Time Management: the 1-minute-block tip

A Coach friend of mine gave me an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive on time management.

Are you car­ry­ing a HUGE back­log on your TO DO list? Are you WAY behind in your filing? Feeling overwhelmed? Are you pro­cras­ti­nat­ing as a result, and cre­at­ing an even greater back­log? Do you feel you never have enough time to achieve what you need to achieve?

This may well boil down to how we organ­ise our “avail­able” time men­tally. Let me explain…

The more impor­tant the task, the more time we think we need, and the more we pro­cras­ti­nate because… Well, it is just over­whelm­ing! Obvi­ously, the solu­tion lies in chunk­ing big tasks into smaller ones.

The FIRST thing is to be clear about what has to be accom­plished, THEN allo­cate time needed to accom­plish it (and this is where my coach friend’s advice comes really handy!)

1. Do a list of what has to be done: task (clear up my in-tray, organ­ise my next trip, write up an arti­cle, pre­pare for a pre­sen­ta­tion etc…)

2. Divide each task into steps ask­ing your­self: what is the first thing I need to do (this becomes your first sub-task)? What is the last thing I need to do to know that the task is accom­plished?  and each step in beween.

3. Allo­cate time to each step.

Now, a thought on time allo­ca­tion. Do you know how Heads of States sched­ule their time? In blocks of … min­utes! Have you seen the movie Char­lie Wilson’s War? There is a scene where Texas Con­gress­man Char­lie Wilson’s is con­duct­ing a meet­ing with CIA agent Gust Avrako­tos while at the same time, attend­ing to a series of emer­gency meet­ings with his staff. 3 min­utes here, 1 minute there.

3 min­utes for a per­sonal phone call, 6 min­utes to dis­cuss about the main lines of a speech to come, 12 min­utes for a meet­ing with a lob­by­ist while at the same time, chang­ing tie and get­ting made up to appear on TV etc…

Often, over­whelm is ONLY the result of inad­e­quate chunk­ing.

3.a Look at your steps/sub-tasks, and put a fig­ure in front of each of them and ask: how many MINUTES (not hours) do I GIVE MYSELF to achieve this? (It is impor­tant to do this process in writ­ing, you’ll have some­thing tan­gi­ble to rely upon when some­thing else gets in the way).

3.b Now look at your day; how many small chunks of time will you have avail­able, what I call the “in-between” chunks of time? Prob­a­bly MANY! Going down a lift, tak­ing a taxi, dri­ving to work, wait­ing for a friend, mak­ing up (sorry guys), even wait­ing for the ket­tle to boil!

4. Then, fit the task/minutes into your daily rou­tine for the day.

The back­log will clear up quickly, and chances are, if you keep think­ing in 1-minute-blocks, never return!

Share on Facebook