Time Management: Beware the Time Busters

I was furious enough to chew nails. It was rude, unprofessional, and a total abuse of a precious commodity. I had an appointment with a chief executive of a manufacturing company more than an hour away from my home office. We’d scheduled it and then rescheduled it to accommodate additional people he’d wanted to have attend a training workshop for leaders.

The night before, I packed my car with the necessary equipment needed to make the presentation (projector, laptop, workbooks, DVDs, etc.). The day of the appointment I arose before dawn to get myself dressed and ready before the kids awoke. While it was still dark outside, I got my six-and four-year-old son and daughter out of bed, sleepy and complaining. After a lot of rushing and running, hustle and bustle, moaning and groaning, we all somehow made it inside the car as daybreak slowly crept across a sleeping sky. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to make breakfast so I ran the kids through an early morning drive-thru and dropped them off in two different locations. Then I high-tailed it at 80 mph up the interstate to my destination. I needed to be there by 8:30; I got there by 8:20. I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d made it ahead of schedule.

I didn’t unpack the car because I wanted to first get a look at the conference room where I’d be presenting. When I entered the lobby, the receptionist looked at me bewildered then acted like I was speaking a foreign language when I told her why I was there. Immediately, I knew something was askew. She went into an office where some indecipherable discussion took place between her and a gentleman I could not see. It didn’t take long before the executive emerged from the office with a look of embarrassment and—was that annoyance?

Here it comes, I thought. My gut told me I wasn’t going to be happy with the outcome.

“I’m sorry, but we’re not going to be able to do this today,” he informed me. “We had a crisis come up with a customer, and today’s just not a good day.”

All I could do was stare at him at first, mouth open. It wasn’t yet 8:30 in the morning. The day had barely started. Unless this “crisis” came up just five minutes before I walked in, I’m sure he had ample time to call me and cancel before I jumped through a bunch of hoops to get there on time. I did not hide my disappointment, and I voiced it also. He apologized (I think) and offered to pay me mileage. Insult on top of injury. Much like he didn’t take the time to call me and cancel, he didn’t take the time to consider how much inconvenience his last minute cancellation caused me. I had set aside four hours for this appointment. My entire morning was swirling around a toilet bowl for time busters, rapidly flushing away.

I didn’t have hours to blow. None of us do. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done. We’re all exhausted and overwhelmed by days filled with too many activities and not enough time to make them happen. Weeks seem to whiz by unnoticed. And for every irretrievable day that passes, we are bombarded with wasteful periods like this one.

At work it comes in the form of useless emails that circulate by the billions everyday, unplanned co-worker visits while you’re in the middle of an important project, phone calls that go on too long and add very little value to your productivity, and other people who don’t manage their time well so they also waste yours. There are more interruptions and distractions that occur throughout the course of our days than there are productive and meaningful actions being taken. They occur often, and they are interspersed among the things we manage to get done. Therefore, we have the illusion that we are diligent on the job when in actuality we are barely operating at half-capacity. Additionally, we discover that the things that should have top priority during our workday have fallen by the wayside because someone has claimed our attention with a task from their own agenda.

How do we keep our focus on what we should be doing rather than get sidetracked by less important items—and people? Beware the time busters. They look like this:

• Having too many meetings that last too long and get little or nothing accomplished
• Spending too much time on tasks that have little or no corporate value
• Spending too much time on the phone when other modes of communication can be as effective and more efficient
• Not prioritizing our tasks for the day so important projects get abandoned or neglected
• Allowing other people to waste our time by delegating their responsibilities to us
• Accepting too many responsibilities that are beyond our ability to complete within a realistic time frame

Sometimes our time is busted by situations that are out of our control—traffic, other people who disregard our time, unexpected illness that derails our progress, and micro-managing bosses to name a few. But there is something you can do. Three things in particular are: 1) prioritize your day and stick to your plan despite distractions, 2) refuse to do anything extra that would deter you if it does not add value (when the choice is yours), and 3) find ways to complete your duties faster and better. Sometimes we’re still riding a stagecoach when we could be traveling by high-speed rail.

Remember your time is one of the few things that are still in your control. Relinquish it too often, and you’ll find yourself enslaved by unfinished and delayed projects. When you’re always struggling from behind, there’s no way to stay ahead of the game. Reclaim your time and take control.

For more information on time management and other leadership skills, contact Betty Parker at (803) 622-4511 or Sharper4U@sc.rr.com