New managers and experienced managers all face at least one common challenge – time management in the workplace.

A meeting here, an employee crisis there, another meeting, terminating an employee, answering questions from the team, chatting with co-workers who stop by… before you know it, your work day is gone and you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing substantial or tangible.

You can feel like you are in a maze with no way out and no idea where you are going.

Before being able to effectively manage your day, you need to be aware of time-suckers.  These can come to you as legitimate aspects of your job or extraneous, non work-related time leeches.

Learning how to identify and manage time suckers will add productivity to your day and make your manager wonder how you get so much done.

Track Your Day

Spend a week tracking everything you do in a day.  If you have an informal hallway meeting with your boss for 15 minutes, log it.  If you take a quick smoke break, log it.  If you answer four phone calls from your family, log them.

This will open your eyes to just how much time is spent on non-productive tasks and identify to you those which are the worst offenders.  And you might be surprised to know which really take the most time.

The higher level of manager you are and the more employees you manage, the more your time needs to flow, so tracking down every thing won’t work.  You may need to take notes at the end of the day and look at time robbers then.

The other thing you need to do is analyze what has to be done vs. what doesn’t.  As a manager one of your primary duties is to protect time.

As I always told my team, “Time is my only non-renewable resource.”

You must be considerate of your team’s time if you have any hope of being successful.  There are other factors for time as well.  I said this on the another page and I will recommend it again, David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done has many great tips.  He talks about removing yourself from distractions, or more importantly getting them out of your way for real productivity.

Mental “clutter” can get in the way of every other kind of productivity.  It causes you, as a manager, to miss opportunities and not fully connect with what is going on now.  I’ll say it again, you need to know what things aren’t essential to really move the needle on productivity.

Meetings

The larger the company you work for, the more your day may be managed by meetings you’re invited to and expected to attend.  Accept only those you really need to attend.

And when it’s your turn to lead meetings, invite only those who are truly necessary (out of respect for their time management) and learn to run an expeditious meeting.  It’s not a bad thing to have a reputation for holding short meetings!

Have an agenda and handouts so people can take notes, this will keep the meeting going and help keep everyone focused. 

There are exceptions to everything I said above….  IF you are in a dynamic change situation, “turning things around”, building your team or any other number of those types of scenarios, it’s important to have meeting with all personnel that may impact, help, or whatever.  I am going to need to information on specific steps for those scenarios because I get questions about those topics all the time.

Chatters

Every workplace has a chatter.  Or several chatters.  They want to talk about last night’s TV shows, the condition of the economy, and their inconsiderate spouse, children or neighbors.  If six people stop you to chat during the day, even for only 10 minutes each, you’ve just lost an hour of work.  Are the chatters stopping to talk to your team members?  Are the chatters on your team?

While you don’t necessarily want to snub everyone who wants to chat with you, you should be armed with some effective conversation-enders so you can return to the job you’re being paid for.

The further up you move in management the more important it is for you to chat constructively.  You have to chat some but you need to make sure you spread it around to everyone.

Another important key is to make sure your employees don’t think you are wasting time.  Be aware what is going on.  If everyone is under pressure to get things done, you better be right there in the thick of things and not out there “chatting”.

Don’t Do What You Don’t Need To Do
 
Two ways you can manage your time more effectively are to prioritize your day in a list and to delegate tasks.

Before you start your day, make a list of the tasks you need to accomplish that day.  As much as possible, work on that number one task until it’s done, then proceed to the next task.  You might want to put the most important task on the top of the list, or you might want to put the task you hate the most on top, just to get it done and off your mind.

Delegation has multiple benefits as well.  First, you don’t spend time doing a task someone else can do.

And second, entrusting a task to someone on your team gives them more responsibility, increases their self esteem and lets them become more important to the company because they can do more.

Here are a few tips that will make delegating easier.

1. Start small.  You need to start with small tasks to get used to it.
2. Make sure any task you give to someone matches their experience level.
3. Ask the person to repeat back to you what you said.  Don’t make it sound like you want to make sure “they” are right, tell them you are making sure you spoke correctly.
4. Make sure you tell them where to reach you if they have a question.
5. Give a specific timeline.
6. Don’t get angry if it turns out wrong, ask what you said to help yourself understand how it went wrong.

There are many ways to help you improve your time management in the workplace.  Try several and see which work best for you.  You (and your boss) will be glad you did!