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The New York Times Gets It Wrong, but a Little Right

An article in the New York Times entitled 5 Easy Steps to Staunch the Email Flood seems to fall into the trap that most time management tinkers fall into.

An author shares a system of habits that works for them and essentially tells everyone else to “follow me” based on the evidence of a single success.  It then follows with suggestions that, honestly, fly in the face of accepted best practice such as “don’t treat your Inbox like a To-Do list” which the article heartily recommends.  (This approach works only under certain conditions, according to the research done here at 2Time Labs.)

The article does get one thing right, however, when it’s author, Sam Grobart states:

But the problem with a lot of organizational systems is that they replace one anxiety (“My stuff’s not organized”) with another (“My stuff’s not organized according to this specific system”).

Not to get too Zen here, but maybe the best system is no system. Or, put another way, the best system requires the least behavior modification. A few small habits may have to be adopted, but nothing as rigorous as GTD.

He’s a bit right here, and the point made about replacing one anxiety with another is well taken and related to his second comment. I would reword the sentiment.  The best upgrade requires the least behavior modification.

The problem with GTD® and every other static system is that they don’t attempt to meet the user where he/she currently is.  Most people find themselves:

1) in habit patterns that are far from ideal that they have practiced for many years

2) without a clue, let alone a plan, for how to bridge the gap to a new ideal set of habits

3) lacking any experience in changing complex systems of habits and therefore under-estimate what’s needed to make new habits stick

The result is frequent failure, and it sounds as if the author counts himself in that number.  But the answer is not to come up with a new set of guru-drive prescriptive behaviors, even if they do seem easier. Instead, it’s better to question the game, and then change it entirely.

What users desperately need is help to figure out what small behavior changes to make first, second and third.  And, they must figure it out for themselves as one-size certainly does not fit all when it comes to time management.

The good news is that MyTimeDesign 1.0.Free is about to re-open for registration and you can see exactly what I mean when I imply that the game can be changed.  Stay tuned., and in the meantime, if you are new to this website, see the About tab above for an overview of  Time Management 2.0.

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Why You Need to Take a Multi-Calendar Point of View

I just completed an article for Stepcase Lifehack that was picked up and expanded on by the LifeHacker website.

The idea is a new one:  the time is fast approaching when your time demands will sit in the cloud, and not on your desktop, smartphone or laptop.

Furthermore, the way you look at your schedule will also change when you get used to the idea of looking at your calendar from different points of view, each of which hides the stuff that you don’t want to see.  The benefit?  Being able to track more stuff with less effort, and making it easier to get to the point where your calendar replaces your list.

Here’s the original Stepcase Lifehack article: How to Use 6 Calendar Views to Be More Productive

And the follow-on Lifehacker article: Use a 5-Calendar Setup to Avoid Cluttered and Confusing Schedules

It’s my first time being published on the Lifehacker website — so this is a happy moment!

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Why You Need a Batphone…NOW!

If you have so many sources of interruptions, including phone calls, email messages, tweets and SMS’ that you don’t know what to manage and when, then you need a Batphone.

There’s a cool article on the TimeBack Management website on the reasons why we need a way to be contacted in a time of true crisis.  Most of us have trained ourselves to not answer every call, or process every email message upon arrival — to do otherwise is to turn oneself into a slave to incoming calls/messages — but we still need a way to be reached that cuts through whatever we are doing in the moment so that we can pick up the “Batphone.”

The article makes a larger point, which is that companies desperately need policies around communication an responsiveness that fit in with the smartphone age.

Here’s the article:  “What’s your BatPhone?”

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Dezhi Wu on the Calendar Tools We Really Need #4

A major focus of Wu’s research as outlined in Temporal Structures in Individual Time Management: practices to enhance calendar tool design, is on the paucity of tools that exist to manage our schedules.

She decries the fact that electronic calendars do little more than mimic paper calendars, and offer little functionality in important areas.  She states: “the porting of the paper-based calendar to its electronic cousin, in our view, suffers from a lack of vision.  The electronic version is a replica of the paper version with… fast search capabilities.”

“Builders of electronic calendars could have examined how users think about and construct their schedules.  … they would have run into thinking about how to build tools that allow users to capture the more esoteric and complex temporal structures affecting their time coordination.”

