Premise of Time Management

So let’s start questioning some rules of thumb or so called best practices in the more mundane sphere of things. I think the use of a good time management system would be considered by most as a worthwhile practice. Several schools of thought, books, and systems have been developed to address the issue of time management. Some, such as Habit 3: Put First Things First of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Getting Things Done (GTD), are extremely popular. Getting Things Done in particular has recently developed an almost cult like following. Today I found myself very much inspired by an article at SaneLiving.org about common sense time management. Questioning the value of GTD leads to some interesting conclusions.

Specifically, what I liked about this article was an implied classification of the supposed things we need “to get done”, each of which can be organized into one of the following four categories:

1. Essential and Unforgettable (EU): Items that have to get done and will make an impact on your life. An example of this sort of thing might be a meeting with a new business partner or investor that has the potential to transform your life’s work. These sorts of things are of the highest personal importance and really deserve mind space.
2. Essential but Forgettable (EF): Items that need to get done, but will not really have an impact on your life. Changing the oil in your car probably falls into this category. These items ideally should not, but often do, consume mind space. All you really need for these is a reminder to do them at an appropriate time and place - nothing more, nothing less.
3. Unessential but Unforgettable (UU): Items that don’t need to get done, but which may provide a great deal of fun or lasting memories. These could be a family trip to a decidedly local destination, going out on a date, or playing a sport.
4. Unessential and Forgettable (UF): Items for which no one is depending on you, and that do not impact your health or happiness. This sort of thing could be steam cleaning your carpets or dusting your bookshelves.

When you think about it, only the first two really warrant any attention from a “I need to get this done” perspective. However, it is also worth pointing out that the third category of “unessential but unforgettable” is often the stuff of happiness and deserves special attention - just not necessarily on a to-do list. 

Four Quadrants of Life Management

The idea behind capture in GTD was developed so that items that needed to get done are logged externally so that they do not have to take up mind space. The problem is two-fold:

1. Often, implementing GTD results in everything, from all four of the categories mentioned above, being captured.
2. What do we do when we have freed up all this mind space we were “wasting” on mentally keeping track of our to-do’s? After all, we have to think about something!

Let’s visualize the four categories of things we supposedly need to “get done” as described above:

Why do we categorize our activities this way? Because we can relieve ourselves of the responsibility of capturing and managing anything unessential! That effectively cuts the time management effort in half. That is also why I have called it the four quadrants of life management as opposed to time management - only the “essential” quadrants truly need to be captured and time managed. You don’t need to capture and manage everything. I like to call this the basis for Getting Essential Things Done (GETD), a sort of GTD “lite” if you will. It also suggests that we spend the freed up mind space on the essential.

The astute will notice that this looks a lot like the Time Management Matrix in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but it is different in one key aspect: urgency is not one of the coordinates. Only the essential could potentially be an urgent matter in the Seven Habits sense, and that is why you are capturing and managing them. The urgency is more a matter of where they end up on your calendar!

Eliminate & Automate

The above classification system is also crucial to followers of The 4-Hour Workweek. Specifically, you can start looking at things this way:

• Anything unessential and forgettable presents a pretty good opportunity for elimination. If no one is counting on you for it, and it doesn’t mean anything to you, why are you doing it in the first place?
• Anything essential but forgettable should be automated as much as possible. These are the things, for example, that we want to outsource, delegate, or deal with using the least amount of time and effort, usually via a reminder to act immediately at the right time and place.
• Anything unforgettable deserves some attention and mind space. But unless it is essential, we don’t have to capture it in our time management system (maybe you want to - hey it’s a free country, and that’s certainly ok! - all I’m suggesting is you don’t have to time manage these).

Hopefully, this frees up a lot of time to have fun and basically do a lot more of the unessential yet unforgettable. As I proposed: we probably shouldn’t bother spending a lot of time planning these sorts of things - it is almost the definition of spontaneity!

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Let’s think about money for a moment. What do you do when you are perpetually in debt, or living dangerously above your means? Usually the very first order of business is to find out where you are spending your money. To manage your money you have to be able to account for it.  The same goes for your time. To drag yourself out of the misery of time poverty, you need to understand where you are spending your time.

Step 1: Track

Here is what I suggest: for a week, make a conscious effort to track everything you do, and I mean everything. Since I am usually at or near a computer, I created a calendar in Google to track all the various things I did during my waking hours. Excel, a notebook or a simple pad of paper would work equally well. Activities you track will most likely include meetings, checking email, processing whatever kind of “widget” you work on (for me it is writing software code), telephone calls, lunch, coffee breaks and water cooler socials. It should also include what you do when you are not at work: taking out the garbage, preparing meals, taking the kids to school, reading, watching television, etc. Call this the Things I Do list.

Step 2: Evaluate

Once that exercise is complete, the next step is to determine which, of all the things you do, add the most value to your life or make you the most happy. What is left are the things that add little, or no value - things that really don’t provide any real satisfaction.

Step 3: Consider Your Options

Now that you have identified these limiting activities, you should consider three options for each:

• Eliminate: Can you simply stop doing it? Usually you cannot, but sometimes this may be the case. If it must be done, can someone else do it without you being accountable for it anymore? This is what I will call abdication. If you can simply abdicate responsibility for something that must be done, that’s great. Maybe there is a report that must be prepared daily for your manager. You know it must be done, but perhaps your manager’s administrative assistant, or a junior peer can take ownership of preparing that report. You may find that people actually want to take ownership of a task.
• Outsource: It has to be done, and you have to be responsible for it (example: feeding your kids!). Can someone else do it for you? This is what I will call delegation. Sometimes you can delegate things at little or no cost (example: your eldest child will help prepare lunch for everyone as part of their chores). Sometimes it may cost you something (example: hiring an assistant to put together sales presentation materials). In the end, it is still your responsibility to get it done, but you do so by getting someone else to do it for you.
• Automate: Is there a better way of doing something? Can a system or technology be used that gets the task done with less time and effort required on your part? A simple example might be using filters or rules in your email client to automatically file or forward certain email messages.

Step 4: Work & Live Smarter

Always prefer elimination. For each thing you do ask: can this be eliminated? There are three possible answers:

• Yes
• Partly (or Maybe)
• No

If the answer for a given task is yes, take whatever steps are required to eliminate that task. If the answer is “partly” (or maybe) you probably need to break down the task into smaller components. After breaking it down, go back and ask your self whether each one can be eliminated and repeat the process. If the answer is no, you have to move on to the next question: can I outsource or automate this task? You will have the same three possible answers for each one. If the answer is yes, you may have to consider several options and you will have to analyze each one to determine which is the best way to outsource or automate it. If the answer is “partly” (or maybe) you need to break the task down a little more. If the answer is no, well, you might have to accept that you are stuck with doing that thing for the time being. At least you know you don’t have a choice at this time, and we all have to do some things we don’t like! My advice: meditate on these tasks and ask yourself, is there any possible way to make doing this a little more fun?

Conclusion

Since starting my quest for the 4-hour workweek, I have followed this procedure in trying to account for, and manage, the things I do. I feel I can improve on my abilities when performing steps 3 and 4, as the idea behind those steps often require a change of mindset. Some things that I initially thought I could not even outsource, I have come to consider as candidates for elimination! As I become more comfortable with the idea of abdicating, delegating and automating the things I do, I find this procedure can be repeated, and the results refined over time.

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