• Bonus Material
• Way Up
• The Art of Time Management
• by Stephan Landsiedel

15‑ The Art of Time Management

»Who cannot manage his time can manage nothing at all!«

Peter Drucker

Do you still remember when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Party Chief Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty in Moscow to eliminate intermediate‑range nuclear missiles? When long‑time Bavarian Minister‑President Franz Josef Strauß died and Steffi Graf became the first woman to win the Golden Slam? Canadian sprint star Ben Johnson was found guilty of doping and the German tennis team won the Davis Cup for the first time in its 88‑year history. In the same year three jet fighters collided at an air show in Ramstein and 70 people died in the crash. The Gladbeck hostage drama kept Germany in suspense for several days. Iraq and Iran ended their eight‑year war. At the Winter Olympics in Calgary the Briton “Eddie the Eagle” entertained the ski‑jumping crowds with humorous antics. Martina Kiehl from West Germany surprisingly won the women’s downhill gold medal. All that happened in 1988—about ten years ago. What were you doing at that time? How were you living? Which people surrounded you? What dreams and wishes did you have then? If someone had asked where you would be in ten years, what would you have answered? Would you have described the life you live now? Have you realised your dreams and wishes, or have they sunk over time and been dismissed as unrealizable?

Where will you be in the year 2000? Where in 2008? The time to decide this is not one year beforehand, but now! Your decisions and actions today determine where you will stand tomorrow and in ten years. Today you lay the foundation for a successful tomorrow. You have set great goals? You know the path to your success and have planned the individual stages precisely? Now you must ensure that time becomes your friend and works for you instead of against you.

Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, but they underestimate what they can accomplish in ten.

What is your dream for the next ten years? Is it a great—perhaps gigantic—dream? Keep it! In a decade many people have risen from nothing to dizzying heights of success. You can do that too if, in addition to everything you have learned in this book so far, you add one more ability: handling time correctly!

It has become a cliché to say “time is money.” Strictly speaking, however, that is wrong—time is more than money! Money you have spent or lost can always be recovered. Try, however, to get back one day of your life—that is virtually impossible! With time we spend working we can make money, but we cannot make time from money. That is a subtle difference. Therefore treat your time even more carefully than your money.

We all have 24 hours a day—how we use them is our decision. When someone “has no time” for something, it is a matter of priority. For something truly important one always has time; otherwise one could not survive.

If time is so precious, why do so many people spend no effort thinking about how they use it? And why do they waste countless hours on unproductive thoughts, conversations or activities?

Carpe Diem! – Seize the day

After setting these goals, he looks more closely at the first decade and divides it into years. He formulates goals for each of these ten years and enters them in the table.

In the first column he again writes the goal for the entire decade so that he keeps the goals for the next larger period and all stages on the way in view. However, after finishing his table he realises he would have to write several columns twice if he now applied this system to quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals as well. Therefore he modifies his system by cutting off the first column and placing the second plan over the first at the appropriate spot, fastening it so that he can easily glance at the lower table at any time.

Next he divides the first year into four quarters and sets goals for these quarters. He files the new table directly behind the year 1998 so that he again does not lose sight of the overarching goal. Now he can see clearly which dream he is heading toward, what he wants to contribute in this decade, how far he wants to get this year and what he wants to achieve in each quarter.

After Klaus has set the goals for the four quarters of the next year, he looks more closely at the first quarter and formulates goals for the first four months.

Next he divides the monthly goals into weekly goals.

Finally he prepares a weekly plan for each individual week, listing every day.

Let us pause here and leave Klaus to continue his planning. If you now picture your new time system, the overlaps of the entries for the different periods may irritate you. If so, you can design your system so that the preceding periods are covered up. Your time system could then look like this:

From left to right the detail in the planning increases more and more, while the length of the planning periods decreases.

A very great advantage of such planning is that you have control possibilities very early on. You can check every day, every week, every quarter, every year whether you are on the right track toward your goals. Deviations can thus be quickly recognised and corrected. After a short time you will be delighted with the excellent overview you now have of your activities.

In weekly task planning you should decide what you want to focus on that week, which task will take the most time and which will present the greatest challenge. Also take routine tasks and activities into account. Consider which tasks from the following week you could perhaps schedule already.

However, the most important level of your planning is the daily plan. It is responsible for the realisation of your goals. Your destiny is decided here! If you are not clear what you want to achieve here, you will waste a large part of your time. At this level it is particularly important that your goals are realistic and at the same time challenging—only then will you muster the necessary strength and energy to achieve them.

Daily planning with the ALPEN method

The name of this method is made up of the first letters of each step. Because the order is important, you can memorise the method immediately with this keyword and my brief explanation. Ideally carry out these five steps each evening for the following day—and of course right now for tomorrow!

