Time Is On Your Side ... If You Have Nothing To Do

Cyndi Seidler
05/11/06

This morning I slept in. I deserved it, I thought, since I stayed up late working on a project. The other times I got up later than usual varied from insomnia to the "it's too cold to get out of bed" ailment.

I'm a night person, what can I say? Forcing myself out of bed to start work at a reasonable hour is just that: force.

I do try to maintain a disciplined work life though, and stick to a routine that allows me to get a lot of things done. You see, in my profession, I preach structured days and enjoy watching other people follow this advice, even if I'm not.

I'm not sure anyone can relate with me here, but sometimes I just end up doing everything except what's on my list of things to do.  Call it rebellion, or call it a disaster waiting to happen. My point is, every now and then I go off on a free-for-all day and have fun doing it (even if "it" is nothing productive to my work demands).

I could be fired if I keep talking like this, so being my own boss has its rewards.

One of my clients however suffered from too much non-productive work, and claimed to be busy all day long yet not getting anything done. I call this the "scattered action" syndrome (but let's hope the psychiatric field doesn't put a disease label on it and try to prescribe a pill for it).

My client Brian runs a company with many staff, each having job duties that would alleviate much of his own hands-on operations of the business. Yet, he often complained, "I can't get anything done! I'm always distracted and my list just grows and grows and grows!"

Come to find out, Brian would take it upon himself to take on all the staff issues by doing it himself, rather than providing a solution and having his staff carry it out. Even more stressful was the fact he had to provide the solution in the first place rather than having his staff provide one for him.

This type of management led to him being the office manager (I think it was the time he went out for toilet paper), the accounting manager, the operations supervisor, and many other job functions in the company. So, as top management, he got very little done. But yes, he got everyone else's job done.

As Brian's authority figure on the subject of time management and organization, I owed it to him to try and set things straight.

"How long did it take you to get the toilet paper?" I asked Brian. "About one hour because I stopped at the dry cleaners on the way," he said.

"And, how much is your time per hour?" I asked. "I'd say it's around $150.00 an hour," he said.

"And, what do you pay your office manager per hour?" I asked.  He answered, "She gets $15.00 an hour."

I did the math for him and pointed out what his errand cost the company, as opposed to the office manager's time.

That was just one point to get him to consider in his job-takeovers.

Managing time isn't all that tricky. The goal is, of course, to be productive with time and accomplish as much as possible in a certain amount of time. If Brian's list of things to do were things that would accomplish his own tasks, that would be a productive action list.  And, if he puts "get toilet paper" on his list in the future, I'm going to suggest he give himself a demotion and pay himself accordingly.

As for me, I may have slept in today, but I plan to manage my day just fine, thank you. But first I have to get to Starbucks for my latte. After all, it's my job to keep me awake for the day.