Time management

Industrial & Organisational : Introduction : Personnel : Organizational psychology : Occupations: Work environment: Index : Outline

Time Management refers to tools or techniques for planning and scheduling time, usually with the aim to increase the effectiveness and/or efficiency of personal and corporate time use. These are embodied in a number of books, seminars and courses, which may offer conflicting advice. The common denominators of these strategies are a to-do-list, setting priorities and goal management. Some of the best known examples of time management strategies are tied to specific lines of time management products.

Time management for personal use is a type of self-management. In a corporate setting, time management software can satisfy the need to control employees, make it easier to coordinate work and increases accountability of individual employees.

Planning time and writing to-do-lists also consumes time and needs to be scheduled. This is one of the major criticisms of time management.

Overview

Time management strategies are usually associated with the recommendation to set goals. These goals are written down and broken down into a project, an action plan or a simple to-do-list. Deadlines are set and priorities are assigned to the individual items on the to-do-list. This process results in a daily plan with a to-do-list. Some authors recommend a weekly instead of a daily perspective.

The four generations of time management according to Covey

Stephen R. Covey time-lines the creation of time management approaches that are on the market today with his approach being touted as the most recent and superior. Rather than presenting a rigorous, academic assessment, he seems to be mainly interested in denigrating the design basis of his competitors in the personal organizer industry.

First generation: reminders

Aficionados of this approach limit their time management efforts to keeping lists and notes. They see these papers as reminders. Items that are not done by the end of the day are transferred to the next day's list in the evening. Covey (who is a devout Mormon) sarcatically calls this approach the "Far Eastern, Go with the Flow" style.

Second generation: planning and preparation

People in the second generation use calendars and appointment books. They will note where meetings are held and identify deadlines; this is sometimes even done on a computer. As opposed to the first generation, the second generation plans and prepares, schedules future appointments and set goals.

Third generation: planning, prioritizing, controlling

Third generation time managers prioritize their activities on a daily basis. They tend to use detailed forms of daily planning on a computer or on a paper-based organizer. This approach implies spending some time in clarifying values and priorities.

Fourth generation: being efficient and proactive

Stephen R. Covey in First Things First, claims his approach is a 4th generation time management. A fourth generation approach as defined by Covey emphasizes the difference between urgency and importance in planning.

The Flaws in Covey's System

However some critics of time management methods consider that Covey's concept of prioritizing by importance is flawed since once a project has been taken on all the work relating to it needs to be done. Questions of importance or non-importance at this point are irrelevant. An illustrative example would be the building of an automobile, where the engine and wheels may be more important than the rear-view mirror and the carpets, but nevertheless a complete automobile would need the rear-view mirror and the carpets just as much as the engine and wheels. The critics would say that Covey correctly notes that if you always action things on the basis of urgency non-urgent things are never going to get done. But Covey fails to note that exactly the same applies to importance - if you continually reassess when to action things on the basis of importance then when do the non-important things get done? If trivial things are allowed to build up, they will gum up the works so effectively that the important work won't get done either. Lower priority tasks that can be ignored or abandoned should not have been included in a project plan in the first place. Allocating time for tasks based on a somewhat arbitrary, daily assessment of "importance" requires a constant (and costly) reassigment of resources.

As von Moltke is reputed to have said, "Planning is everything. Plans are nothing."

Techniques for setting priorities

ABC analysis

A technique that has been used in business management for a long time is the categorization of large data into groups. These groups are often marked A,B, and C, hence the name. Activities that are perceived as having highest priority are assigned an A, those with lowest priority are labeled C. ABC Analysis can incorporate more than three groups. ABC analysis is frequently combined with Pareto analysis.

Pareto analysis

This is the idea that 80% of tasks can be completed in 20% of the disposable time. The remaining 20% of tasks will take up 80% of the time. This principle is used to sort tasks into two parts. According to this form of Pareto analysis it is recommended that tasks that fall into the first category are assigned a higher priority.

The 80-20-rule can also be applied to increase productivity: it is assumed that 80% of the productivity can be achieved by doing 20% of the tasks. If productivity is the aim of time management, then these tasks should be prioritized higher.

Time

Different people may judge identical lengths of time quite differently. Time can "fly"; that is, a long period of time can seem to go by very quickly. Likewise, time can seem to "drag," as in when one performs a boring task.

In explaining his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that although sitting next to a pretty girl for an hour feels like a minute, placing one's hand on a hot stove for a minute feels like an hour.

Management is the process of getting activities completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people.

Management is "working with and through other people to accomplish the objectives of both the organization and its members." This definition places a greater emphasis on human beings in the organization; focus is on results to be accomplished (objectives), rather than just activities and adds the concept that personal objectives should be integrated with organizational objectives.

External links

Web books

What Time is it Now? Keys to Successful Time Management
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - The classic time management book
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - Full text online and free PDF

Web articles

A PPT based tutorial on http://www.tntech.edu/counsel/olr/Time-Management---Tutorial-imp.html

de:Zeitmanagement es:Gestión del tiempo

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