When - the timing of success

Time Management - When

Business Owners spend only 5% of their time on key tasks that will drive their business forward according to research by the Chamber of Commerce.

Ideally this should be about 40%, so where does their time go?

According to the same research it gets tied up on the activity that is URGENT but not actually IMPORTANT, with as much as two thirds of their time consumed by these tasks.

This can be the difference between the business achieving its goals or falling short.

Business success is a lot about timing, both managing time effectively and also when things happen-starting at the personal level.

Time Management principles say that you should categorise your tasks by their Urgency and Importance and then action accordingly.

Time Management Important versus Urgent

URGENT and IMPORTANT, generally means CRISIS or close to it so requires immediate action.

NOT URGENT and IMPORTANT, such as long-term business planning, developing business process, working on the Vision or addressing people issues. Time for these tasks needs to be planned and scheduled. If these don’t get addressed they will be CRISIS at some point.

URGENT but UNIMPORTANT, these are the tasks that eat up time and need to be controlled and managed - more about that in a minute.

UNIMPORTANT and NOT URGENT, either don’t do these at all or if they are “hygiene” tasks – delegate these (to your VEA).

When it comes to dealing with the UNIMPORTANT tasks there are 5 options, according to Chris Croft of Chris Croft Training, who specialises in Management and Leadership Effectiveness (he describes the typical business owners day as a series of CRISIS-HASSLE-CUP OF TEA!)

5 ways to tackle Unimportant Tasks Chris Croft Training

SAY NO – speaks for itself, but harder than it sounds

NEGOTIATE – agree to do less of the task or in a different time frame

DELEGATE – use your VEA and other members of your team, to do all of the task or part of it

DEVELOP EFFICIENT SYSTEMS – to improve the time a task takes

DO THE JOB LESS WELL – perfectionists will spend too long on tasks they don't need to, the "task driven" will gravitate to quick wins for a dopamine fix and those who like to please others struggle to say no.

But WHEN should you be planning to deal with different types of tasks?

In Dan Pink’s new book WHEN - The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, https://www.danpink.com/books/when/ he explains that as well as the How and What the When can be critical.

Pulling together a wide range of research Dan explores how our circadian rhythms also have an impact of WHEN we should be doing different tasks.

He describes people as either Larks, the early risers, Owls, who like to burn the midnight oil and Third Birds, who are more Lark than Owl. We are all born Larks, gravitate towards Night Owls in our teens. About 25% of people are Owls by nature.

When: Larks Owls and Third Birds - Dan Pink - When The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

Depending on our type our internal rhythm makes us better calibrated for certain tasks at different times of the day.

• Larks and Third Birds have more energy and focus in the mornings, generally peaking mid-morning to midday and then have a slump mid-afternoon, before another peak towards the end of the working day.

• Owls hit their peak much later in the day and rebound in the evening.

Understanding this can allow you to plan your activity around your rhythm – our brains, it transpires, are much better at processing complex and analytical tasks whilst we are approaching our peak and better at dealing with more creative tasks as our rhythm begins to slump.

So, if you are a Lark or Third Bird, plan those IMPORTANT/NOT URGENT TASKS for the mornings and attack what’s left of your URGENT/UNIMPORTANT in the afternoon. If an Owl, the other way around.

If you use a VEA you should be making TIME MANAGEMENT part of your working process together. Once you have established parameters around priorities, available time and resources to deal with your workload, your VEA can;

1. Work with you to schedule time, in the right part of the day to hit the IMPORTANT/NOT URGENT tasks.

2. Agree in advance what can be DELEGATED either to your VEA or others in your team.

3. Also agree what tasks you will SAY NO to.

4. NEGOTIATE tasks before they hit your desk to make sure you only do what is necessary or possible.

5. Develop EFFICIENT SYSTEMS to minimise the time you need to spend on other tasks.

In many ways you can delegate TIME MANAGEMENT to your VEA.

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