, I had a sense that people were focusing on the wrong things, which was triggered by an article I saw listing “The Top 100 Time Management Tips.”

What I didn’t say in the ebook is that I think that we humans absolutely love to hear that something is easy, effortless and free.

We want to believe that greater productivity is simply a matter of putting into place a few tips here and there that require little or no effort.  In other words, the unspoken question is: “how can I get something for nothing?”

In time management, the answer is simple… you can’t.  Here’s why.

Each person on the planet who is aware of the concept of time uses different habits to manage themselves, in an effort to make the most of the time they have.  No two people are exactly the same, and no two habit- systems are the same either.

They were all learned after years of trial and error, most of which took place without conscious effort.  For some, what they have created and implemented works for them.  For many, it doesn’t.

The end-point is the same, however.  Each person has a set of routines or habits that are executed over and over again, and they are now baked into their muscle memory where they are executed without thinking.

However good these habits are, at the same time they are difficult for anyone to break, and therein lies the problem.

When someone makes a decision to become more productive, manage their time better or procrastinate less, they are doing more than asking for a few tips.

Instead, they are setting up an internal battle between their new intention, and their already ingrained habits.  Very few people are any good at willfully, deliberately changing habits, even when there is powerful external pressure to do so.

I once had a friend who was a constant smoker.  A few years ago, he literally smoked himself to an early death, unable to stop the habit that took him on a one-way death march to the grave.  Millions of others do the same each year – testimony to the power of ingrained habits.

The problem is that there is not a single time management system in the world that can be implemented without the development of new habits.  Even the smallest of tips are useless if they cannot be converted by the user into a new habit of some kind.

Given our weakness at “habit management”it’s no wonder that the failure rate is so high.

The problem is that it’s difficult to promote the idea of “hard-to-change habits” and it’s much easier to advertise “10 easy, effortless tips.” I know which option I’d sign up for!

What I have noticed is that developers of time management systems downplay the challenge that users have in making the necessary conversion, and few offer the kind of long-term support that is needed to craft new habits.Unfortunately, habit breaking and making is a time consuming business that requires lots of practice, months of repetition, plenty of emotional support, constant reinforcement of the costs of quitting – all until new some muscle memory begins to develop.

In the book, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, he notes that it takes some 10,000 repetitions on average, to become good at something, and he uses Mozart as an example of someone who almost HAD to become a genius because of the time he devoted to practicing his music.

That is not good news for most of us.

But it’s the truth, even though it might not sell books, programs or workshops.

Also, I’d be shocked if lots of people started tweeting about changing “time management habits”.

If anything, I believe that there will be a gradual dawning of the fact that the constant pursuit of tips is a fool’s errand, and that real change will only come from a steady investment in incremental behavior change.

After all, it’s the only way to produce a top ballplayer, musician or chemist.  Why shouldn’t it be the only way to produce a top of the line, highly productive professional?

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Brilliance in Systems Thinking

samcarpenter_186x305.jpgAs I mentioned in the prior post, I have just finished reading Sam Carpenter’s book — Work the System.

I am a bit in awe of what he’s written, and the fact that he’s written it as a business-owner, rather than a management theorist.

What has really got me excited, however, is that he perfectly echoes, in general terms, the essence of the 2Time approach.

It’s a bit uncanny, really, but if you are a reader of this blog, I invite you to draw your own conclusions about the general principles he has derived, and the ones I describe here on the blog.

He says, for example:

Here is the system-improvement concept in a nutshell:  For a given primary system, in order to ensure that the desired result occurs over and over again, the task is to adjust that primary system’s subsystems so the correct components are being used and they are sequenced properly.

In essence, this is the 2Time approach to Time Management stated a bit differently.  I discovered, to my astonishment, that I have basically followed the same steps he lays out in the book:

1. define the systems and subsystems (i.e. time management and it’s 11 inescapable fundamentals)

2. examine the subsystems, and analyze their components one by one, looking for opportunities for improvement(i.e. focus on building new habits one at a time)

3. make the system improvements, moving each system to peak efficiency.  Document the new procedures (i.e. in the system of Belts moving from white to green.)

Anyone who is familiar with Michael Gerber’s book, The eMyth, will recognize that his ground-breaking book says very similar things from a slightly different perspective, and without contradiction.

Carpenter spends a great deal of time in the book sharing his own experience of  trying to manage a company using the “Whack a Mole” approach to fighting fires on a daily basis. It was debilitating, addictive and ultimately un-sustainable until he had a moment of satori – enlightenment – and saw that his business was one large system that was being poorly managed.  The way to escape the rat race that was killing him was to work on the subsystems.

