The Definitive Guide to Ruthless Time Management

This approach to time management has nothing to do with colored labels or organizing the files on your hard drive. It’s about ruthlessly protecting your time so you can get more done faster. These ideas will offend some and inspire a few, but that’s ok–there’s a reason only the minority are highly successful.

Why do so many feel overwhelmed most of the time? Many years ago, I was running ragged trying to work a full-time job while running two business and juggling a family with a newborn. I couldn’t keep up and had to slow down and figure out what the heck I was doing and where my time was going. I realized I was “busy” most of the time, but I wasn’t really accomplishing much.

My days as a detective started out like the movie in Groundhog Day. I got to my desk at about 7:15 AM–not because I was most productive then, but because my boss showed up at about 7:30 and as long as I beat him in, I was good. Everyone else worked on the same premise.

I would fire up my computer and just stare at it for a good fifteen minutes. It was much like a scene in the movie Office Space. When my boss walked in, everyone gathered around and talked about nothing for an hour or two. When I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, but my boss liked it, so we complied.

No one else had anything to do that early either, but somewhere it said we had to start work at 7:00, so we did, even if it would have been more productive to come in later.

Eventually everyone would wander back to their desk and do the easiest and least demanding task—check email. If email posed too much of a stretch, it was always important to check what was said in response to your Facebook comments.

Eventually it was time to cave in and re-read emails that had already been read the prior day, and maybe act on one if we had read it enough times. However, someone would usually interrupt me from another cubical to chat or invite me to a coffee break. Rinse and repeat and occasionally squeeze some work in.

That is a typical day in corporate America. It may sound familiar. That was my workday before I started launching businesses, had a family, and started to lose my mind with everything I was trying to juggle.

There are books, seminars and coaches that promise to help you organize and manage your time. Much of that stuff recommends different colored labels and other complicated inbox management. Most of this stuff is waste of your time. Here is what will really help you get things done without giving you a bunch of busy work masked as time management.

Clarity

If you chronically run out of time, you lack priorities. Forget about multi-tasking—it’s impossible. We waste time when we’re unclear about our goals or do busy work to avoid doing things we fear. This is why we start our days checking email or organizing Outlook contacts instead of calling prospects to make a sale.

The key to effective time management is becoming crystal clear about what you want to accomplish. Without clarity, it’s easy to get distracted by unproductive time wasters or other peoples’ emergencies. Very few people value their own time, so what makes you think they will value yours.

Eliminate everything that’s not fulfilling or profitable. Be ruthless about removing the least profitable or less fulfilling things and only do the stuff that yields the highest return. In other words, only do what you love or makes you a lot of money. The rest is garbage.

Start Each Day Running

Clearly divide work and pleasure. Work is the stuff you wouldn’t do if you did not need money. Play is the stuff you’d pay to do. Few people have clear distinctions between the two; the lines often blur which leads to waste.

Because we’ve been programmed to believe it takes exactly eight hours to do our job, we fill that time regardless whether we actually need to or not. Instead of working, we fill the void of time by socializing with co-workers we wouldn’t otherwise spend time with if we weren’t at work.

Instead, each night write a list of the one to two major things you want to accomplish the next day. Do not write a giant to do lists; just a couple of high return projects and when you start your work day, do nothing until you accomplish your tasks. No gossip, email, Facebook, voice mail or anything else. Just get it done and get out of there. If you want to maintain friendships with co-workers, do it outside of work where you can really enjoy it.

Peak Productivity Times

Many productive people script their entire day. This works very well if you have a tendency to procrastinate. By scripting your day, you’re likely to accomplish more than if you don’t.

I actually do the opposite and schedule time off. I work from home or a coffee shop, so I have a tendency to keep working unless I’ve blocked out time for exercise or family. I’m also more productive at odd hours. It’s common for me to wake up at 3:00 AM and work for a few hours and later wrap up the following day at 3:00 AM. I’m a bit neurotic I suppose.

I am almost worthless between six and nine in the morning, so trying to force myself to work during those hours is pointless. I do well working with clients in the early afternoon when my energy level is higher and I do my best writing after 10:00 PM. Trying to mix those times makes me less productive and unhappy.

 It’s important to do what fits you rather than what someone else does. The point is, define your peak productivity hours and only work within them.

Batching

Limit repetitive tasks such as email, paying bills, reading mail, voice messages, and returning phone calls to weekly or monthly scheduled times. These things are notorious distractions. The problem comes when you’re working on a project and you’re interrupted by a call or email. Not only does it interrupt you, but your attention shifts from your productive work, to someone else’s crisis.

When you receive a call, email, or letter in the mail, nine out of times it’s less than great news (bills, taxes, government interference, etc) or it is someone who wants something (salesman, etc.) Occasionally you receive a birthday card or check, but you have to agree those are the minority of your messages.

