Time Management for Managers: a More Effective To Do List

Most people I know start each work day with good intentions and a To Do list. Sadly, by the end of each day the To Do list has gone by the board and the good intentions have evaporated in a black cloud of frustration.

Does that describe you? As a manager, you need to have a system that ensures that you get done the things you need to get done, despite the chaos around you. Time management for managers requires a better To Do List.

The traditional To Do list is simply a list of the names of things you want to get done. You sit down and start jotting down, or typing in, all the things that pop into your head that you’d like to get done today — and that list can be dauntingly long by the time you’ve finished. That’s not a To Do List — that’s a brain dump.

The first problem is that there’s no difference on the list between a 2-minute item and a 2-hour item — they’re both just items. So how can you possibly know how many you can fit into your day?

There’s a simple solution to this. Block off the amount of time you will devote to each item. This forces you to really think about the size of each task, and when it totals up to about 15 hours of work, you know you can’t do it in an eight-hour day — it just doesn’t compute and it’s not going to happen.

But this reality check will help you become practical and cull the list so that the block for each item has a place on your schedule. Now all you have to do is put them in order and work through them.

“Huh!” I hear you say, “what about all the interruptions?”

Ah well, that’s a subject for another day — stay tuned!