Category: Scheduling

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Evidence-Based Scheduling

This article is a bit geeky, and reminds me of the kind of thinking I first learned to do in graduate school.  It’s all about building accurate schedules for software development projects, and the need to drive down to small tasks in order to properly estimate the length of large projects.

Click here to find the article on “Evidence-Based Scheduling.”

There are some interesting points that it makes that I recognize from using Orange Belt scheduling techniques, or in other words, replacing task lists with a single schedule.

1.  It’s easy to over-estimate your ability to get stuff done.  When you start using a schedule, you quickly start to wonder if you’re not a bit crazy, because everything seems to take much longer than it ever used to.  It doesn’t.  You’ re just paying attention for the very first time.

2.  You can’t put more blocks of wood in a box than it can hold.  In other words, you can’t schedule a 5 hour task into a 2 hour time-slot.  You’ll be shocked at how badly this works when you start working with a schedule of your tasks!

3.  When you use a schedule, you learn the power of distributions, and unbiased estimates.  That’s a fancy way of saying that when you tell the kids that it will take you all 3 hours to drive to Orlando from Miami, that what you really mean is:

– the real average drive time is four hours

– the distribution varies from 2.75 hours to 5.5 hours

They’ll thank your for your precision and honesty…

Honestly, it’s a great article.  Click here to find the article on “Evidence-Based Scheduling.”

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Someone Else Agrees!

I found a website that echoes the very same thoughts I have shared on this site about the power of upgrading one’s Scheduling skills, and relying less on Listing.

I don’t think they have found this site, as they appear to have arrived at the same conclusions that I have independently, but they are the very first site I have found that (openly) agrees with what I have written.   When the number of time demands increases above a certain number, it’s time to upgrade one’s skills to prevent stuff from falling through the cracks.

The software that MyTimeFinder sells is interesting, but it appears to lack Outlook integration at the moment.  However, they are absolutely on the right track… but what do you think?

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Further Benefits of Orange Belt Scheduling

In a prior post I described what it’s like to upgrade one’s skills at Scheduling.

While there’s an immediate benefit to the professional who makes the jump, there is also an important benefit that comes from having an explicit schedule on paper, versus one that’s stored in one’s memory.

Imagine that, for a moment,that your boss approaches you with a new meeting or project. As she describes the work required, you start to feel a bit queasy as you aren’t sure you can deliver the results in the necessary time-frame. A negotiation starts, and it turns out that she really wants to work done, and she starts to ask you questions about your other commitments.

It turns out that White Belts have very different conversations than Orange Belts when confronted by a boss with an urgent request.

If you are a White Belt, your schedule looks like this:

Most of your time demands are stored in your memory, and if you are working with a to-do list it’s likely that her eyes would glaze over if you try show her all the items that are on it. When she presses you on changing around your schedule you get a bit lost, as it’s hard to mentally juggle all the items that you are trying to track, and that’s especially true when you are on the hot seat.  In addition to the task portion of each time demand, you are also keeping in mind some idea of when tasks start and end, in terms of the time of day and, of course, the date.

It’s likely that if your boss is persistent that you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage. You may feel pressured as your objections to the additional work are met with some sharp questions, and on the spot coaching.

On the other hand, if you are an Orange Belt, then your schedule would look like the following… (for the very same week.)

Your major time demands have been laid out in your calendar, and when your boss surprises you and you start to feel queasy, you simply say: “Let us both look at my schedule.”

As your schedule flashes up on the screen, you show her exactly what time you currently have available, and why you feel queasy. She looks at the schedule, and a different kind of conversation ensues. It’s about what should be done when, and why, and which items can be moved from one day to another in order to accommodate the new project. As you try to solve the problem together, you aren’t defying logic, or arguing from a position that’s uninformed by the facts.

Something has to give, and your schedule clearly shows that every time demand you commit to has a consequence. If the project requires overtime, weekend and vacation work (God forbid!) you can have a clear conversation with your boss about what will happen to the precious time you spend with your family, and whether or not those airline tickets for your next vacation are refundable or not.

It’s a mature conversation based on facts, rather than an adversarial argument over your mental schedule, and your feelings.

Now, take your boss out of the picture, and imagine that instead of a time demand originating with your boss, it’s one that starts with a request made by your colleague, spouse or friend.