She writes that the current tools offer no support for automatically changing scheduled activities.  For example, in planning software like Microsoft Project, a change in the final due date can automatically cause all the dependent tasks to shift their due dates in concert.  In Microsoft Outlook, no such capability exists.

Also, there is no way to download a project’s individual commitments into one’s calendar.  Instead of manually entering the tasks required to complete one’s taxes, an entire sequence of events could be downloaded that reliably produce the end-result, if followed.  It would allow us to see more clearly what happens when we commit to play a role on a new project, for example, and more realistically deal with the time it will consume.

She gives the example of airlines that allow passengers to download entire flights directly into their calendars.  A smart calendar would incorporate the time it take to get to the airport from the office, and block that time out also!

She also talks about the need for working groups to make their norms that require calendar space more explicit, such as the fact that that the group has a mandatory lunch discussion each Friday and a meeting with the Vice President every last Wednesday of the month.  New members could immediately download these structured commitment upon joining, and observe the impact on their overall schedules.

One of the major complaints from the most effective time managers is the fact that they have to do so much manual work to set up effective schedules that cover the temporal structures mentioned above.  An intelligent auto-scheduler would know to never set time aside for a trip to the grocery store at a time when it’s closed, for example, on a holiday.

Lastly, it should be easier to coordinate schedules.  A project manager should be able to “see” a view of a person’s calendar to determine whether key action items need to be changed in keeping with events happening in other calendars.

Wu mentions a particular intensity around these complaints, and I take that to mean that the opportunity for a significant product innovation exists.  Companies that make electronic scheduling tools could be producing much, much better products, a point that I make here at 2Time Labs.

She obviously has some insight into what an effective user-design might look like, and if game-changing software were to emerge, it would probably sweep into the lives of working professionals at an awesome pace.

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productive! Magazine Features 2Time Labs Article

An article I recently wrote was included in the latest issue of productive! Magazine.

Here’s the link to the website where the full issue can be downloaded or viewed for free:  productive! Magazine Issue 9

Please take a look and pass it on to others who might benefit.

Also sign up to receive Tweets on time management, or download the special report if you’d like to get frequent updates from 2Time Labs.

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Dezhi Wu’s Game-Changing Research on Scheduling #3

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been immersing myself in Dezhi Wu’s book “Temporal Structure in Individual Time Management: practices to enhance calendar design.”  It’s a book based on the research she did over 5+ years and her empirical findings have put to bed some of the questions I have been exploring here at the 2Time Labs.

Here’s a summary of some of the findings as they pertain to a topic I have been exploring in depth.  In it, she uses the term “temporal structure” to mean “a time representation indicating how (people)…. capture, manipulate, and manage … time -related structures… in order to find out the best way to manage their time.”  In an earlier paper she states that a “temporal structure is defined as patterned organization of time used by humans to help them manage, comprehend or coordinate their use of time.”

In other words, temporal structures are the items that you put in your calendar, ranging from birthdays, study schedules, meetings, appointments, project work, exercise time… pretty much anything.

The best time managers use calendars to schedule their tasks.

This finding was unambiguous, according to the following excerpts:

“effective time managers demonstrate more skill in capturing and using their temporal structures than ineffective time managers.”

“better time managers (in terms of how much they accomplished in their work and how busy they were) were more likely to have intricate use of temporal structures as part of their scheduling behavior.”

“time-urgent individuals have a tendency to schedule more activities and are capable of fitting these activities more comfortably into time slots.”…. “They are more capable of completing more work within the same time… and have a tendency to be good time managers.”

“Effective time managers who exhibit less procrastination are found to use…. (and create) …significantly more explicit temporal structures in comparison to time managergs who procrastinate.”

“Time managers who meet more deadlines exhibit significant differences on the use of explicit temporal structures”

“there is a significant correlation between meeting deadline and creation of temporal structures.”

“Within the set of respondents were individuals who complained less about the difficulty of managing their time and who also had more time for personal activities and additional achievements. …. they were better able to estimate the amount of time a task required…  They created their own temporal structures to manage their life… they allocated units of time for specific types of repeating activities.  These better time managers also recorded more of the external temporal structures affecting their time usage in their electronic calendars. In contrast, another set of respondents, who complained about a lack of time for accomplishing anything significant, were much less likely to record and manage their time in a calendar system…. They were relatively unproductive… (and) produced less work product.”

