Struggle with time management? The ‘Eisenhower method’ will help
By Grace Beverley
The plain truth is that we all need to work and will spend a huge chunk of our life working, and so we’re better off working smart. Working smart – being productive, efficient and effective – means that we’re going to have more time to do more of what we love, whether that’s more work or more play.
That being said, I don’t buy into the whole, almost cult-like, “work smart so you don’t have to work hard” rhetoric. Working smart is hard. It requires a lot of time spent getting to know yourself, and a good dose of tough love. On top of that, it’s something that will evolve throughout your working life. We need to be honest with ourselves each and every day – on those days you want to work less and on those you want to work more.
A priority should be learning to effectively write it all down all the tasks ahead of you to sort them out. Time management is a form of stress management after all.Credit:iStock
One of the key skills to learning how to manage your stress, workload and get to know how you like to work is figuring out time management. It is one of, if not the, most crucial part of living a productive life. It allows you to structure your time in order to fit in everything you want and need to be doing, and is one of the most effective ways of reducing stress.
When you can feel the stress tidal wave coming over you – you have 352 things floating around in your brain in no particular order, all of which are a top priority, and none of which make sense – you need to be able to know how to effectively write it all down and sort it out. Time management is a form of stress management after all.
Prioritise
In order to do this successfully, you need a method – how to work out what to do first, where the important things go, how to stay sane. The first rule is prioritisation. The simple truth is that if you choose not to do something, it is not a priority. That’s the first bit of tough love. Substitute saying, “I don’t have time” with “it’s not a priority”, and you’ll instantly get closer to the self-accountability needed for discipline and progress.
Something not being a priority is absolutely fine: you just need to be able to acknowledge that. This is a lot harder than it seems. Once you’ve understood that something hasn’t been a priority, the next thing you need to decide is whether you’re going to change that, or whether you’re going to accept it. Both are acceptable, and tied to where you want to be next week, next month and next year.
The Eisenhower method
If you’re struggling with working out what you should be doing, let alone when, I strongly recommend the Eisenhower method. This focuses on differentiating between “urgent” and “important” tasks on your to-do list, so you can decide whether you need to do them, and if you do, how much of a priority they are compared to other tasks.
It’s not a complicated method, and it should definitely help with the basic principles of working out what’s worth your time, both now and later. I personally find that I automatically do the “urgent-important” classification in my head.
In my opinion, this alone is not organisational enough beyond deciphering what you should and shouldn’t do, but it’s a great first step.
Get organised
My main organisation principles are based around visibility and awareness – a clear sight of what you have to do is essential.
Keep an electronic calendar. Electronic calendars allow you to book years in advance and get alerts closer to the time, then you can move things around to your heart’s content. A second benefit is that you can create different calendars for different areas of your work and keep your social life separate, which can be helpful in cultivating work-life balance.
Keep a paper diary, too. I highly recommend that your paper diary has a double-spread full week view so you can visualise the entire week. It will give you the bird’s eye view you need to effectively manage your workload, even when things change last-minute.
The to-do table. The to-do list is so last generation: we’re all about the to-do table now. This is a very serious question: why does your to-do list look like the Top 40 music chart? All your tasks are not the same: they are not of equal priority. I divide my table by Quick Ticks (will take five minutes or less), Tasks (will take up to 30 minutes) and Projects (they may not be for today, but you still want to be conscious of them).
Slot them in. Once you have your to-do table, have a look at your day in your calendar, and slot the day’s worth of tasks in between fixed commitments. I use a technique called time-blocking: as much as you can, divide your day into blocks of time and dedicate each block to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks.
My methods aren’t going to work for everyone. That being said, at least try these suggestions, and tweak them as you need – whether that’s adding more columns to your to-do table or writing your paper diary out on a computer. I truly believe that as long as you know what works for you and you’re honest about where to apply it, you’re on the path to productive and mindful success.
This is an edited extract from Working Hard, Hardly Working by Grace Beverley (published by Penguin Random House, $35) out now.
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