From Time Management to Time Intelligence. Zach Davis
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Название: From Time Management to Time Intelligence
Автор: Zach Davis
Издательство: Автор
Жанр: Экономика
isbn: 9783941546271
isbn:
If, on the other hand, you take a direct flight from New York to L.A., then your chosen method is effective as well as efficient. If, however, you get on a plane to Mexico your behavior is not effective, since your goal was a different one – L.A. At least in this case you are being efficient, since the means of transportation has a good ratio between input (your investment) and output (reaching your goal). The high level of efficiency, however, doesn’t do you any good if you’re traveling towards the wrong destination!
This way of proceeding is comparable to leaning the best ladder in the world against the wrong wall. Let us hope that at least it isn’t your career ladder. And now for the prize question: what combination do you have if you set off in the direction of Mexico on foot (assuming your goal is still reaching L.A.)? Effective? Efficient? Well, let’s just say that a person who does this still has a lot of room for learning.
So we want to be as effective as possible. And how should we define effectiveness? There are many different definitions, but here’s one we like: we have reached effectiveness when success and satisfaction overlap. How much is the one worth without the other?
Another pair of words that often comes up for discussion is “important” vs. “urgent.” What do these mean and what is the difference between them? Urgent is defined purely in terms of time. If you still have a lot of time until the deadline, the matter is not (yet) urgent, while if you don’t have much time left until the deadline, then the matter is urgent. (The origin of the word “deadline” is quite interesting. The dead-line in war camps during the U.S. Civil War referred to the physical line prisoners were not allowed to cross without being shot. Given this historical background, “deadline” denotes a time commitment that is serious and absolute.)
Urgency, however, does not correspond to importance at all. Importance is about impact. If something has a strong impact in a relevant area, then it is important. If the impact is weaker, the importance is also less. Confusing importance and urgency can present a danger for our time management. This concept will be discussed in much more detail later.
The Time Target
“I hate to criticize, but you’ve only been here for two days and you’re already three days behind schedule.”
If you take a look at the literature concerning time management or attend a seminar on the topic, you will find that almost everything revolves around the questions of importance and urgency. Logically, there are four possible combinations:
• important and urgent
• neither important nor urgent
• important but not urgent
• not important but urgent
Next, you will probably be introduced to a diagram using the so-called Eisenhower method. This diagram is a model with four quadrants. Although this model may occasionally be useful as a trigger to begin reflecting on importance and urgency, in practice it will not save you much time. (Don’t worry, an alternative model is coming up soon.) Why? If the matter falls into the quadrant “important and urgent,” the model says you should deal with it immediately. Theoretically that is fine, but what do you do if you have ten such tasks at the same time? Then you are encouraged to postpone the quadrant “important but not urgent.” Deal with it at a later time.
Whether that is a reasonable decision we will discuss a bit later. But what to do about the tasks that other people want to have completed right away? The Eisenhower Method states that things falling into the quadrant “not important but urgent” should be delegated to someone else. That makes a certain kind of sense. But what do I do if there’s nobody I can delegate my task to, or if the people who theoretically are available are already overloaded with work? We need answers to these questions.
Finally, for the quadrant “not important and not urgent,” the model tells us to dispose of the activity, in other words, not complete it at all. It does make sense up to a point to spend as little time as possible on tasks that are neither important nor urgent.
But the biggest problem with this diagram is that it doesn’t help to solve the basic problem: having too much to do in too little time. How many people, in the midst of feeling overwhelmed, have the time and clarity to sit down and organize tasks according to the quadrants in order to devise the best strategy?
Nevertheless, questions about the importance and urgency of a task are central aspects of our concept of time intelligence. Let’s look at an alternative approach: the time target. Since, logically, there remain four possible combinations, here too we have four sections – picture them as the rings of a dartboard.
One thing before we start: it would be useful to know how we keep score in this game of time management. Here’s the system: the outer rings give you fewer points and the inner ones more. Now imagine you have 40 darts to throw. These represent the 40 hours of your workweek.
Where do you aim with your darts? Of course you aim for the center, the innermost ring. Will you always hit the bull’s-eye? Of course not! But the more skilled you become at placing your darts, as with managing your time usage, the more often you will also attain the highest number of points. Now let’s see how we can attribute one of the possible combinations discussed above to each of the rings of our new target.
Our seminar participants always reach the same conclusions: in the end what matters are two things: 1) the results that we are able to produce and 2) the stress level. We want to get the best possible results within a certain period of time while keeping the stress level tolerable. We’re not aiming for zero stress, but at least it should not chronically exceed an acceptable level. Our criteria for the assessment (our points) are, therefore, our results and our level of stress. Let’s remember that for later.
What is the outermost ring? When we ask seminar participants, they usually answer quickly and unanimously, “not important and not urgent.” Once we have agreed on this, we have a clear definition for one of the four rings in our time target (let’s call this ring number one).
While it is not a problem if we spend some time in this area, it does not give us many “points.” What would happen if you spent a lot of time here, though, doing things that are neither important nor urgent? What were our criteria again? Results and stress. Of course, if we pursue lots of unimportant tasks the results will not be good. The stress level may briefly be very low, but only until the really important tasks catch up with us. One example for a task that belongs in the first ring would be gathering statistics but not evaluating them critically and failing to act on them. The introduction of new systems that are no better than the old ones also belongs in this category.
This category comprises all activities that do not bring improvement, and we will henceforth refer to it as the “area of escape,” because most people who spend a substantial amount of time in this area are trying to escape from other topics they don’t want to deal with. This applies to work as well as private life. Does this ring any bells for your own organization?
What combination of qualities do we put into ring number two (counting from the outside)? Here, too, most seminar participants agree – even if there is sometimes a bit of discussion. Into this СКАЧАТЬ