Then imagine that there’s no-one else in the picture… you are just making commitments of your own, to yourself. With only a White Belt Schedule you are likely to make mistakes, and commit to impossible deadlines in all spheres of your life, and to feel frustrated that you don’t have enough time.

With Orange Belt skills, you are much more likely to make rational decisions and to conduct reasonable discussions, and to have the peace of mind that when you commit to a future deliverable, you can truly deliver.

P.S.  When your Scheduling skills are at a White Belt level, it forces you to make lots of reviews of lists, to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks.  Many users have trouble conducting these reviews, as they become onerous when the number of time demands gets to be too large: I outlined this phenomena in the video: “Permanently Fixing the Weekly Review.” Orange Belt Scheduling fixes the problem by replacing lots of lists with one schedule.  Click on the Videos tab at the menu on top to find the video on the page.

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More on Moving From Lots of Lists to One Schedule

In an earlier post entitled Moving from a List to a Schedule, I shared some of the challenges to be overcome in upgrading one’s time management system from Yellow to Orange in Scheduling. It turned out to be a pretty popular post, but I know that there’s a school of thought that advocates that one should never go beyond Yellow Belt skills in this area.

The logic proceeds as follows:

  • keeping a schedule of all or most tasks is too hard / difficult / cumbersome
  • therefore, tasks should be kept in lists
  • schedules should only be used to track appointments with other people

As you may have noticed, I am challenging that wisdom by saying that new mobile technology makes it quite easy to change a schedule on the fly, and in fact, Orange Belt skills are a necessary upgrade when time demands grow beyond a certain point.

A few years ago, I actually did an experiment, and tried a downgrade that I don’t recommend but I’ll illustrate here.

In the following video, the college student who puts together an Orange Belt schedule builds  it up based on 4 classes that she has in the semester.

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This is NOT the approach that most books, programs and websites advocate. Instead, they argue that it’s impossible / impractical to maintain a schedule such as this one, even with the advent of portable planning tools, such as smartphones, PDA’s, iPad’s and laptops.

Following their advice would produce the following schedule, and list:

This schedule requires a list looking like this one to support it:

  • read
  • write paper
  • work on paper
  • college activity
  • goto movie
  • swim practice
  • eat
  • shower
  • night out

As I mention in the prior post on this topic, using this approach means looking at this list every day, in order to construct a mental schedule of what needs to be done and when.  Some would argue that you need to construct many different types of lists, depending on priority, location, “context,” energy or other different categories, but this doesn’t prevent you from having to look at most items each day to make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach, which is one that White Belts use.  It’s a useful one for handling a limited number of time demands.

However, a you can see from the video, and from the change that was made at the very end in order to accommodate a “night out,” it’s much easier to manipulate a schedule that’s laid out in front of you, than one that’s stored in one’s memory.

A few years ago, before starting this website, I tried changing my approach from using a full, Orange Belt schedule to using a White Belt schedule accompanied by lots of lists.  It didn’t work – I noticed stuff falling through the cracks, and I kept making mistakes with my mental schedule.  Checking the same lists all the time was a hassle that never went away.

When I reverted to my former habit of what I now call Orange Belt Scheduling, things became much easier, and once I determined how to convert email messages into scheduled items in my calendar, it became easy to manipulate time demands as they flowed into my Inbox. My peace of mind returned.

Luckily, the tools that we have available to us mean that even paper schedules are a thing of the past, but the video is a great one as it shows very simply, the power of working with a schedule that’s laid out in front of you, instead of in your memory.
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A New Vision of Scheduling Tools

I just saw an amazing video that shows the real-time progress of civilization over the past 200 years.

The content is inspiring, but this post is actually about the technology. Following on the heels of my post on Migrating from Listing to Scheduling, can you imagine a time when you are able to manipulate your schedule with this much ease? That is, you could turn on a switch from your smartphone which would then project as many days as you’d like in front of you.

You’d then be able to move around time commitments from one time slot to another effortlessly, between different days if you wanted, and be able to see where the errors are in overlaps, overly-ambitious time-frames, not enough exercise and the like.

You’d also be able to add in newly scheduled items from your email with the touch of a button, or from your paper pad or capture pen with the flick of a switch.