Instead of allowing repetitive interruptions, schedule when you will check email, voice messages and other similar tasks so you only deal with each message once. For example, when you sit down to review email, handle each email through it’s completion, rather than receptively re-reading the same email daily until you finally decide to deal with it.

Never check email, mail, voice mail first thing in the morning. Bad news can mentally distract you from accomplishing your productive work the rest of the day. Finish your daily goals first, and then tend to the messages.

Incoming Calls

For peak productivity, limit access to your direct phone number and email address. In a perfect world, the only people that would have your business contact information would be your assistant. This is not always possible, but the closer you get to it, the more productive you’ll be.

While I’m working, I have all incoming, unscheduled calls forwarded to my assistant or voice mail. This is productive for both parties because it allows for better preparation and a more efficient future call. If I take an unscheduled call, not only will I be unprepared but I will also be distracted by whatever I was working on beforehand.

My voice mail encourages people to send an email instead of leaving a voice message. When people write their requests, instead of leaving a voice message, they are usually better able to articulate their needs.

Most calls can be eliminated by using focused emails that can be drafted at both parties’ convenience. Sometimes, however, a phone call is more efficient, but there must be a clear agenda and a predetermined end time to the call. Miraculously everything will get done during the allotted time.

Occasionally people will refuse to indicate the purpose of the call, because they are either unclear themselves or they want to sell something. I love sales people because they help connect someone with a need to someone with a solution, but cold calling is inefficient.

Email

Email is a highly efficient way off communication that has almost replaced mail, but that blessing can also a curse. The ease of email has encouraged people to send a message every time a thought pops into their head. We’re all guilty of this and have sent multiple messages, one after the next, because we didn’t take a few moments and organize our thoughts.

Here is the key to email

1. Do not have conversations by email.
2. Put as much time into writing an email as you would a letter. This little extra time will save you in the end.
3. Work hard to make it short. Writing a short message is an art.
4. Practice “if/then” writing. This practice can eliminate several back and forth messages. For example:

Please read the attached contract. If it is acceptable to you, please sign it and email it back to me and we will begin the job.

If the contract is not acceptable, please edit the attached document to your liking, sign it and return it to me. If I agree with your changes, I will sign it and begin the job.

Sincerely,

Chuck J. Rylant

Can you see how this one email can eliminate many additional emails and phone calls? This is a powerful technique.

Lists

I work off three lists. Usually these lists are in a simple spiral notebook or scrap piece of paper, but there are times I’ve used a electronic documents. If you use an electronic format, use software such as Dropbox to be sure it follows you everywhere you go and is available on your smart phone.

1. Waiting for list

This is perhaps the most important list idea I’ve ever learned. It’s frustrating for productive people when you get get stuck waiting for an employee, contractor or vendor.

It’s easy to submit your request and forget about it while you wait for a response from the other party. Unfortunately, very few people do what they say they will, so these things often fall into a deep, dark black hole and never resurface.

On a side note, if you want to be a rock star employee or service provider, simply do what you say you’ll do without being reminded. Since 80% of the population doesn’t, you’ll stand big time.

Keep a running list of each thing you’ve delegated, to whom, and the date it’s supposed to be returned. Review your list daily. When the date passes with no word, you’ll know you have to follow up.

2. Project list

This is the list I keep of every project I’m working on or plan to in the future. When I have multiple projects going, I will have multiple lists so I can include each step or idea that is part of it. This is a great list to keep by your bed so when an idea pops up at 3 AM, which is when they always do, you can write it down and fall back to sleep. Otherwise, you’ll never fall back to sleep or you’ll forget the idea.

 3.       To do list

I keep this list small and re-write it every night. This serves two purposes. If I dump everything just before bed, it will help me sleep, otherwise I’ll be up all night thinking of everything I need to do the following day. Secondly, it allows me to start the next day at full speed.

Eliminate meetings

I’ve wasted thousands of hours of my life in meetings. I can never replace that lost time. If you haven’t attend enough meetings to discover the truth yet, meeting are almost always a waste of everyone’s time. Meetings generally serve a few purposes, none of which includes getting things done.

Meetings are common in non-profit organizations and corporate environments where there is a surplus of time and little accountability of results. The people who set meetings often do so because they are an institutionalized practice in the organization. Meetings also provide a platform for attention for people that otherwise would not get it.

Meetings rarely result in productivity. If you attend meetings, stop at all costs. If you host meetings, ask yourself why.

Summary

In a nutshell, these are the most important time management strategies I know. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time, money and energy studying and experimenting ways to get more done in less time. However, it is not really about getting more done, it’s about doing more of the things you want and less of the stuff you don’t.

Above is a culmination of my experience and strategies I discovered and adapted mostly from three of my favorite books on the subject. They are Getting Things Done, Four Hour Work Week and No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs. If you want to become more productive, it’s important that you study the habits of other highly effective people and adapt strategies from them that fit your personality, because not all of the strategies I use will work for you.

What works for you?

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