Have you ever been on a conference call and waited several minutes after the start time of the meeting to actually begin? What if each time a person joins late, the host stops and provides a catch-up summary? Is that fair to people who joined on time? How about meetings that extend beyond the scheduled end time with no regard for what anyone else may have scheduled next? I’ve been in all of the above, in each of these roles: on time, late, host, and guest.
As the host, I finally made a commitment to start the meeting on time and end on time. Commitment is a critical skill in time management. I
realized I needed to be more committed with several factors of my time management. By committing myself to building better habits, I found
that others started to practice similar techniques.

Understand your own commitment level. Be fully invested in improving your time management skills, and be respectful of others’ time, as well. Think of examples in which you must commit and start to create the right actions and habits. Here are some examples:

• Commit to start and end times you set for yourself. If you said you would spend an hour on a project, stick to that time. If you’re not done with a task, set up a new time to complete it.
• The same holds true as the host of a meeting. Start on time and end on time. In a meeting, you may want to say, “Out of respect for everyone’s time, we’re going to get started.” It’s not
always easy, but many times we enable the process. With every new late attendee who joins, we do a quick recap. As much as we want everyone on the same page, it makes the meeting
inefficient and is disrespectful to those who did join on time. You can offer to catch them up after the call or have them read the meeting minutes, but it’s important to try to limit the
constant recaps for the late arrivers.
• As the end of a meeting approaches, you may want to say, “I see we only have a few minutes remaining. We’ll end the meeting and cover the rest at the next meeting,” or set up a new time
to finish that works for everyone. Going beyond the end time has a downstream effect for many. Showing respect for other people’s calendars builds the right habits for everyone. Be
committed to making it happen.

Stay focused on doing what you set out to do, starting by sticking to what you allotted for time on your calendar. This will keep you on task, build a strong time management reputation for you, and ultimately save time for not only yourself, but others. Looking back at incidents when you let time drift or found yourself not committing to what you set out to do will provide you with a good snapshot of what needs to change and what new habits to establish.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I have been involved in many meetings, especially conference calls, in which people were obviously not engaged. The disengaged population is often multitasking. Besides the people who readily admit that they are multitasking (you would be surprised at the number of people who come right out and tell me), there are the people who don’t say a word during the entire meeting, other than to say hello in the beginning and goodbye at the end. The multitaskers also are the obvious ones who say, “Huh?” or, “Can you please repeat the question?” when they hear their name directly. Some are bold enough to say, “Johnny and I were just instant messaging and I didn’t catch all that.”

In 2009, Ryan Buxton referenced a new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found multitasking may do more harm than good. Citing the study’s findings, the article states, “Multitaskers are more susceptible to memory interference by irrelevant details.” The effort to move from one topic to another and the exertion required to return where you were impacts the true retention of information for multitaskers. What does this have to do with time management? Everything. Anything that takes your concentration away from the present will create extra work for you. Stop kidding
yourself by thinking that multitasking saves time. It actually does the opposite.

I recently saw a presenter request the audience to write out their first name and last name. He asked them to write out the first letter of their first name followed by the first letter of their last name, and so on. It obviously took much longer than simply writing their names out normally. The point was powerful.

Start an exercise over the next three days at work. I want it to be based on true experiential facts, not by looking at the past and creating a time study—you want facts, not subjectivity. Start to monitor the number of times that you try to multitask in a day. By being conscientious of it, you will reduce the pull to do it. Mark down the number of attempts, even if you went back to concentrating on the first item. The goal is to improve this by ten percent each day.

I won’t be a hypocrite and say that I have never done it. However, since I’ve limited my multitasking, I have found myself asking What just happened? in a meeting much less frequently than I had in the past. Additionally, I will say that my concentration level and my engagement has grown substantially since I made a concerted effort to concentrate on one task, one meeting, and one conversation at a time. A conversation that only needs to happen once—thus saving everyone time.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

In an ironic twist on the previous blog, I want to share the power of mindless checklists. As I was packing for a summer vacation, I was scrambling around and getting stressed over whether or not I was forgetting something. As I was digging through my junk drawer, in the back of a notebook I found last year’s list. There it was; everything I needed to bring—including a swimsuit, sunscreen, and sunglasses.

The burdensome task of packing turned from a budding stressful situation to a quick to-do. I have since made a winter vacation list, and a
business trip list. Each of the lists has matured and changed over time, but the basics remain the same. Routines—or doing the same thing
over again with predictability—can make you a better organizer and time manager if they enhance your productivity and reduce your stress
levels.

Determine what checklists and routines personally and professionally can work for you. Are there standard operating procedures that need to be made up? Are there morning opening or closing tasks that can be made holistic and easier for you to follow? What regular reference points or routines can you establish and create both personally and professionally? You might even want to establish a routine to have time each week, or even daily, for no electronic disruptions so that you can commit to doing nothing but what is in front of you. To put the last blogs to work, you can have an appointment for today to review the specific checklist that will be used (e.g., “Use packing list to pack for vacation”).

Checklists and routines reduce unpredictability and consistently let everyone know ahead of time what is expected. If it’s a standing meeting or a common task that makes you more productive and reduces unnecessary stress, then checklists and routines can and should be implemented.
Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I used to work with an individual who carried her calendar with her everywhere. Within the calendar was her personal checklist for the day. Each morning, I would see her flipping the pages back and forth from yesterday to today and transferring the items not finished yesterday to the new day. After several days of watching her do this, I finally asked her two questions: First, how long does it take each day to transfer the new items over? Second, how important were the tasks in the first place if they kept getting moved? The answers were, that it took longer than she liked and the tasks transferred each day were probably not as important as she had originally thought. She was hurting her ability to manage time effectively in an attempt to organize each day.

The use of checklists always starts with the best intentions. Unfortunately, people often like to see them to check off their completed items and turn it into an accomplishments list. Checklists shouldn’t be used as an accomplishments list to tick off the little victories, or as an exercise in procrastination. Checklists should be used to drive execution of the tasks, but too often we start to migrate to the easier and quicker tasks. If you want an accomplishments list, then keep one, but don’t combine it with your checklist. A checklist should be about getting things done. On it should be all items needing to be addressed today: important, not important, urgent, and not urgent. It should be a complete list dedicated to today.

Assess your own checklist usage. Whether it is a literal checklist or a figurative set of tasks that you keep online, take the time to understand how often you move tasks regularly. You should stop using a checklist if you constantly shift tasks from day to day—this isn’t productive. Consider the following when conducting your assessment, some of which is reinforcement of past blogs:
• If you have moved a task for consecutive days, you must ask yourself, “How important is it?” If it is important, take action on it. If it is important but not urgent, don’t schedule it for tomorrow, schedule it for a week from now, when you know you can get to it.
• If you are proactively staying ahead of your day, week, and month as stated in an earlier chapter, then you should be on top of this and simply be making tweaks along the way.
• Checklists, if kept, must be comprised of the least amount of work you expect to get done and still consider the day a success. Specifically, this is the “I can’t leave until this gets done” list. Be
very realistic.
• Build in daily events and habits. What do you do at eight a.m. every morning? Are there calls you have to return, administrative tasks that need to be done (e.g., paperwork to process)? If so,
build it in. Account for the time you are using.

When it comes to checklists, the important key is to not write it down or add it to your online to-do list today if you are not going to do it today. Your checklist assessment should enable you to turn a potential time management hindrance into a time management tool.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com