It’s futuristic stuff, but how close would we have to get for most of us to rely on schedules rather than lists?  I just completed a time management book that argued, as most do, that it’s too hard to keep a calendar of tasks.  That was probably inspired by the memory of trying to keep a schedule on paper.

Watch the video, and let me know if you get a glimpse of the future.

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Migrating from a List to a Schedule

I have been doing a little research on some of the popular time management systems described in books and blogs, and most of them tell their users to do two things:

1) keep lots of lists

2) keep a minimum schedule of appointments

In 2Time, this thinking is the equivalent of telling people that they should give up on ever earning Orange Belts in time management, because Orange Belts have found ways to make the transition effectively, and are able to handle more time demands as a result.

What they do is simple:  they remove time demands from places like their email Inbox and their paper pads, and they immediately put them in their schedule.  Yellow Belts (who are below Orange Belts) add them to lists.

Let’s slow the action down a bit to see why it’s easier to work with a schedule than a list when one is trying to manage a high number of time demands.

When a Yellow Belt decides to take an action in the future, they simply add the item to a list.  However, when they do so, they are also simultaneously and mentally recording the following:

  • how long the task takes – they make an estimate
  • when they believe the task will start and end
  • what else might be pre-scheduled for that time-slot, and they determine this by scanning their memory
  • a decision not to schedule anything for the same projected time period

As you can learn in my free program – MyTimeDesign 1.0.Free – and on this website, this is not a problem for low numbers of time demands.  It’s quite a bit of mental activity, but it’s inescapable if you decide to add this information to a list.  At some point, you must account for the difference between doing simple tasks like picking up the milk and complex projects such as finishing the annual marketing strategy.

Some Yellow Belts have pretty long lists, which means that they carry around mental schedules that are quite hard to remember.  The way they compensate is by scanning their lists frequently.  They need to check their entire list when they do a review, which might be completed at the start of a week or the start of a day.

Once again, it depends on how many time demands are added  to the list and how fast.  Those that find themselves adding 10 items each morning, might very well have to check the entire list just after lunch in order to rejigger their mental schedule.

Some have gone a step further, and put together lists that correspond to time-spans.  They might have a Today List, or a Tomorrow List or a Next Week List.  This helps a bit, but they still force one to remember the timing of each item on the list.

As an example, take a look at the following list made by someone on Monday morning for work that can be done at his/her desk:

As you glance at the list, you may notice yourself  quickly making an estimate of how much time it will take to complete the entire set of items.  Some may think it will take a week, while others may believe that it should be done by lunch-time.

There is no right answer, of course, but notice that if you were to start the week you’d be carrying around these estimates in your memory.

You could improve things by making a list of tasks for each day, like this:

These could be separated into three lists, but the principle would be the same.  Here the user has accounted for the time realities by dividing the list into separate parts.

However, they are still keeping a mental schedule of each day.

Here is what the original task list would look like in an Orange-Belt schedule:

There are some apparent advantages to be gained from navigating the next three days with this kind of schedule.

  • at any point in the next three days, the time demand to work on next has already been pre-planned
  • there is very little that has to be remembered if this schedule is accessible via smartphone, PDA or laptop
  • it’s easy to see when each item will be done, so that when the boss asks when he’ll be able to see the draft email for the VP-IT, you can tell her when you plan to work on it
  • space can be allocated for important items like lunch, breakfast and time each morning to plan the day
  • possible problems can immediately be seen:  the activity at 6pm on Monday night – “edit white paper for conference” – looks as if it’s a scheduling problem waiting to happen, with its proximity to the prior task and its placement at the end of the day
  • with this kind of schedule, it’s much easier to say No to anyone who wants something done during the next three days.  On a White Belt calendar, these days would appear to be blank, but the fact is, they are filled with important items that don’t involve other people appointments

With the advent of electronic calendars comes a tremendous gain:  this schedule can be easily changed around at will.  When paper calendars were the only ones that were available, this kind of scheduling was onerous. but the software has now become easier to use, allowing us to use a schedule like this to make a plan that is entirely flexible.

With a schedule such as the one described above, there are none of the things that a list requires you to try to remember.

This is a fairly simple example, with only a handful of time demands, but you can imagine what happens when that numbers grows.  Someone who is stuck with Yellow Belt skills is forced to review frequently, and remember a lot about each item.  It’s a lot of work that can quickly become overwhelming.

