Time Blocking is a useful technique when you find the urgent is overwhelming the important. It’s based on the concept that you give every hour of your work day a specific task. Here’s how to do it.

1. Make a list of the most important things you want to work on – these are tasks, not goals. That means if you were focusing on sales, you’d put down “Make 5 phone calls to prospects” not “Sell $10,000 more.” If you’re doing content marketing you’d list “Write a blog post” not “Get 10 new followers”
2. Next to each item on the list make a note of how often you should do it and what is the ideal sized time block. Some things you can do in an hour-long chunk. Some take a half day.
3. Get out your calendar – the one with all your normal appointments and regular meetings. Find blocks of time of the appropriate length for each item on the list. If you need to, rearrange your appointments and meetings.
4. Block in time on your calendar for each item on the list. It’s like making an appointment with yourself. After all, aren’t you the most important person you need to meet with?  

Tips & Tricks

Don’t fill up your entire day. Leave some white space. Stuff happens and if you don’t have buffer time to take care of that stuff, it will screw up your whole schedule. If some of your blocks need to be a day long, you can fill that day, but leave some buffer in the days before or after.

Let everyone know you are not to be disturbed during these times unless there’s fire or blood. Just like if you were having a meeting with your most important client or best employee.

You yourself must treat these blocks with that same respect. Don’t reschedule them when stuff comes up. After all the reason they made it on the list in the first place is you consider them the most important things for you to do.

Look below for a view of  what it used to look like:
And that blank stare you see? The clutter made it hard to focus. But when there’s nothing on my desk I have to decide what’s the most important thing to work on now. I can’t fool myself into thinking I’m doing something important when I’m working on what’s merely urgent (or worse!). When there’s only one thing on my desk I know what I have to work on. When there’s two things on the desk (or more) I’m distracted.

You may also be able to see I’ve got ZERO emails in my inbox (the monitor on the left). I realized I was using it as a holding tank and doing so was cluttering up my mind. I’m using gmail so I just selected them all and archived them. That way I can find them with search if I need to, but if I don’t ever need them then I don’t need them. As mail comes in I’ll check periodically and empty the box every time. I’ve never been a huge fan of labels (folders) for email but I’m starting to find them useful. I now have one called “later” for stuff I want out of my inbox but don’t want to take the time for now.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Clutter

You do realize that multi-tasking is a myth don’t you? You can’t really do two things at once, you just flip from one to the other in very small bits. Like talking to someone on the phone while you’re having a different conversation with someone in the room. You don’t really hear them both at the same time. You just ignore parts of each conversation that (hopefully) you can infer when you switch back.

I’m trying to be more conscious about what I work on – meaning I’m deciding based on what’s important not what’s urgent (or distracting) unless I decide distraction is important for the time. It’s similar to the GTD process of emptying your inbox on a regular basis.

Applying this to a TODO list

I’ve started using Asana for my TODO / Project list. I like it because I can assign tasks to projects and see them that way. But in another view I can see all my tasks in a single list (called your inbox) This needs to be emptied regularly as well. The way Asana prioritizes tasks, you go to your inbox, and decide when you’re going to work on each task. You can assign it to TODAY, Upcoming or Later. I realized that the reason I kept so many things in my in box is I didn’t want to forget about them. The “Later” category is great for that. I can keep my Today list clean and not loose those wonderful ideas that I love (which often turn out to be not so great but that’s a post for another day).

It’s kind of like the concept of a WILL-DO list rather than a TODO list.

I see this post has gotten away from me.

It’s devolved into a productivity discussion – which isn’t bad – but that’s not the bigger thought that inspired me to write. The bigger thought is

The difference between zero and one is huge!

Much bigger than the difference between one and two or even one and one hundred. You see this in lots of arenas. When a startup goes from zero sales to one – it becomes a company instead of just a prototype factory. That’s why so many small shops stick the first dollar on the wall. They don’t do that with the 2nd or the tenth or even the millionth dollar.

Zero mistakes is a great place to be. So is zero late shipments. Factories post how many days they’ve gone with zero injuries – not how many days since they’ve had one.

And the difference makes the one important as well. The only one is much more important than the best of two.

Takeaway:
I’m not sure what’s the best takeaway for this post. But it’s a new year. A year I hope will be marked by a one followed by lots of zeros in my bank account. Maybe starting with zero things on my desk and in my inbox will help.

