In his book, the Effective Executive, Peter Drucker talks about the most basic principle of Time Management, the principle of Awareness. Knowing how you spend your time is where it all starts. In my management class, I assign each participant the exercise of tracking their working time over a one week period. When Drucker makes this assignment, he recommends hiring someone to follow you around to make more accurate notes of your wanderings during the week. The recommendation has less to do with accuracy and more to do with capturing the truth. I know full well that my class participants are not going to engage an assistant to follow them around. They laugh about the high cost of such a simple task and that no one would approve the budget item to be followed around.

So when I send my students off to make this accurate record, I know they will not heed Drucker’s advice, so my admonishment is, “Remember the 11th commandment. Thou shalt not kid thyself.”

A week later, the results are always interesting. The recordkeeping for the week fits on a single side of an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet. Down the side are the time increments, across the top are the days of the week. In each time increment (of 15 minutes), I ask them to record their activity. Activities lasting more than 15 minutes simply occupy more blocks on the page. With their weekly log in hand, at the top, I have them identify 5-6 of their important Key Result Areas and armed with highlight pens of different colors, I ask them to color code all of their activities.

The patterns of color yield a very quick analysis. A dominant color would indicate a high priority in that Key Result Area. The coaching question is, “Does the real priority of the Key Result Area match the color dominance on the weekly Time Awareness Chart?”

A missing color would indicate that one of the identified Key Result Areas was ignored during that week. The coaching question is, “Did you forget about activity in that Key Result Area, or did you omit the activity on purpose?” On purpose is actually a better response than realizing the ball got dropped through forgetfulness.

But, what about the areas where there is no color at all? The time block indicates activity, but no color seems to match the activity. First blush might indicate that time is being wasted. My contention is that most managers do NOT waste time. Most Managers I know are most always engaged in important activity. The absence of color simply indicates the important activity is not connected with any Key Result Areas of the Manager. Likely, it was connected to a Key Result Area of someone else who cleverly involved the Manager.

The first principle of Time Management is awareness. If you think this exercise might benefit you, remember, “Thou shalt not kid thyself.” —TF