Time Management

Managing one's time well is of course a fundamental skill for performing well.  Some work roles require it more than others and some roles can be performed with inefficient time management but the trade-off is usually working extra hours.

Below we introduce a few well known and generally respected concepts and techniques that you may want to familiarise yourself or others with.

On this page:

The Time Management Matrix

The time management matrix appears in a variety of different forms, with different words used to describe the type of activities associated with each quadrant; however, the basic concept is thought to have first originated with US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”When confronted with something that needed to be done, President Eisenhower is said to have asked himself two questions: First, is the task important? Second, is it urgent? This allowed him to get things done in the right order at the right time, and to work out which tasks could be delegated and which ones should be given his immediate attention.

Stephen Covey popularised the idea in his 1989 business classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, under the title “The Time Management Matrix” (page 151). Covey believed that the best thinking in the area of time management could be captured in this single phrase: “Organise and execute around priorities.”

The TM matrix is the most popular model used in time management training, which is particularly useful for leaders and managers who are in a position to delegate. Even so, the model can be applied to anyone in any position within business as well as in the personal domain.  According to a six-year global study of 351,000 people, over 40% of time in the workplace is spent carrying out tasks that ultimately don’t matter.

According to the matrix, everything we do in life can be sorted by both its urgency and its importance. This creates the following matrix: 

Q2 is all about proper planning, about putting the necessary time in before things become urgent. This is the quarter we should be prioritising, since doing so will help us be more effective in our work and, thus, minimise bad work stress. So how do we make time to do this?

Four Steps for Managing your Time with this Matrix

1. Identify your priorities
   If we want our work to sit mostly in “important and not urgent”, we first need to identify our highest-priorities. Steven Covey refers to these as the Big Rocks and they are the things most important in your life.  The whole objective of this time management matrix is to encourage us to question whether a certain task helps us achieve our goals or not.
   If you are currently having VFS Coaching (or have previously had a VFS Coach), check out our resource for Big Rocks & Time Management in your Members Resources area.

2. Schedule time for deep work
   Once you’ve identified which tasks are truly important, the next step is to create more undisturbed space for working on them, to free up time for undisturbed, prolonged focus.  Where you can, schedule thoughtfully to make sure you give most of your time to this type of work.  Consider using time blocking to create regular sessions for immersive deep work, as well as limit the amount of time you allow yourself to spend on low-value, unimportant tasks like daily email management.  See below for tips on email management.
   You may also need to employ techniques and tactics to postpone and cancel meetings or to simply be clear that you will not be attending because it will prevent something more important from getting done.  It's important to seek clarification on what the purpose of the meeting is...what it aims to achieve and why it's important.  You can even try to improve the quality of meetings you are expected to attend.

3. Outsource or automate wherever possible
   To free up more time for Q2 work, you also need to reduce the time you spend in Q3 and Q4. Work that’s not important but urgent can include tasks like meeting scheduling, time tracking and replying to emails. While much of this work is unavoidable, a great deal of it can be partly automated or completely outsourced.
   For some people it's worth exploring smart tech to limit the impact of this work on your day.  For example, apps that can prioritise your inbox, track your time automatically and schedule meetings intelligently.  However, beware...the tasks may still have more disruption on your productivity than you realise AND tools such as these can often prevent people from trying to get to the root cause of those that can be eliminated from your workload.

4. Minimise Distractions
   Q4, things that are not important and not urgent, should ultimately be eliminated entirely, or at least reserved for when you need a quick deep break from cognitively demanding work.   In the past we had a variety of techniques and practices to help us not get disturbed.  But in this day and age, most distractions come from our digital devices...or our own habit to check our devices for notifications.
   Anti-distraction apps are a great help for ensuring these types of task don’t consume your time or interrupt you when you’re trying to focus. They can even help you manage your biggest self-distracting behaviours, blocking certain websites or limiting your non-work related browsing each day.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) Framework

(Including Inbox Zero)

To do

The term was coined by Merlin Mann and much has been written about keeping your inbox empty. Mann has stated that, the zero is not a reference to the number of messages in an inbox; it is “the amount of time an employee's brain is in his inbox.”