He argues against the kind of wishy-washy thinking that the focus away from solid, tangible mechanics, and urges company-owners to look for the tangible processes that are falling apart in front of their eyes, while they have been chasing after the fallout.

The problem with a lack of systems thinking is that when bad things happen, we chase after the results to try to correct them, without being able to see the causes correctly.

In a way, this is what people struggle with in their time management, also.

There is stress in their lives, broken promises and forgotten commitments, and they don’t know why.   They place the problem in the wrong mental category, thinking it has something to do with the kids, their own tendency to procrastinate, their ethnicity, the demands of their job, their need for a vacation, etc.

When the factor that they think is the cause changes either by luck or design, they are stunned to find out that peace of mind doesn’t come as they thought it should.

All that’s happened is that they don’t understand how time management systems work… how they ALL work, and that there’s certain inescapable, common design that they must follow in order to function.

Carpenter says virtually the same thing about companies, but he doesn’t go as far as Gerber or I do in suggesting what the subsystems are.

Not a problem, because the book is a compelling autobiography that makes it seem easy to make the journey he has made. He encourages business-owners to figure out their own sub-systems, launch their own improvement programs, come up with their own foundation documents and develop their own language to keep it all together.

At the most, this book is a brilliant business-book that every business owner should read, right before Gerber’s.

At the very least, it has helped me to see my own learning curve, from my degrees in operations research, through Peter Senge, via Michael Gerber and to this point where he echoes the underlying logic of 2Time.

What is clear is that he is elevating systems thinking and acting to a discipline in and of itself, and this is one of the book’s major contributions.  He has made a powerful addition to the work Peter Senge did in the 1990’s to bring “systems thinking”to the fore in his book The Fifth Discipline.

I recommend it wholeheartedly.  Download Work the System here.

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Work the System – Now Free

work-the-system.jpgI had the unique fortune of visiting the Work the System website while the book is being offered for free.

While I write a review of the book, I want to invite you to “grab it while you can.”

According to the Work the System website, the book is available for download only until July 27th, 2009 — that’s tomorrow.  While it might very well be extended, this is an excellent book that’s well worth the five minutes it will take to download it.

Download the Work the System e-book here.

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A Survey Question Coming Soon

hypothesis-test.gifI am planning to ask some questions in an upcoming time management survey, about whether or not users have an issue with learning new habits.

I recently read a shocking statistic — some 90% of Americans don’t get past the first chapter of the average book that they purchase.

Clearly, they don’t have in place the habits that they need to complete the book, and I imagine that the reason given has little to do with “interest in the book” and everything to do with “finding the time.”

In other words, they don’t have the habits, or the ability to create the habits, that support the completion of a book they wish they could finish.

I imagine that the same thing happens when someone attends a  2 day training program, hears a one hour webinar or downloads an ebook on time management tips.  They hear some good ideas that they come to believe are wortwhile, and then fail to implement them in their lives.

That’s not to disregard the handful who can create new habits at will.  They can learn a new practice and put it into place immediately.

The vast majority, however, have a great challenge.

They grasp the new ideas very quickly, and tell themselves to implement them, but simply fail.

One question I hope to ask is why they failed.

As a part of MyTimeDesign 2.0, I hope to use the internet to provide the kind of reinforcement that will improve the odds that a user will succeed in putting in place the habits they want, and continue them over time.

Some of the strategies I have used in MyTimeDesign 1.0 and in the live NewHabits programs do include these kinds of supports over a 2-3 month period, but I am now thinking that that might just not be enough.

I am starting to believe that a time management program that sets 4 hours apart for just assisting participants to teach themselves new habits would increase the implementation of new habits dramatically.

Hopefully, the survey will help to clarify this particular hypothesis.

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Covey’s FTF vs. Allen’s GTD

istock_000003307226xsmall.jpgArticles like this one are interesting in their attempts to compare one time management system versus another.

But if you read carefully, you’ll probably find yourself liking a few things from each, and willing to discard some different things from each.

The only reasonable response, it seems to me, is to  create one’s own approach that uses the best that one can find from all sources.

 

 

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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Another Custom-Built Time Management System

Here is a link to a post in which a user describes a time management system that she created for herself: My “GTD®” Hacks

While I don’t know enough about her system to say much about it, she makes the point very clearly that this works for her at the present moment, and gives her the degree of peace of mind and productivity that she wants.

While her needs are likely to change in the future, and her paper-based system may prove to be too bulky,)  the point is that it fits the purpose she’s trying to accomplish now.

One innovation that she uses is a 24 hour calendar, and apparently she’s doing some pre-planning for each upcoming day based on her mid-term goals.

She’s done some good thinking to come up with a great example of Time Management 2.0.

 

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.