Some of the books I have read argue against this kind of scheduling because they say that it’s too cumbersome to change a schedule on the fly.  That point of view needs an upgrade… it WAS too cumbersome, but today’s software has made things much easier, and there is evidence that college kids who never had to make lists on paper are doing  this kind of scheduling on their mobile devices with ease.  I can speak from experience – I once experimented by reverting to lists after using schedules for some time, with disastrous results.  (Here’s an article the describes how How Smartphones are Transforming the Mobile Lifestyles of College Students and you can search for the Survey of Students’ Technology Use for Time Management.)

And the fact is, new technology is making it easier every day.

I have used Orange Belt scheduling techniques for years and found it be a powerful tool that requires important habit changes, but is well worth the effort.  It’s a scalable habit that can accommodate way more time demands than lists ever can, and its much closer to the project management best practice of laying out activities in time using a similar tool:  Gantt Charts.

Many years ago, they made the switch from running projects using lists, and were immediately able to complete larger and more complex projects.  Now that the tools are readily available, it’s time for professionals to upgrade their personal practices so that they can avoid the experience of overwhelm, even as they handle more each day.

P.S. If what I’m saying is accurate, it points to a few possible new industries…

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Jumping from a Yellow to Orange Belt in Scheduling/Listing

In the 2Time system, there is a critical point that must be crossed to make the jump from a Yellow Belt to an Orange Belt. At this point, a professional must change two major habits at once, doing much less Listing and more Scheduling.

This is no mean feat.

I’ll be covering this switch and all that it means in a series of posts, but let me start off by giving the reasons why someone would want to make such a major change.

Most adults who grew up without computing resources learned how to make lists somewhere in their teens or early twenties. These were paper and pen lists that were intended as memory joggers. They easily and cheaply expanded individual effectiveness, and allowed one to work on a greater number of time demands than their memories could manage. The results were easy to see: homework that would have been forgotten was remembered, phone numbers that would have been lost forever were stored later and the skimmed milk made it to the fridge at home as a result of a trip to the corner store.

At some point, they also learned to use a calendar as a method for scheduling meetings and appointments. The first appointment calendars were modeled after the ones used in doctors’ offices, and only included a few items. These were also built with paper and pens or pencils.

Most time management books stop at this point, and advocate this approach, with only minor variations. Some emphasize the way in which the lists must be categorized and sorted. Others say that the key list needs to be limited to only what can be done on that day, and other lists should be kept of future time demands.

There are a few systems, however, who advocate the upgrade to Orange Belt Scheduling, and it’s a shift that’s ctually being driven by today’s college students.

Smartphone, laptop and iPad penetration in tertiary institutions have placed powerful productivity tools at the hands of millions of smart kids. They aren’t limited to paper and pen like their parents were. Instead, they have a choice of using electronic calendars in a variety of devices.

For example, their classes are scheduled on their electronic calendars, and not on paper.  When they sign up for a class, their schedule is instantly updated.  Once that happens, many go the extra step and schedule other important activities that must be done if they are to be successful.

Most of who are effective will also create a study schedule at the same time, and if they are realistic they’ll also set time aside for life’s other essentials such as meals, exercise social time and leisure. Here is an example of a Darden School of Business student who has done just that.

He hasn’t scheduled all his meals, or exercise, and he hasn’t included all his study time, but you can imagine that this is an important part of his plan for doing well that  semester.

The reason that a schedule like this works so well is that students have a tremendous number of time demands to manage in any given week, and any item that falls through the cracks is likely to produce an immediate impact on their grades or some other part of their lives.

At the same time, it’s not too hard to see that managing an electronic schedule of time demands is more efficient than the alternative: keeping a list of these same items to be done each week.

Listing is a very efficient method for tracking a low number of time demands, and it was a decent tool to use before the advent of internet communication.  Now, life is different, with the average professional facing hundreds of time demands each day.

The old method of keeping a list on paper no longer works at higher volumes, for practical reasons.  Updating a paper list with more than 10-20 items is time consuming.  Also, paper lists don’t have backups. It’s a practice that can only be afforded by entry-level employees with light workloads, or someone who works part-time.

