Most of the time when one talks or thinks about time management ‘to-do lists’ come to occupy prime position in such deliberations. This thought process seems fair considering the fact that one is planning to make better use of his/her time. However, optimising the use of the available time requires a different thought process.
While, knowing what to do when is helpful in extracting maximum use out of the available time, knowing what to stop doing and not doing help one to save time.
In my previous blog on inversion I have talked about avoiding the activities that come in the way of a goal accomplishment. Similarly, one should ‘not-do’ activities that come in the way of optimum usage of time. It is an extremely helpful activity to make a list of things and activities that one should definitely avoid while trying to manage their time better. The usual term for such activities is distraction. However, I feel that merely labeling these tasks as distractions and not actively working on disengagement from them, is not fruitful. Hence, having a written down list with oneself as a guide to what all should not be done is efficacious in overcoming the engagement with distractions. The ‘not-to-do list’ thus, becomes an essential component of time management.
The third type of list that boosts one’s efforts for enjoying their time better is the ‘stop doing list’. Many a time, an individual and/or an organisation develop a habit of performing certain activities that were relevant and required for a certain period. With time the requirement changes and so does the need for such activities, however, they continue to be performed.
For example, when I was holding an important profile on a voluntary basis, in a membership-based organisation, I was required to engage actively with other members of that organisation. Most of my Saturdays were further taken up with a long meeting to wind up the week. Resultantly, my own clients and my own team felt out of touch with me when we had only one weekly meeting. To overcome this challenge, I met my team two times in a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. My stint as a role-bearer in the other organisation came to an end after 9 months. My team and I had by that time had acquired a habit to meet two times in a week, and we continued with the routine for at least the next two months. One day, when I was faced with a severe time crunch, I reviewed my schedule for the week, and the second team meeting of the week stood out as superfluous. It was discontinued from that day. The immediate consequence was easing up of my commitments with my time and my team performing better.
So after an audit of my present schedule, I was able to come up with a list of ‘stop doing’ activities that were essential earlier but not required later. This kind of examination is also called ‘productivity audit’. Paul Jarvis talks about this concept of optimising utilisation of time in his book Company of One. He has said that bigger organisations face a challenge of repeating routine even if it depletes productivity.
Thus, it can be safely concluded that merely making a to-do list is not enough to manage the scarcest of all resources, i.e., time. One should meticulously make a ‘not-to-do list’ and a ‘stop doing list’, as well to emerge on top of the time game.
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