Time Management for Managers: Is It Important, or Just Urgent?

Time management for managers often comes down to an ability to distinguish between tasks that are important, and those that are merely urgent. Why does that matter?

To answer that question, I posted this video on YouTube. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uP7O3a8ANk

Watch the video, take a good look at your To Do list, and take action!

New Manager: Invest in Yourself!

Someone recently told me she would like to become a Traveler in my program for new managers, The Manager’s Journey, but her employer would not pay for it. She asked how she could persuade the company to pay so that she could take part in The Manager’s Journey.

My answer probably wasn’t what she expected, but here it is: pay for it yourself! After all, it’s your career, isn’t it?

One of the biggest mistakes new managers make is not investing in their own professional development. Of course it’s great when your company puts you through courses for your development, but you shouldn’t restrict yourself to those. If you want to develop your management career, there are many things you’ll need to learn and they won’t all be available in-house. Those who ask why they should have to pay when it’s the company that gains are taking a very short-sighted view.

In the long term, you will actually benefit more than the company, because you will learn skills that are transferrable. If you move to another position in another company, you will already be more prepared if you’ve learned some basic management skills. If you can truthfully say in your resume that you have taken management courses, that gives you an advantage in the job market, so why not put yourself in this position even if it means paying your own way?

That is, in fact, the reason I have kept the ticket price for The Manager’s Journey low, because I know many new managers will have to pay their own way and I want them to be able to afford it. (By the way, if you haven’t already, you really should read all about The Manager’s Journey to see if it’s for you.)

Don’t be short-sighted, new manager, and don’t be left behind: invest in your own professional growth, invest in your career, invest in yourself!

Questions from New Managers: Unscheduled Interruptions

This is the first post in a category I call “Questions from New Managers”, and I invite you to submit your questions for future posts. Just send your question, in as much detail as you want, to me at helen@tipsfornewmanagers.com and I will answer it for you.

Our first question comes from Bob, a Traveler on The Manager’s Journey:

“Helen, I try to start off my day with a carefully thought out to-do list, but it keeps getting longer because of the things that come up during the day. Quite often they don’t really need to be taken care of right away, but I’m afraid I’ll lose track of them or people are waiting for my reply to their question. How can I fit these things into my day without squeezing out the things I had planned to do?”

Well Bob, I’m sure you’ve already found that time management takes on a whole new dimension when you become a manager! Questions and requests for your time are a fact of life now and you must deal with them, but it’s important that you handle them in a way that works for you. I’m pleased you start off your day with a good to-do list, and I hope you have blocked off an appropriate amount of time for each item. Since most tasks take longer than we think, it’s also a good idea to build in some “wiggle room” by allowing an extra five to ten minutes for each, depending on its importance.

But of course those interruptions are not on your schedule, and time is finite, so what do you do? My favourite tool for handling this is the “parking lot”. It’s a place to make note of things that need to be done, but not necessarily right now. I use a small whiteboard, located to one side of my desk where I can easily reach it. Here, I jot down items I want to keep on my radar, but that I don’t want to do immediately at the expense of my scheduled items. Some days it gets pretty full, while on other days it stays comfortably open, but my rule is that it starts off each day blank. That means at the end of each day I deal with each item by either scheduling it into a future time slot, delegating it to someone else or, in more cases than you’d think, simply removing it because the need for it has disappeared.

It’s important to keep your parking lot near you, because if you have to stand up and walk over to your it, you often won’t take the time—and little pieces of paper scattered on your desk don’t do the job nearly so effectively.

So my advice to Bob, and other new managers dealing with this “time pirate” is to set up a parking lot and start each day with it empty. Try this, and do let me know how it works for you.

Remember, I want to answer your questions, so do send them to me at helen@tipsfornewmanagers.com