Author: Chris Tingom

Imagine a workplace where you were rated based on your productivity.

Imagine a workplace where a results were rewarded, and not just sheer working hours.

Imagine what would happen if you could work less, even 4 days a week.

Did America go down the right path when we began the 40 hour work week?

Smashing The Clock is an interesting article about an experiment at Best Buy called ROWE, for “results-only work environment.”

At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation’s leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical–if risky–experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for “results-only work environment,” seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.

BusinessWeek Online: Smashing The Clock

Among the twenty time saving tips listed on this page, the one that hits home the most is this one: Do difficult things quickly; waiting doesn’t make them easier. It’s a fact of life that sometimes difficult tasks present themselves. Getting those ones out of the way first can free your mind and allow you to concentrate better.

Here are the rest of the tips:

1. Learn to set priorities on things like goals, tasks, meeting agenda items, interruptions.
2. Start with “A-priority” tasks; is it the best use of your time?
3. Fight procrastination; do it now if it’s important.
4. Subdivide large, tough tasks into smaller, easily accomplished parts.
5. Establish a quiet hour, even though it requires will power and may not always work.
6. Find a hideaway. The library or office of a co-worker who’s traveling.
7. Learn to say “no” when you’ve got something important to do.
8. Learn to delegate.
9. Accumulate similar tasks and do them all at one time.
10. Minimize routine tasks; spend only the time they deserve. Shorten low-value interruptions. Throw away junk mail and other low-value paperwork. Delegate, shorten or defer indefinitely the C-priority tasks.
11. AVOID PERFECTIONISM. Remember the 80/20 maldistribution rule.
12. Avoid over-commitment. Be realistic about what you can do in the time you have.
13. Don’t over-schedule. Allow some flexible time for crises and interruptions.
14. Set time limits. For example, some decisions shouldn’t take more than three minutes to make. Know how to recognize these.
15. Concentrate on what you are doing.
16. Use big blocks of time for big jobs.
17. Do difficult things quickly; waiting doesn’t make them easier.
18. Try to handle paper only once.
19. Think the job through before acting.
20. Finish as you go; get it right the first time.

It’s a great list, isn’t it?

Now let’s talk a bit about the 80/20 rule

If you got through that list and wondered what the maldistribution rule is, here’s a quick explanation: Twenty percent of the things you have on your “to do” list will provide you with eighty percent of the payoff.

It is also referred to as the Pareto principle, or the 80-20 rule.

I found a site that goes in depth on the 80/20 Rule of Time Management:

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, “discovered” this principle in 1897 when he observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population. Pareto’s theory of predictable imbalance has since been applied to almost every aspect of modern life. Given a chance, it can make a difference in yours.

And lastly, a tip that wasn’t included on the list

The last tip I want to provide is this: If you stop and actually track your time, both billable and non billable, and actually make an effort to do so, you’ll find that as you become more aware of how you use time, you waste less of it.

Google 20% Time

I’m sure you are all familiar with how Google let’s it’s engineers and other employees spend 20% of their time on side projects. According to Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, half of new product launches originated from 20% time. (source). That’s a great return on investment, and I suspect it originates from the fact that employees have something to look forward to, and their job doesn’t become mundane.

I’ve changed my environment ever so slightly here at Tornado, by moving to an empty desk in the same office. My new work space is clean and it has changed my perspective. Try it sometime when you’re in a rut. You can always move back to your old spot.

If you’re the type of person that lives for 5 o’clock, then this clock is for you. You can get it at the MoMAstore. It was designed by Tibor Kalman, an influential designer of the 20th century.

Are you always behind schedule and constantly working towards the next deadline, afraid that you might miss it? It’s quite possible that you are suffering from the side effects of not having deadlines.

Hence the title of this post: You can’t hit a target if you don’t have a target to hit.

Real World Translation: Your projects will always be late if you don’t have targets written down that you can meet.

You wouldn’t believe how important deadlines can be towards the health of your company and your well being. Over the years, I have gone through stages where I had a deadline for every project, and other times where I didn’t. Life is much easier when every project has a start date and an end date, with milestones along the way.

When every project has a deadline, you know when you are ahead and when you are not. So make your next to-do item this: Schedule my projects and start with start and end dates for every project.

I discovered a great podcast from a site called DonationCoder.com. In a 2 part interview, personal productivity guru David Allen talks about “Getting Things Done,” and goes in depth about the key principles, the subtleties of the system, and some potential trouble spots.

Click here for the podcast with David Allen.

Shortly after I read Getting Things Done I had a great struggle over the concept of having a folder for everything. I hate using file folders because you can only fit so much into each of them, and once you have a lot of things inside of them, it begins to get cluttered. Plus, with file folders. You can’t throw them around because they would spill all over.

That’s when I discovered what I call “project folders” (large catalog envelopes that can fit 11 x 17 sheets of paper). I can put everything related to a project inside of one, and it all fits. I don’t even have to organize what is inside of each folder, because I know it’s there, so I can easily find it in under a minute.

I would not say I have embraced the “GTD” lifestyle. A few key things changed my life, and I think that’s how most people look at GTD. Read the book, find one or two things you can embrace, and at the end of the day, one or two things can make a big difference.

I was reading the Wikipedia’s article about time tracking today, and ran across some great content about the advantages of time tracking. Here they are:

Time tracking can lower costs in 3 ways: by making payroll processing more efficient, by making costs visible so you can lower them, and by automating billing & invoicing.

Time tracking can increase revenue through automating billing, which tends to make it easier for a company to get correct invoices out for all hours worked by consulting staff. This speeds up payment and eliminates the hassles of ‘dropping’ bills.

By lowering costs in 3 ways, and increasing revenue in one way, timesheet management technologies that are web-based can improve the health of companies.

In the project management world timesheets can also be used to build a body of knowledge about how much effort tasks take to develop. For example if developing a training plan has historically taken a month, then it can be assumed that creating a new one will take a month.

I’ve discovered that most people only log their time in their timesheets if it is billable. I’m going to give you a new reason to track all of your time, even the unbillable moments in your day.

Statistics.

Imagine being able to pull up a graphical chart showing your billable time compared to your unbillable time. You could see at a glance that a large chunk of your day was either billable or unbillable. Companies call this an employees utilization, and the goal is to have a large proportion of your day be billable.

It’s great information to have, because you can keep appraised of your overall effectiveness.

Well, our tool will give you the ability to see how your time is utilized, but it won’t tell you this unless you log all of your time. Billable and unbillable.

Don’t worry, we’re going to make it super easy to do all of that, so it won’t be a pain.