“I think I need some tips on Time Management,” explained Krista. “I mean, I know I have to set priorities and stuff, but sometimes the day just gets out of hand. I keep my team busy, but you know what they say. The harder we work the behinder we get.”

“How do you make decisions on what to do next, or what to leave behind, what to make faster and what to double-check?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It seems like any ball we drop comes back to haunt us.”

“Indeed,” I replied. “In the grand scheme, it all has to get done. No goal can be cast aside.

“So, how do you decide?” Krista insisted.

“Let me see your list of goals for the next three months. You are a manager. You certainly have a list?” -TF
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“The point of the vacation exercise is not to pretend that every week is the week before vacation, but to look at the difference between that week and any other week,” I explained.

“That’s good news, because if I worked as hard every week as I do the week before vacation, I would go nuts. It’s bad enough the way it is. Almost makes going on vacation not worth the all the trouble,” Marissa replied.

“So, what is different about that week from any other week,” I asked.

“Well, I have to get more stuff done, so I just do whatever it takes. Some days I work longer, but mostly I prioritize and delegate. And you are right, some things simply become unimportant, so they don’t get done at all.”

“So, you have just learned about Parkinson’s Law. Work expands (or contracts) to the time allotted.”
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“Have you ever noticed that the week before you go on vacation is the week from hell?” I asked.

Marissa nodded.

“Why is it the week from hell?”

“There is always so much to do that I can never get it all done.”

“Think about what else is different about that week,” I prodded.

Marissa smiled, “That’s the one week that I actually sit down and plan everything out. I delegate all kinds of things that I never delegate, and there are some things that I know that just won’t get done. That’s the hardest part.”

“Do those things ever get done, like when you come back?”

“Now, that I think about, no. Those things never get done. The only things that get done are the really important things,” she replied.

“Those things that are necessary.”

“To figure out what to eliminate, you have to figure out what is necessary,” I continued.

“That’s going to be tough. Just because our headcount is lower doesn’t mean that we can relax our standards. Everything still has to get done,” Marissa resisted.

“Everything?” I nudged.

It had not occurred to Marissa to examine the things in a typical workday to determine what is truly necessary.

“I suppose, we could,” Marissa stopped. Deciding necessity was more difficult than she thought. She was used to the routine, and eliminating unnecessary steps was throwing her off-balance.

“Marissa, I want you to try this. The project we talked about at the Monday meeting, you said, would take a week to complete. I want that project completed and emailed to me by this Wednesday instead.”

“No way,” she protested. “Impossible.”

“Yes, possible. And what’s more, if you are forced to complete the project by Wednesday, I guarantee, you will drop out everything that is not necessary. This is more than just an exercise, this a new way of looking at productivity.”

“There are many disciplines for Time Management,” I said. The group was taking notes. “Which is the most important?”

“OHIO,” shot a voice from the back of the room. “Only Handle It Once.”

“Okay,” I replied. “But who cares? Without this discipline, who cares if I handle a piece of paper once or handle it 50 times?”

“Prioritization?” came another guess.

“And what is it, that makes one task more important than another task?”

“The goal?” answered a voice in the third row.

“The goal,” I repeated. “Without the goal, all Time Management is meaningless.”

How do you incorporate discretionary behavior into a job description? Prescribed duties are easy, but what about the discretionary part?

When I was 17, I dropped out of high school and worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant. I quickly learned something about systems-thinking that stuck. In the middle of the work station sat a huge dishwashing machine. Temperature gauges, auto soap dispensing and a 90 second cycle timer. Whenever I placed a rack of dishes into the machine, there was a minimum 90 second cycle. No matter what I did, I could never go faster than the machine. The machine, in manufacturing terms, was my bottleneck. Herbie. My mantra was to keep Herbie working. Except for a few seconds each cycle, to move one tray out and a new tray in, my focus was to keep Herbie in cycle.

That 90 second period was my discretionary time. I could soak silverware, rack glasses, stack plates. It was my discretionary time that determined my throughput. If I kept trays in the queue, I was most effective. Whenever Herbie sat idle, I was losing ground. It is the discretionary behavior that determines effectiveness. How does a Manager capture that from team members? -TF