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How Great Leaders Manage Their Time
Plan The Unexpected Important Stuff
About 40% to 60% of our day is taken up by important stuff that needs our attention but is not on our daily calendar.
Planning our day accordingly, keeping about half of it free for these 'out-of-calendar' activities, is realistic and sustainable.
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Time Management For Leaders
Managing time gets challenging as our career progresses and we take up more responsibilities. Five ways we can manage our time like a successful leader:
- Plan realistic reactive time.
- Don't respond habitually.
- Avoid the 25-minute meeting rule.
- Carve out your best 'brain time'.
- Answer a 'Yes' with true Intent.
Plan The Unexpected Important Stuff
About 40% to 60% of our day is taken up by important stuff that needs our attention but is not on our daily calendar.
Planning our day accordingly, keeping about half of it free for these 'out-of-calendar' activities, is realistic and sustainable.
Ask For Time
Instead of committing to getting the requested assignment done as soon as possible, factor in some buffer time and ask for a couple of days or a week.
This will help you get the work done along with any 'reactive realities' that come up, and it's a win-win if you get it done before the deadline.
Dynamic Meetings
Rather than having habitual meetings, make them dynamic and result-oriented.
Focus on the problem, and ensure there is a continuous follow-up, giving people space to brainstorm and come up with solutions.
Your Best 'Brain Time'
You need to figure out when your brain works best and get heavy work done in those productive hours.
These windows of 'brain time' cannot be wasted with meetings and chores that end up wasting your time.
The Value of Time
We normally get frustrated and can have a frowning expression when we are interrupted while being busy. When saying a 'no' can be impolite, a better way is to say 'yes' and then asking respectfully to fix a time to discuss.
The best leaders know the value of time and are proactive and purposeful in handling their daily calendar.
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The Pressure Of Time
Most leaders have familiar approaches to managing time: setting goals, planning, delegating, tracking commitments, and creating to-do lists. While these approaches do help in self-organization, the...
Sustainable Productivity
Instead of increasing the number of productive hours, we can focus on getting the right things done in a timely way. We also need to restore and balance ourselves, our colleagues, family and environment, instead of a neurotic or pathological focus on deadlines.
Find out what's truly important to us and use the finite resource of time wisely.
Phantom Workload
Phantom workload looks like real work but results in massive unproductivity and even conflict in an organization. The pressure to meet unrealistic expectations causes a vicious cycle of further workload.
Leaders need to take a hard look at what is being avoided or not addressed. Facing difficult tasks that were 'swept under the carpet' earlier strengthens them further to make hard decisions and face difficult people and situations.
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Get an early start on the day
Early hours are important because they tend to be free of most distractions and give you an opportunity to get focused.
An early start will allow you to squeeze in more time...
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- Balanced blood sugar levels, which helps maintain your energy throughout the day
- Improved short-term memory and mood
- Faster recovery and renewed energy after workouts
Better use of the commute to work
Some of the ways you can be productive during your commute include:
- Catching up on podcasts or listening to business-related audio books
- Hands-free calling to get a head start on critical or time-sensitive issues
- Reading and responding to emails (for those who use public transit)
- Researching and preparing for presentations
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1:1 meetings
1:1 meetings matter. It is important to nurture that essential employee-manager relationship. But it still not easy to get right.
Under pressures, managers are still juggl...
1:1 category
The goal of an effective 1:1 is not an update from your direct report or for you to lay down some instructions. It's a conversation. It's a chance to hear about your direct reports' ideas for your product, their career goals, and possibly their opinion of their performance.
Keep a list of three potential topics ready for discussion. When they say they have nothing to discuss, you can jumpstart the conversation with one of your items.
Manager's best tool
Your most precious resource is your own time and energy. When you spend it on your team, it helps build healthy relationships.
Your job as a manager isn't to give advice or 'save the day.'' It's to empower your reports to find the answer themselves. If you want to understand what's going on, ask. Let her lead the conversation while you listen and probe.
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Mindfulness at work
Means being consciously present in what you’re doing, while you’re doing it, as well as managing your mental and emotional state.
If you’re writing a report, mindfulness requires...
1 min/session
That’s the minimum required for a mini-mediation.
Just focus on your sense. You don’t need to close your eyes. You don’t even need to be sitting down.
Use Mindful Reminders
You can use interruptions as hooks to make you more mindful.
Every time your phone rings, take a mindful breath. Every time you hear the ping of a text message, pause to be mindful of your surroundings rather than immediately reacting by checking the message.
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Remote-first Mindset
Accept that you have to put in place remote work systems, even if more than half of your employees ultimately revert to office-based work.
- If done right, a remote-first infrastructu...
Build a socially-connected culture
Intentionally design for the same interactions that would otherwise happen if people were in the office.
- Culture is what naturally happens when a group of people gets together for any period.
- A great culture happens with intentional design and influence. It's the reason you should make your company's mission, vision, values, operating principles, standards, and agreements visible.
- Culture is experienced through emotions, including how your employees feel about the company, you, other leaders, and peers. That feeling is developed through human interaction at the water cooler, kitchen, or hallway conversations.
Your leadership presence
Your people need to feel your presence as a leader as they will have fewer opportunities to see you face to face when they work remotely.
- Regularly show up in a variety of forms that can include weekly video meetings, periodic company-wide emails, or presence in public channels.
- Err on the side of more communication rather than less.
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The 2 kinds of work :
- “Deep work”: using your skills to create something of value. It takes thought, energy, time and concentration.
- “Shallow work”: all the little administrative and logist...
Cal Newport
"The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. "