And by “Nothing All Day”, I don’t mean you’re lazy or hanging out at the beach playing angry birds. What I mean is that the stuff you do all day is not, for the most part “CEO work”. It’s usually what is done in a large company by sales people, or production folks or HR or accounting.

There are 2 reasons for this.

CEO work is Important but not Urgent.

This is a trap. The more time you spend on important work, the less often emergencies pop up. If you don’t force yourself to block out time for the non-urgent then you’ll always be chasing your tail.

CEO work is not required full time.

This is true for all but the very largest companies. Think of CEO as a function not a job. Like cleaning your house. It’s a function that needs to be done, but you don’t need a full time janitorial staff. So there’s nothing wrong with you doing sales, solving production problems, or any of that others stuff. In fact there’s a lot that’s right with it.

What you shouldn’t do is neglect the CEO functions your company needs because they are not urgent.

CEO as Orchestra Conductor

Think of that metaphor. The conductor makes none of the music. A small band (4 or 5 people) doesn’t need a conductor. Everyone plays an instrument – but someone chooses what song to do next, and when to schedule rehearsal. You’re probably mid-way between the two. You are the conductor but you also play an instrument (or several).

Takeaways:

• Let everyone know when you speak as an instrument player or as conductor
• Schedule time to function as the conductor or the whole orchestra will get out of time.

If that’s true, then you’re not doing it right. And, of course a lot of people aren’t doing it right – that’s what keeps my blog in business. I’ll tackle the meetings bit here and leave the manager problem for another post.

Collaboration, Communication

Most people don’t do their work in a vacuum. They need collaboration and communication (C&C) with others. Let’s say you have 5 people on a team who need to organize their work together. Let’s add a sixth person – the manager – who needs to know how the team is doing, if there’s anything she can do to help any of them (that’s her job after all) AND she needs to provide direction and connection with other teams in the organization.

That’s a lot of C&C.  If all those people reach out to one another willy-nilly whenever the impulse strikes that’s a lot of interruptions. No wonder Jason wants to get away from the office.

But there is another solution. Figure out which parts of all that C&C can be scheduled and organized. It won’t make the problem go away, but it will diminish it. Hopefully to the point where the down side of the interruption is out weighed by the benefits of C&C. So if you’ve got a scheduled and organized way to collaborate and communicate, what do you have but a meeting?!?!?

I agree that most meetings are a waste of time. But that’s because they aren’t done right. Appropriate meetings not only save time, but encourage all kinds of good things like synergy, morale, camaraderie, sharing of ideas – in short, team work. But the idea of abolishing meetings because of this problem is like abolishing food because people are obese. You just have to do it right.

Here’s a quick primer for Better Meetings

• Each Meeting  needs a purpose. And the kind of meeting has to fit the purpose.
• It has to include the right people – all of them but no one else.
• People have to come prepared.
• It should have a pattern – a rhythm. This will vary with the type of meeting and it’s purpose. A brainstorming meeting has a different pattern than a meeting where you hash out alternatives and reach a decision.
• It should be as short as possible – but no shorter.
• Someone must be in control.
• Each meeting should have an outcome – one that accomplishes the purpose of the meeting.
• Keep in mind that each meeting doesn’t happen in isolation. Maybe there are times that should be “meeting-free zones” and other times when meetings should be optional.

[Ricardo Semler goes so far as to make all meetings optional. His point is if you’re planning the meeting it’s your job to make it enticing enough that people want to come (and want to pay attention instead of playing with their iphones). This is pretty extreme and only works when all other aspects of the company culture are aligned with it. But it’s an interesting approach. ]

If doing meetings this way sounds like a lot of work – well yeah. That’s why no bumper sticker says “I’d rather be running a meeting.” But (as Jason points out in the video) meetings are expensive. A one hour meeting with 10 people is really a ten hour meeting. And if you add up the salaries of all those people and account for the interruptions the meeting causes before they get back into the flow of their work – you’ll jump out of your skin. If you’re going to spend that much money / time / etc isn’t it worth it to do it right? That’s why you get paid the big bucks.

Takeaways

• Meetings are expensive
• If you’re going to have one – do it right
• If you do it can pay off it spades

UPDATE: Seth Godin and I are aligned in starting the new year with better meetings.

Seriously. Check this out:

Time Management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defence, and 6+ peer-reviews papers. And finishes by 5:30pm.

