Save Your Time and Be more Effective

Most discussions of the executives task start with the advice to plan one’s work. This sounds eminently plausible. The only thing wrong with it is that it rarely works. The plans always remain on paper, always remain good intentions. They seldom turn into achievement. - Peter Drucker

Time is totally inelastic. Everything we do requires time. All your work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet we forget to think of this irreplaceable, and necessary resource. We need to take care of time, we need to manage it. The first thing we need to do in managing our time, is to know where it actually goes:

  • Team work and communication about projects and possible work can not be communicated with a few minutes. If you want to get anything across, you need to spend a fairly large minimum quantum of time. The plans, direction, and performance of work need at least a full hour.
  • Since most creative direct themselves, You must understand what achievement is expected and why. You must also understand the work of the people who have to use the output. For this, You need a good deal of information & instructions — which all take time.
  • The designer/creative must be focused on the results and the goals of the entire organization to have any results and performance at all. We need to understand the meaning behind the work, the why. This means that You have to set aside time to direct Your vision from Your work to results.
  • In a larger organization, their is less actual time for the creative to work. Knowing where time goes and to manage the little time at your disposal becomes even more important.
  • The demand for innovation and change has created even more time demands on the creative. All You can think and do in a short time is to think and do what You always have.
  • You have to find the non-productive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them.

Peter Drucker helps us out with 3 questions to ask ourselves:

1. First try to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely waste of time without any results whatever. “What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it.

2. The next question is: “Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?” And if the answer is, “Yes,” then delegate it or outsource it. Focus on your strengths don't try to control everything.

3. Are you wasting your team members time? If you want to find out, simply, ask other people in your team. Effective creatives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?”

Time is our scarcest resource, and it has to be kept on a leash. The analysis of your time, is the one easily accessible and yet systematic way to analyze your work, and your results, to think through what really matters.

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