time management tips tmt

8/9/2019 time management tips TMT

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Time ManagementRandy PauschDepartment of Computer Science

University of VirginiaCharlottesville, VA 22903

[email protected]

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Remember that time is money

Advice to a Young Tradesman

Benjamin Franklin 1748

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Introduction

• Time must be explicitly managed, just likemoney

• Much of this won’t make sense until later(too late?): that’s why the handouts...

• Faculty vs. Grad Students

• Lightning pace, heavy on techniques

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One Good Thief is Worth TenGood Scholars:

Time Management for Teachers

Cathy CollinsParker Publishing Company, 1987

CareerTrack Seminar:

Taking Control of Your Work Day 1990

(303) 447-2300


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Outline

Why is Time Management Important?

Goals, Priorities, and Planning

TO DO Lists

The Office: desks, paperwork, telephones

Scheduling Yourself

Delegation

Meetings

Technology

General Advice6 of 48

Why Time Management

is Important

• “The Time Famine”

• Bad time management = stress

• This is life advice, not job advice

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Scholars are Really in Trouble

• Academia has not kept up. Teachers: onlywhite collar worker without telephones

Never before have we had so little timein which to do so much

Fireside Chat, February 23, 1942

Franklin Delano Roosevelt 8 of 48

The problem is severe

• By some estimates, people waste about 2hours per day. Signs of time wasting:

messy desk and cluttered (or no) files

can’t find things

miss appointments, need to reschedule them

late and/or unprepared for meetings

volunteer to do things other people should do

tired/unable to concentrate


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Hear me now, Believe me Later...

• Being successful doesn’t make you manageyour time well.

• Managing your time well makes yousuccessful.

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Goals, Priorities, and Planning

• Drucker’s Dictum: Doing things right isnot as important as doing the right things.

• Benefit/Cost analysis

• Lou Holtz: list of 100 things before I die

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Questions To Always Ask:

• why am I doing this?

• what is the goal?• why will I succeed?

• what happens if I chose not to do it?

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The 80/20 Rule

• critical few and the trivial many

• Having the courage of your convictions• Good judgement comes from experience

• Experience comes from bad judgement


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Inspiration:

If you can dream it, you can do it

Walt Disney

• Disneyland was built in 366 days.

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Planning is Important

• Failing to plan is planning to fail.

• Plan Each Day

• Plan Each Week

• Plan Each Semester

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Separate Planning from Action

• Update your plans

• Pause to think, but remember:

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits

• Musing is not planning

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TO DO Lists

• break things down into small steps

• like a child cleaning his/her room• do the ugliest thing first


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The four-quadrant TO DO list

Due Soon Not Due Soon

Important

NotImportant

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On My Desk

An OUT BOX

Box of Tissues

Wall Calendar for year

Work order form (see example)

Envelopes

Post-it Notes

Thank you cards

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Paperwork

• Clutter is death; it leads to thrashing.Keep desk clear: focus on 1 thing at a time

• a good file system is essential

• touch each piece of paper once

• correspondence: answer on the letter itself

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Reading Pile

• only read something if you’ll be fired fornot reading it

• note that this refers to periodicals androutine reading, which is different than aresearch dig


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Telephone

• Keep calls short; stand during call

• Start by announcing goals for the call

• Don’t put your feet up

• Have something in view that you’rewaiting to get to next.

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Telephone

• When done, get off: “I have studentswaiting”

• If necessary, hang up while you’re talking

• group outgoing calls:

just before lunch & 5pm

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Vacations

• your message-taker should give twooptions

• if this can’t wait, contact John Smith at555-1212

• otherwise, please call back June 1

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Office Logistics

• Make your office comfortable for you, andoptionally comfortable for others

• No soft comfortable chairs! I have foldingchairs, some people cut off front legs

• People respond to physical objects

• signs vs. window shades


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Scheduling Yourself

• You don’t find time for important things,you make it.

• Everything you do is an opportunity cost

• Learn to say No

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Learn to say No

• Will this help me get tenure?

• Will this help me get my masters?

• Will this help me get my Ph.D.?

• keep “help me” broadly defined

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Gentle Nos

• “I’ll do it if nobody else steps forward;”“I’ll be your deep fall back,” but you have

to keep searching

• Moving parties in grad school; “Honey, thewasher & dryer...”

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Everyone has Good and BadTimes

• Find your creative/thinking time. Defend itruthlessly, spend it alone, maybe at home.

• Find your dead time. Schedule meetings,phone calls, and mundane stuff during it.


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Interruptions:

• 6-9 minutes, 4-5 minute recovery — fiveinterruptions shoots an hour

• you must reduce frequency and length of interruptions

• blurting: save-ups

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Cutting Things Short

• “I’m in the middle of something now...”

• start with “I only have 5 minutes” — youcan always extend this

• stand up, scroll to door, complement,

thank, shake• Clock-watching; on wall behind them

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Time Journals

• it’s amazing what you learn!

• monitor yourself in 15 minute incrementsfor between 3 days and two weeks.

• update every 1/2 hour: not at end of day

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Using Time Journal Data:

• What am I doing that doesn’t reallyneed to be done?

• What am I doing that could be done bysomeone else?

• What am I doing that could be donemore efficiently?

• What do I do that wastes others’ time?


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Procrastination

Procrastination is the thief of time

Edward Young, Night Thoughts,1742

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Balancing Act

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

Parkinson’s Law

Cyril Parkinson, 1957

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Avoiding Procrastination

• doing things at the last minute is muchmore expensive than just before the last

minute

• deadlines are really important: establishthem yourself!

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Comfort Zones

• Identify why you aren’t enthusiastic

• Fear of embarrassment

• Fear of failure?

• Get a spine!


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Delegation

• No one is an island

• You can accomplish a lot more with help

• Mostly Faculty to grad student; listen tothis advice from your perspective

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Delegation is not dumping

• require responsibility, accountability

• grant authority

• treat your people well

• I vacuum the lab myself

• grad students & secretaries are yourlifeline

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Challenge People

• People rise to the challenge: You shoulddelegate “until they complain”

• Communication Must Be Clear: “Get it inwriting” — Judge Wapner

• Give objectives, not procedures.

• Tell the relative importance of this task

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Sociology

• beware upward delegation!

• reinforce behavior you want repeated

• Ignorance is your friend — I do not knowhow to run the photocopier or the faxmachine


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Meetings

• average executive: > 40% of time

• lock the door, unplug the phone

• maximum of 1 hour

• prepare: there must be an agenda

• 1 minute minutes: who is responsible forwhat by when?

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Technology

• “Computers are faster, but they takelonger” — janitor, UCF

• If it’s not spell checked, stop reading it!

• Secretaries are better than answering

machines; where are the costs & benefitsof a technology? (transcription)

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Technology

• Electronic mail

• VIRGO & LEO: I haven’t been in libraryin 3 years

• Speed dialing speaker phone: hands arefree to do something else — “You’re on oneof those things”... “Yes I am”

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General Advice

• kill your television (how badly do you wanttenure or your degree?)

• turn money into time — especiallyimportant for people with kids or otherfamily commitments


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