We, rightfully, constantly seek to free up time. Yesterday, coaching an executive, the key issue was “freeing up time.” For such a senior executive, to some it might seem surprising, but it comes up in virtually every conversation I have, at every level of the organization.
It’s interesting, I see two, almost diametrically oppose, things happening when we look to free up time. One is, despite the time that is freed up, there are always more demands on our time than time available. It’s characteristic of the busiest but most productive people I encounter and seems to be a persistent condition of work and, possibly, life. The second, usually associated with medium to poor performers is, “What do they do with the time that is freed up?”
This post will be a two parter. I’ll address the first case in this post and the second in the next.
There are two things that are common when we look at freeing up time. While we approach it as a “time management” issue, it is seldom actually about time management. Second, while over the decades, we see tools/technologies that help us accomplish more in less time. These tools really don’t solve the problem. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly advocate leveraging these tools and technologies, I tend to be a very early adopter of all of them. But even after implementing them, there is more that needs to be done than the time available. (In the second case there is a little variant to that statement.)
Let’s dive into the first case, the high achievers. These tend to be the most productive people, already, but they are always time poor. They are the earliest adopters and the power users of any tool that helps them better manage their time or cram more into each minute of the day. Yet, they still have a profound time management problem.
This problem will never be solved by more tools/technologies/techniques. Even categorizing things as urgent/important, urgent, or important isn’t very helpful. Everything seems to fall, legitimately into the first category.
I suspect, the most effective technique with this category of performer is they need to become comfortable in choosing what they ignore. When, I coach high performing executives on this, a couple of things come up.
First, I ask the question, “Are you the only person in the organization that can do this?” Often, they hem and haw, then say, “Well no one can to it as well as I can!” But that’s not the point. First, if someone else can handle the issue, give it to them. They will never improve their ability to handle these issues unless we let go of these things. The goal is to delegate 100% of the things that someone else can do, even if they can’t do it as well. What the individual is left with is the things that only they can do.
And that will still require more time than available. At this point, it’s choosing what you will ignore, alternatively becoming less uncomfortable with the things that you ignore.
This is where I get into interesting discussions with high performers. “I can’t ignore these things, only I can get them done!”
But they recognize they don’t have enough time to do everything they have on their plates. I then say, “What are you going to ignore?” Then we get into a frustrating discussion, “I can’t ignore anything……., How do I choose….., What if I make a mistake…..?” Unless, the issue is truly life-threatening, there is probably not a wrong choice. Over time, we gain experience in making better choices. Even if we make a mistake, the critical issues start to emerge. And virtually no choice in business is not recoverable. We may have lost an opportunity, we may miss our numbers for the quarter, we may make a bad investment. All of these are temporary and can be recovered on the future.
If we don’t make those choices, if we can’t become less uncomfortable with what we ignore, we become paralyzed. Or we start trying to address everything and we accomplish nothing.
Some years ago, I coached a CEO of a Fortune 100 company on this issue. I was involved in another big project with the company and had noticed a huge “meeting management/integrity” problem. There were so many meetings, you couldn’t know if the right people would actually come to your meeting. So massive amounts of time were wasted. Since they had given me access to their Teams system, I could start looking at executive calendars and saw the problem.
I happened into the CEO in a hallway, we actually knew each other pretty well. He asked, “Dave, I’m having this time management problem….” We went to his office, I asked him to display his calendar. George had a habit of scheduling three meetings simultaneously. They were in conference rooms right outside his office. He would run from meeting to meeting, thinking he was accomplishing a lot.
I asked him to look at the calendars of the executives that reported directly to him. You guessed it, they were scheduling 3 meetings simultaneously. Then we looked at the next level. We saw the same thing.
People in their busyness, but emulating George, thought they were being very productive embracing an extreme multitasking process. But they never knew if the right people would show up for their meetings, or if they were attending the right meetings. And this practice spawned even more meetings.
George immediately saw the problem. I said, “Cancel 2 out of every 3 meetings you have on your calendar…” He asked, “How do I know which ones to cancel?” I replied, “It doesn’t matter, the important issues will emerge.” Within a very short period of time, productivity skyrocketed. Sure some meetings that should have been conducted weren’t, but those found there way to the top priorities relatively quickly.
High performers will always have more on their plates than the can manage. The challenge is not in doing more, but it’s in choosing what to ignore, if only for the time being. And it’s becoming comfortable with those choices.
I address the second part of this in The Conundrum Of “Freeing Up Time,” Part 2.
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