Electronic lists are better, but they become a mental burden.  Let’s use the example of the Darden student.  If he were to create a list instead of a schedule, he’d end up with a physical list and a mental schedule.

The reason is simple.  When anyone makes a to-do list of any kind, they automatically make a calculation, and need to store some information in their memories.

For example, the item: “Learning Team” appears on the student’s schedule five times.  If he weren’t using a schedule, and instead had the item on a list it might look like this:

  • Football practice
  • Learning Team
  • Dinner
  • Cold Call

As he glances down the list and his attention rests on “Learning Team” he instantly makes a calculation:

  • On what days will I perform this action?
  • What times will it start each day?
  • What time will it end?
  • How far ahead do I need to prepare for it?

Once he answers each of these questions, he’d store the results in his memory.  If you multiply these actions of calculating and memorizing by the number of items in his schedule, you could see that he has now given himself the difficult task of remembering a great deal of his schedule, rather than having it plotted out in front of him.

When someone asks him if he’s free on Friday night, he has nothing to consult but his memory at that moment, and he’s likely to make a mistake.

It’s obvious that an attempt to remember all these items for every item in the list is likely to fail.  It’s just not possible to manage a great number of time demands using memory.

This is precisely the challenge that many working professionals face today.  They have a large and growing number of time demands, that simply cannot be managed with a long list and a basic schedule of appointments.  When they try to do so they end up feeling overwhelmed, burdened and stressed out, with lots of time demands slipping through the cracks.  They spend inordinate amounts of time reviewing their lists each day, making sure that nothing has popped to the surface when they weren’t looking.

They need to perform the upgrade that will take them to a different blend:  short lists used infrequently, and a deeper schedule that includes all the time demands they are likely to forget, overlook or under/over estimate in terms of their duration.

(If you’re a fan of project management techniques, you’ll undoubtedly recognize some best practices taken from that discipline, and applied to individual time management practices.  The most recent mobile latest technology makes this translation a feasible option for the first time on a large scale. )

In future posts I’ll address other questions related to this upgrade, such as when it should be undertaken, how it should be initiated and who would gain the most from making the switch.
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The New Skill of Re-Scheduling

I realized recently that I need to add a critical sub-skill within the overall Discipline of Scheduling — it’s the ability to change a schedule as often as necessary.

Back in the days of paper schedules this was a very difficult task, involving pencils, erasers, white-out and the like.  It was easy to create a mess, and hard to move things around without getting frustrated.  Many writers and authors of time management books and classes remember those days well, and decided that it was impossible to manage a schedule  in this way. They recommend strongly that users not try to use a schedule of tasks, and to assign tasks to lists, while reserving calendars for appointments.

Things started to shift a bit when Outlook expanded to include a calendar function, around the time that the Palm Pilot hit the market in the mid 1990’s.

Unfortunately, many users who gave up on scheduling back then, still haven’t developed the skill, even though we are a long way from paper calendars, and it’s not hard to see a time when everyone will have a smartphone synced with a calendar that’s probably also stored in their wrist-watch.

Now, it’s relatively easy to rejigger a calendar many times in a single day, and it’s a skill that’s becoming easier as the technology improves.  However, just because it can be done does not mean that the skill is an easy one to master. Here are the steps to be followed, in the form of a simple example.

You are at your desk in the morning having crafted your calendar for the day when your boss calls.  She needs the Walker report done by 4pm in order to attend an important meeting, and she’s asking if you can get it done.

Your first response is, “Let me check.”

You look over your electronic calendar and notice that you were meant to complete working on the Simpson file that afternoon, and you tell your boss: “I had planned to work on the Simpson file this afternoon.”

She gets quiet for a long moment, and then replies: “I need that Simpson file — I’ll do the report instead.”

Five minutes later she calls back: “I just remembered… Simpson is away on vacation… let’s delay working on the file until he comes back.”

You agree, and open up your calendar.  You slide the 3 hours scheduled for the Simpson file to the following week to an empty time-slot, and block out the afternoon to work on the Walker report.

This is a fairly typical transaction that takes place every day in the life of an Orange Belt, but there’s a difference between the way a White Belt conducts the same conversation.   They first check their memory to see what they planned to do in that time-slot.  Then, they might check their list of tasks to see what’s on it – and that could take some time.