You see you can’t really manage time. You can’t save it, spend it or do anything with it or to it. You have the same 24 hours a day that Bill Gates, and your cat have.

What you can manage is yourself and what you do or don’t do WITHIN the time you have. It’s a great article. Click and read it if you haven’t already.

It’s simple: Give them what they want!

Hey, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you don’t have happy employees this will change everything. I mean EVERYTHING. The good news is it works. And the better news is it’s less expensive that you think (and probably less than you’re spending now). But it does take some effort. If that sounds like a good deal to you, read on.

UPDATE: BMW asked their employees what they needed and gave it to them [albeit this was focused on what they needed to be comfortable at work and nothing else] but the results were pretty spectacular.

Why Focus on Employee Retention?

Do we really need to review this people?

• It costs you money to replace people.
• The good ones leave first and the bad ones stay longest.
• Employees are (or should be) what makes you better than the competition. Yes, whether you’re making widgets (and I have clients who do) or have the most unique technology this is true.
• It’s more fun to work in a place with a community of people who’ve been there a while, then where people come and go all the time and aren’t a community.
• People are more productive if they’re content in their jobs.

What Do Employees Want?

Dreams. People have dreams. And remember, your employees are people not “resources”. Have you ever asked your employees what their dreams are? What they want to accomplish in life? What is some place they’ve never been they’d like to visit? Something they’ve never done before? It may be as broad reaching as to buy their own home and build a better life for their kids. Or it may be as simple a chance to see a pro sports game live. Or maybe pay off some student loans. Ask. See what you can do to help them accomplish their dreams.

A Good Boss. I’m talking about their immediate supervisor. More people quit a good company with a bad boss than a bad company if they have a good boss. And this is a two-fer. The better bosses your people are, you get the benefit of retention, and you also get good supervisors.

Security. This one frustrates a lot of entrepreneurs. We know things are constantly changing and we can’t promise how it’s going to be in the future. And we don’t have any job security and we love it that way. But consider the good news. If all your employees thought like you do, they wouldn’t be working for you. They’d be working for themselves.

You can’t promise lifetime employment. What you can do is be open and honest about the state of things (the economy, your company, and their performance) and give them a way to continually improve their abilities. That includes training, the proper tools, and most importantly the proper feedback, mentoring and coaching. If you do have to lay people off, do it all at once, be honest about it, pull the remaining team back together and move on.

Money. Obviously. I don’t think anyone at your place is working just for all the fun and good coffee you provide. Even though entrepreneurs tend not to believe it – it’s true that if the money is decent it ceases to be a motivator and can even be a de-motivator. See Dan Pink’s book DRIVE for details. This is why a good retention program can be cheaper than what you’re spending now cycling through employees.

Recognition. Notice when people do a good job even if it’s their job to do a good job. Tell them. Mention it in front of others. In detail.

Takeaway:

Check out what  Rebekah Monson wants. She’s twenty-something. And she works for somebody. What would you do differently if you were her boss and she told this to you?

We are limited to 24 hours each day – right?
So, the number of things we can do is limited by time – are you with me so far?

Most entrepreneurs respond to this truth by trying to do as much as they can every day. But what happens is they often mistake activity for accomplishment. Yes they are busy, maybe even efficient. But they aren’t as effective as they could be. I think they’re approaching this from the wrong end.

Choice is more important than activity.
If time (and the number of things you can do) is limited then what’s important is not how much you can cram into the day because by definition you can’t cram everything in. What’s important is what you choose to do and what you choose to leave undone. Choice is more important than activity. What if you could only accomplish one thing each day? Or even one thing each week? I bet it would be simple to decide what that one thing should be. But, I hear you saying, if I only did that one thing, then this wouldn’t get don’t and neither would this and this. Guess what? You’re right. But some things are not going to get done in any case (remember the 24 hours limit?). So shouldn’t the things that get done be the most important and the things that don’t get done be those of lesser importance?

Try it for a week. Pick one thing a day and accomplish, finish, complete, actually DO that one thing. At the expense of all else. A week later – revisit and see if it’s better or worse.

Bonus: This article gives some insight about the work routines of some pretty accomplished folks (from Beethoven to Churchill to Mandela to Al Gore). It’s surprising how little they DO to accomplish a lot.