Step 1:

Write down everything you want to accomplish the next day. Include tasks arising from your weekly and monthly goals, unforeseen tasks, newly added activities, routine tasks and appointments.

Step 2:

Enter after each task the estimated time you will need for the activity. Do not fear estimation inaccuracies—you will know after a few days how much time you need for certain processes. Moreover, we tend to need exactly as much time as we give ourselves. If you set no end for a meeting, it will last until the last possible moment. If you limit it to 90 minutes, you might need ten minutes more, but you will finish much earlier than with no limit. The same applies to your own time specifications: with a clear concrete limit you compel yourself to stick to it, work more concentrated and handle your time more consistently.

Step 3:

Reserve at least 40 percent buffer time! This time is for unexpected and spontaneous activities that you cannot plan at this moment. That means you should schedule only six of ten working hours—or five of eight—which often requires rigorously cutting other activities.

Step 4:

Decide on the priority of your activities! What is most important or most urgent for you? Where can you cut or delegate? One possibility is the ABC method, which I will introduce afterwards.

Step 5:

Transfer the notes to the detailed weekly plan. Do so by tackling the really important tasks at the beginning of the day, grouping smaller tasks into blocks or, if necessary, saving them for variety between bigger jobs. Note that there are times when you are hardly disturbed and times when the phone constantly rings or visitors drop by. Also respect your own body and its biorhythm.

“It is not little time that we have, but much time that we do not use.”

Seneca

Take 10‑15 minutes every day to plan your work and tasks—you will easily save this time during execution. But do not spend more time, otherwise your time management becomes inefficient again.

Remember every day that today you are taking another step toward fulfilling your dream—not just any step, but an important one. Perform each step with utmost care, live each day with maximum intensity and always give your best!

The time pie

Consider for a moment how you have spent your time each day so far. Write these things in a list!

Now represent the various time shares in a pie chart. It does not matter whether you take a day, a week or a month. Build something like a typical day and pay attention to the proportions. Please also include the time you spend sleeping—even if you think that is not time effectively available to you.

Find out whether this time pie is in accord with the values you discovered in chapter 4. Do you spend most time on the things that are most important to you? If not, think about why you do not.

How would the time pie look for a day you spend in harmony with your values and goals—a day on which you take a huge step toward fulfilling your life dream? Draw a pie chart for such a day as well.

What must you give up if you want to realise your life dream? Which goals must you abandon?

Where must you cut back on time?

Is your dream worth accepting these sacrifices? Are there ways to achieve both?

If it was not possible to fill in the time pie immediately, observe yourself for a few days and write down what you use your time for. We often do not really know how we spend our time or how much time certain tasks require.

“There are thieves who are never punished and yet steal from people what is most precious: time.”

Napoleon

ABC analysis

Because only limited time is available to you each day, it is absolutely necessary to use it primarily for truly important things. Separate important from unimportant and gain a clear overview of what is really crucial for reaching your goal. Divide your activities into:

A. Activities that cannot be postponed and must be carried out by you personally. They are extremely important and make up about 15 percent of all tasks, yet contribute about 65 percent to goal achievement.

B. Activities that are important but can indeed be postponed. They constitute about 20 percent of all tasks and contribute about 20 percent to goal achievement. Try, where possible, to delegate these activities.

C. Activities that are useful but can be postponed at any time or done by others. These account for about 65 percent of all tasks, yet their value is only 15 percent. Try to delegate, shorten or omit these tasks.

Allocate your time so that you spend the majority of the day on priority‑A tasks. Although they are the smallest quantity, they should receive the most time.

Control

Goal setting and planning make sense only if their results are reviewed. Therefore check every evening, before planning the next day, the actual state and compare it with the desired state. Praise yourself if you have achieved the planned workload or part of it, and take measures if not. In case of a larger deviation, also find out exactly why the goal was not reached and what could possibly be optimised. Also check your priorities and the associated use of your working time regularly.

“If I have achieved so many things, it is because I always wanted only one thing at a time.”

William Pitt

Principles and rules of time planning

1. 1. Basic rule (60 : 40). Plan only about 60 percent of your working time to leave room for unforeseen events, disruptions (“time thieves”) and personal interests and needs.
2. 2. Always gain an overview of all pending tasks.
3. 3. Work regularly and systematically on your schedules and carry a started task through to the end.
4. 4. Try to compensate for time losses as soon as they occur.
5. 5. Set results, not mere activities.
6. 6. Make precise time specifications and assign only the amount of time truly necessary for each task.
7. 7. Deadlines: set completion dates for all your tasks. This enforces self‑discipline and prevents indecision, delays and postponement.
8. 8. Priorities: decide exactly what you want to accomplish with which priority.
9. 9. Delegation: plan from the outset which tasks must be done by you and which can be delegated.
10. 10. Plan breaks consciously. Observe your own performance rhythm and schedule the most demanding work for the time when you are most productive.