All of us want to be more productive. Yet most people prefer to persist with habits and approaches that “suit them”, rather than those that have radical potential to upgrade their lives. Human nature often prefers that which is familiar, comfortable and conventional, even if it is less than efficient.
A common example is the use and abuse of email in the working environment. The net effect of electronic communications has been to radically speed up the “expected response” cycle for any message. The new presumption – especially if one is accessible via Blackberry(TM) or other smartphone – is that employees are available on a virtually permanent basis and that all messages require instant response and action. However this kind of mentality can play havoc with true prioritisation of tasks.
Start with the 80/20 rule – the concept that 80% of the value (importance, urgency etc.) lies in just 20% of emails. This is the famous Pareto rule, developed by the wily Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in the nineteenth century and subsequently adapted to a multiplicity of uses in economics and finance. Richard Koch has written a fine series of time management books on the subject. This means that the vast majority of electronic communications you receive are quite literally junk. So start looking for the vital few. Prune and eliminate ruthlessly until these are found.
Then start considering all of your work using lean management principles, thinking of every action as a flow or a process – with inputs, a transformation, and output. What are the key inputs that are really driving the outputs? Through a radical focus on the key deliverables and the inputs that ensure them, there is often room for a significant productivity upgrade in most workplaces. Some find that Yamazumi or other cycle time charts are invaluable in identifying how a process really works (as opposed to how we think it works).
In sum, there are significant opportunities in most workplaces for significantly enhanced approach to time management and productivity.
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