Your job
Start with your job – the tasks you have to carry out and the
objectives you are there to achieve. Try to establish an order of
priority between your tasks and among your objectives.
It is more difficult to do this if you have a number of poten-
tially conflicting areas of responsibility. A good example of this
was a director of administration who had a ragbag of responsi-
bilities including property, office services and staff. He had
perpetual problems with conflicting priorities and, all too
frequently, at the end of the day he would say to himself: ‘I have
wasted my time, I have achieved next to nothing.’
He took a day off to think things through and realized that he
had to take a broad view before getting into detail. He felt that if
he could sort out the relative importance of his objectives he
would be in a better position to attach priorities to his tasks. He
quickly realized that, as an administrator, his first objective was
to set up and maintain systems which would run smoothly.
Having done this, he could rely on preventive maintenance to
reduce problems. But when a crisis did occur – which was
inevitable in his area – he could concentrate on fire-fighting in
one place without having to worry about what was going on
elsewhere.
His second objective, therefore, was to give himself sufficient
free time to concentrate on major problems so that he could react
swiftly to them. He then classified the sort of issues that could
arise and decided which could safely be delegated to others and
which he should deal with himself. He was thus prepared to allo-
cate priorities as the problems landed on his desk and to select
the serious ones to deal with himself, knowing that the adminis-
trative system would go on without interruption.
How you spend your time
Having sorted out your main priorities you should analyse in
more detail how you spend your time. This will identify time-
consuming activities and indicate where there are problems as
well as possible solutions to them.
The best way to analyse time is to keep a diary. Do this for a
week, or preferably two or three, as one week may not provide a
typical picture. Divide the day into 15-minute sections and
note down what you did in each period. Against each space,
How to Manage Time 191