Takeaway:

• Do less

[tags]time management, productivity, gtd, management [/tags]

But consider this key quote

If someone found a new drug that could wipe out infections with anything remotely like the effectiveness of Pronovost’s [check lists], there would be television ads with Robert Jarvik extolling its virtues, detail men offering free lunches to get doctors to make it part of their practice, government programs to research it, and competitors jumping in to make a newer, better version.

The article focuses on checklists to improve outcomes in hospital intensive care units. But has examples of their use in other fields, with results just as impressive.

Why They are Unappealing

But just like the timer, a checklist is so mundane we feel funny using it. We think it will dehumanize our workers or our work. In my opinion it does the opposite. For two reasons.

1. When the checklist is created (and improved) it encapsulates the best of our creativity and judgement to determine how to best perform a job. In other words it takes the best practices out of the heads of a few individuals and spreads them around the entire organization.
2. When the checklist is used, it provides consistentcy and recall of best practices. Consistency and recall are two things people are not terribly good at. By relying on the checklist for those parts of their job, they can free their brains for other aspects that people are good at. Courage, wits, and improvisation are three of these that are mentioned in the New Yorker article.

Would your business benefit from consistency? Best Practices? Courage? Wits? Improvisation – what I’ll call creativity? If so then I’d propose that management’s primary job is to create check lists and make sure they are used properly.

Takeaways:

• Checklists encapsulate the best thinking in your organization and make it available to everyone
• Checklists replace the parts of our brain we aren’t good at, and free us up to use the parts we are.
• The primary job of Management is to come up with the right checklists and make sure they are used properly.

[tags] best practices, entreprneur, check list, productivity, small business, management. CEO [/tags]

We also talked about the benefits of spending 15 minutes at the start of the day planning the calendar and developing a plan for the day. Many people have a hard time sticking to a routine like that because when they walk in, there are people wanting to talk to them, voice mails wanting to be listened to (it could be that big deal that you were waiting for and if you don’t get to it in 15 minutes it’s sure to disappear – really it could.) and emails screaming READ ME! READ ME! But usually those same people will keep appointments with another human, they just can’t keep the appointments with themselves to schedule their day. DAMHIKT – (that stands for Don’t Ask Me How I Know This meaing I learned it by personal experience).

Enter the assistant and the timer.
Make an appointment with your assistant every morning first thing when you arrive (or you could do it last thing before you leave to plan for the following day). By “your assistant“, I mean any other person in the office. If you don’t have an assistant, just pick someone and make this part of their job. When you first arrive, they are to drop what they’re doing, and come have a 10 second meeting with you. At the meeting they say: “I’m going to set the timer for 15 minutes. You’re going to do nothing but plan your day. I’ll call you when the timer goes off.” Then they go back to their regularly scheduled job and set a timer. In 15 minutes they call you. You spend that time planning your day. The end.

What’s weird about the timer.
What’s so funny is that all this use of the timer sounds so contrived and artificial. It’s true. It is. Don’t be afraid to say so and to laugh about it. But use one anyway. Do you work out? Don’t you measure your time on the tread mill? Your reps on the weights? Your miles on the bike? Would you eat in a restaurant where the cooks didn’t measure the ingredients? And of course you track the money in your company. Why are we so squeamish about measuring our most precious resource – time? I don’t know but we are. Acknowledge it and get over it.

Takeaways:

• Use a timer.
• It will feel strange. Don’t ignore this. Talk about how you’re using the timer and how strange it feels. That will make the power of the strangeness disappear.

[Update – I didn’t fall off the face of the earth since the last post, we had a death in the family. But I’m back now]

[tags] entrepreneur, small business, business owner, time management, productivity [/tags]

Context is the Key
It’s like saying is fat bad? Too much is, so is too little. And it depends what kind, what else you eat etc.

Incentives are good for some things, bad for others. On top of that some people respond to them differently from others. Management is part science and part art. The smaller your group of people (less than a dozen) the more exceptions there are to the “science” and the more important is the art of knowing each person and what works for them and how to give people what they want/need without making others feel things are unfair.

Takeaway:

• Sorry there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers when it comes to managing people. That’s why management is a skill set in it’s own right.

If you’re in the USA – have a happy Thanksgiving Day this Thursday. If you’re not in the USA be thankful. (Double entendre intended.)
[tags] management, CEO skills, small business, entrepreneur [/tags]