Time/Life Management

I dropped into Andy Kaufman's overcrowded session on Wednesday (no, not the actor, but he's just as engaging). This President of the Institute for Leadership Excellence and Development was talking about the leader as juggler -- and offering tips on getting things done in the real world.

"Life tends to scale up faster than our ability to deal with it," he said. I could relate. So how does one maintain balance between work and life when the workspace is getting more demanding than ever? Kaufman snaps it all together by presenting his own incremental time-management system that helps the pieces of your life fall into place. He's quick to say that "the answer's never the tool," even though he's a real geek, with Palm and tape recorder in tow wherever he goes -- but he admits that they can help.

Kaufman's key time-management principles?

• Responsibility: "If you don't take control of your life, someone else will," he admonished.
• Relaxation: Try getting it out of your mind and onto a list.
• Definition: Determine what success looks like to you.
• Focusing: Reduce tasks to incremental steps; the next action rather than the next 50. (Sometimes you just need to do one thing to make start feeling good about tackling the whole herd.)

Sounds simple enough ... then Kaufman shows how it's done.

• Lists, organized by context: Phone lists; lists for the office and home; waiting-for lists; lists of things to recall about people and places; travel lists; and one I especially liked -- the someday, maybe or perhaps list (someday, I would like to go to Fiji). One piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
• Organizer: Get something to hold these lists: a PDA, Franklin Planner or even a notebook -- whatever works -- to hold your calendar, contacts and in-boxes and to organize a tickler file at home (one per month, one folder per day to file away things that have to be filed, like bills and airplane tickets).

His method is sort of simple -- at least on paper:

 
  If (something comes your way that is actionable and relevant to your goals) then 
     If (it can be dealt within two minutes) then 
         do it 
     else 
         if (multiple steps are needed) then 
             define what success would be for executing this 
             activity and file it in your actions or calendar, so you 
             can find it again. If it can be delegated, make sure you 
             place it in your waiting-for list. 
  else 
      trash it 
  end If 

Although priority schemes can have more bark than bite, they can be honed with four simple criteria, such as context ("If I do this, it will help me to ________"), time available, energy available and priority. These delimiters, with weekly review of your categories, will help you to become more organized and start relaxing again ... well, until your personal lists and calendar start getting input from someone else's personal calendar. That's when the pieces start flying again and you've got to fall back on good old-fashioned communication.