Managers are advised to manage their time by using importance and urgency dimensions in deciding what to do and, then, to perform those selected tasks efficiently.
Is this enough for managing the minute-to-minute actions in our daily operations?
There's little doubt our days are a little more fast paced than in 530 BC when Pythagoras wrote, "Let not sleep fall upon thy eyes till thou has thrice reviewed the transactions of the past day. Where have I turned aside from rectitude? What have I been doing? What have I left undone, which I ought to have done?"
Today's increasingly rapid succession of events demands a finer evaluation of what was done with each minute or, more precisely, what was accomplished with each minute.
A manager is more effective when a time log is combined with a production output control. You will never know if this is true in your case until you track and evaluate both your time usage and your actual units of production.
Do you recall how reluctant you were to conduct a time log when you first became serious about time management? Remember how enlightened you became with the outcomes? It's the same for logging units of production. You gain a new and keener perspective of time and activity.
Most tasks and projects can be broken into separate units. These could be the essential units that contribute to a successful completion of a large task or they could be key actions that cause you to declare, "I've had a very productive day!"
Targets and criteria are essential elements of a time-production control system.
Combining units of time with units of production is a good cure for procrastination. For instance, you realize you've been avoiding the start of an important project because you weren't sure where to start. Identify some simple actions for the startup phase and slate those for completion on your production control document. Upon completion of these actions you become encouraged by the movement and the next actions are placed in the control. You now know what next "little step" is required.
The same target-action-completion procedure can be applied to other "excuses" such as finding source materials, arranging a place to store or perform work, acquiring instruments, setting a working schedule and other activities which can be divided into units of production.
Your control spreadsheet becomes a convenient place to sketch out a critical path or for pasting notes describing the next action to perform when you return to the project.
Time or Outcome Management - Which is Best?
We pass on the concept of combining production output with your time usage controls. We trust your active and fertile mind will determine if this is viable in your situation and, if so, you will devise a control system to convert the concept and your time into more successful accomplishments.
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