Her research involved over 7,000 respondents and took place in a variety for forms, including surveys, in-depth interviews and a survey of existing time management research that must be the most comprehensive of its kind.

What does this all mean for the average professional?

Well, it casts into doubt the assertions made in many time management and productivity books that state or imply that it’s too difficult to keep a calendar of tasks, and that instead one must revert to using lists.  In all the research I’ve done, I’ve never seen any data to back up these statements, or even a single author who has stated that they tried both methods and have first hand experience that compares the use of lists to electronic scheduling.

Wu’s research backs up my own findings: there are many professionals who manage their tasks in schedules, and they tend to be the more productive as a result.  In numerous posts on this website, I have made that point, but here is the first empirical evidence that backs up my observations, and my own experience in moving from an electronic calendar, to lists, and back again to a calendar.

There are other findings I’ll share in future posts having to do with the paucity of tools at our disposal, different time management types and the reason why there is so little research.  None of it contradicts the 2Time Labs concept that each user needs a system that is customized to his/her needs, and habit pattern, and that it’s simply invalid to state that one size fits all.

If you liked this post, take a moment to download the 2Time Labs Special Report, and also to follow me on Twitter or Facebook using the links in the right-hand column.

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Finding Software that Links Goals to Habits

I found an interesting program that connects goals with not only tasks, but the habits that need to change to make them happen.

On a consulting call with a client earlier today, she bemoaned the fact that managers were allowing strategic plans to fall through the cracks.  I described that fact that old habits executed daily aren’t enough to implement some new plans — they require new habits.  Unfortunately, they are often hard to learn.

Maybe this software could help:  Goals on Track.

N.B. Sorry about the incorrect link posted earlier.

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Find the Right Personality for Your Productivity

A basic idea underlying Time Management 2.0 is the notion that one size / system can never fit all.

There are few places in books or on the Internet where this point is embraced, accepted and addressed in some form, and here’s one I stumbled across.

Kirsten over at the Being MultiPassionate blog has found some time to come up with a quiz that gives some insight into the kind of productivity system you should be implementing, based on your personality.  It’s an interesting take on this very new idea — follow this link to take her short quiz.

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What I’m Learning from Doing Better Reviews

Once again, I am tinkering with my time management system.

A little background… the belt system set up here at 2Time Labs describes skills ranging from White, Yellow, Orange and Green belts.

It goes no further than these 4 skill levels because I wanted to be able to set higher belts, as they are discovered and articulated.  Also, I gave myself room to grow by intentionally crafting at least one Green Belt element that I have not achieved. It means that while I talk about the wonders of Green Belt skills, that I do so from the vantage point of an Orange who one day hopes to claim not just one but many other, higher belts.

An essential practice to master to move up from one skill level to the next is a Review of my system, both in terms of the content that in it, and how well I am executing each of the 11 fundamentals practices.  In the past I have left this review to happen on an ad-hoc basis, which simply means that it wouldn’t happen unless I led a live NewHabits program — I learn a lot about my personal system, and where it’s faulty when I have to teach a course.

As soon as I started the review I realized that my profile needed to be updated.  Some practices were stronger, while others were weaker but I’m not sure if that’s due to the improved tools I have for analyzing each practice, or because I have changed habits over time.

Here is my current profile — those who have taken either MyTimeDesign or NewHabits training programs would know what

In keeping with the 2Time Labs convention, I am an Orange belt, which is the lowest belt on my chart.

It’s easy to slip back down to a lower level, and destroy one’s piece of mind.  I learned that when I do my review, I am able to catch these slips much earlier, hopefully preventing a bigger problem from happening.

Unfortunately, there was a slip in Tossing when I learned that users have a bad habit of maintaining empty folders in Outlook.  Back I went to an Orange Belt when I learned how many empty folders I currently have, a practice that is simply unsustainable.

Maybe this is what progress looks like… taking steps to move forward and backward as more/better information becomes available about the higher belts.

Coming soon — if you’re interested in joining me on this journey of self-improvement, sign up for early notification for MyTimeDesign 1.0.Free.