Their use of memory is unreliable and imperfect, and a source of errors.  Their lists might be too long to remember when they planned to do most of the items.

Notice that if the conversation was focused on a day 7 days in the future, or 77 days in the future, the Orange Belt would undertake the same actions.  They’d check their schedule of tasks, and follow the same process.

The White Belt would have a problem, because their memory is not likely to stretch that far in the future, even if they are quite bright.  At some point, they won’t remember what they planned to do, and they’ll struggle.  They could easily make a mistake, because they are carrying so much in personal memory.

Re-scheduling is much easier if there is a standard, reliable process that’s followed that doesn’t change,and uses data that’s not based in memory.

It’s also made easier when one remembers that an electronic schedule is just a plan that is quite likely to change.  In my schedule for example, I have set aside time for lunch each day of at least an hour, which includes a short nap.  (I find that I need that kind of time to return to my work completely recharged, and have since found lots of research that supports the practice.)

However, there are some days when it’s just not possible or practical to take an hour, and I easily change my schedule to accommodate the shift.  I rarely change the actual electronic schedule, but I often take a look to see what I had planned to complete after lunch.

Having my schedule in front of me help me to decide how much flexibility I have, and also what to do about major and minor schedule changes.  When I can see not only today but other days laid out in front of me, I experience a peace of mind knowing that I am looking at a feasible plan.

That’s very different than keeping a schedule in my memory.

When the boss calls to make the change with a White Belt, he’s likely to do a quick mental scan, and under pressure he’s likely to say yes, without remembering to account for items like the Walker report.  Or lunch.  Or choir practice after work.  Or his kid’s science project.

This is not to say that everyone needs to develop the skill of rejiggering a schedule, as there are many people whose overall number of time demands is low enough to plan each day as it comes, the way a White Belt does.  There are also some who are unable to develop the skill of manipulating an electronic schedule, and must stick to paper.

However, for most people, that’s not good enough to handle the number of time demands that must master each day.  They are always rejiggering their schedule depending on what’s happening in front of them, but the most skillful are keeping themselves unstressed by managing their schedules using a portable electronic tool, rather than just their memory.

This is especially true for those who must manage complex projects with multiple deliverables stretching out for a year or more.  They schedule time in their calendars to complete activities that require anywhere from 5-10 distinct steps, and these must be scheduled in order to avoid trying to remember them all and ultimately failing.

The obvious fact is that better planning allows for better decision-making, and when interruptions and disruptions inevitably arise, it’s easier to work with a schedule laid out in front of you rather than a mental construct whose details are easily forgotten.

Some resist the idea of keeping a schedule of tasks because they believe that they’ll feel bad if they have to change it.  Others don’t want the feeling of guilt that they think is inevitable from seeing a daily schedule get blown to bits by an unplanned activity.

The truth is, these things will happen whether or not a user has an electronic calendar or not, and it’s easier to deal with these feelings if the schedule is in front of the user, displayed on a screen, than if it is kept in their memory.

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An Experiment with Scheduling

I just stumbled across a post over at Matt Cornell’s blog in which he shares an experiment he performed around the discipline of Scheduling.

For those readers who are familiar with GTD®,  you will notice that he clearly crosses a boundary that that particular system enforces.  The schedule should only be used for items that have “hard edges,” or in other words, cannot be changed easily (e.g. a meeting with your boss at 4pm.)

From a 2Time point of view, this boundary is what separates White Belts from Yellow Belts in time management.  Yellow Belts don’t need elaborate lists that must be checked once a task is complete — they simply set up their calendars to handle most all tasks (while using lists to manage items on a shopping list that don’t require individual time-slots.)

My own opinion is that when David Allen, the author of GTD, wrote his book back in 2000-1, the tools for scheduling were simply too crude to contemplate the kind of schedule that a Yellow Belt maintains.  Today, we have iPods, Blackberries and Palm Pre’s, and they make scheduling a much simpler task, and the job of carrying around a schedule at all times as easy as carrying around a smartphone.

(While I do have issues with the fact that smartphones don’t easily allow users to create scheduled items from individual emails,  I have to think that that capability is coming… the sooner the better!)

Until that happens, visit Matt’s blog to read: Testing the Classics:  A Time Management Experiment: Time Blocking

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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.