Time Mastery

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

One of the biggest obstacles to success is something that shouldn't be an obstacle at all. It's the perception that there isn't enough time to do everything in your business you want to do.

I say perception because the reality is quite different.

You can find the time, manage more projects successfully, and keep on top of all the details and to-do's if you have a good system for managing time and projects.

Most people have no system or a poor system. Every day they are faced with a mountain of things to remember, schedule and implement. And there never seems to be an end in sight.

Many get to the point where they *always* feel behind, no matter what they do. Stress and frustration mount, and the big projects never seem to get off the ground or fall by the wayside.

Whatever happened to that website upgrade, your monthly eZine, and your speaking plan? They probably got buried with several dozen other projects you've been trying to keep on top of.

OK, if this describes you, I have a three-step system for you.

This is an offline system that requires pen and paper. I suggest you start with a thin 3-hole binder and two dividers. This system may translate to a digital or online system; I just haven't found one that really works for me.

You keep this binder at your desk, at hand to look at when you need it. But you only have to look at it once a day and then once a week for your weekly planning. Here are the steps:

1. Create a Project List for every project you have in progress

This is simple. Start with the first project you think of. Just a title will do - "Web Site Upgrade" or "Jones Training Program." Most usually discover that they have more projects in motion that they realize and that they don't have project sheets for most of them.

Now go through the Project Lists one at a time and start adding to-do items. It may be a few, it may be many. From ten project pages you may have a total of 100 or more to-do items.

Remember, you were keeping most of these in your head every day or perhaps on one big, long list. Now you have them separate and distinct from each other. Some are higher priority than others. In fact, some may be no more that ideas you haven't gotten around to yet.

One of your Project Lists will be a "Miscellaneous" or "Someday Page" This is a list of things that may turn into projects or simply to-do items that don't yet belong or your Weekly or Daily Lists.

These project pages are your "big bucket" of things you have to do, organized by project and easily scanned on a weekly basis.

2. Create a Weekly List drawn from your Project Lists

Next, what you do once a week is draw from your Project Lists and transfer to-do items to your Weekly List. You do this in a weekly planning session that takes from 15 minutes to an hour (depending on how much stuff you've got going on). By the way, if you don't think you have time for this planning, you are deluding yourself. For every hour you spend planning, you save from five to twenty hours. No kidding. It's that powerful.

It's a bit of an art planning your week. You need to transfer items from your various Project Lists so that a few things happen:

One, you want to transfer the highest priority items. Two, you want to transfer not too many and not too few items. Three, you need to let go of all the other Project List items for this week.

What you're left with is a list of twelve to twenty items on your Weekly List. And the game for every week is to complete most of, if not all the items for that week.

If they don't get done, you transfer them to the next week's list when you are doing your weekly planning. And sometimes you will decide to put some items off until later (or even eliminate them).

It's important that you put "Urgent and Important" items on your list each week plus some "Not Urgent and Important" items. Marketing projects often fit into that category. Try to leave off "Urgent and Not Important" items. Those are little things that come up daily that you need to fit in.

By the way, your Weekly List goes at the front of the binder and behind a divider go all your Project Lists.

3. Create a Daily List drawn from your Weekly List

Now every single day you spend a few minutes planning your day. You only look at your Weekly List, not your Project list. You don't have a hundred things to consider, just a dozen or so.

Then you transfer the items from your Weekly List to your Daily List. And this list is very short, only three or four items. Rarely more than six.

How many you transfer to your Daily List depends on your daily schedule. If you have two teleclasses and three client appointments that day, you'd put fewer items on your list, and on a day with a more open calendar, you'd put more on your list.

Each day also becomes a game to complete all of the items you have on your list. The things you don't do get transferred to tomorrow's Daily List.

Finally, you might put your Daily List in front of your Weekly List in the binder with a divider in-between. Alternately you might put your Daily List in a desk calendar or other time management system. But the key is to be able to see that list throughout your day - ideally in conjunction with your daily schedule.

Here are a few things I've noticed using this system:

- Immediately I seem to have more time. I am not overwhelmed by a hundred things a day (that are rattling around in my head) but only a few vital things.

- When an idea for a big project comes up, I can quickly put it on my "Someday List" or take a few minutes to create a Project List for that project. I don't have to worry about doing it now or forgetting it later. (These are the kind of things you can put on your PDA as well and transfer to your lists later)

- Big, not urgent, projects actually get started and the follow-through is easy because I only need to worry about one action item at a time as it hits my Daily List.

- I can be more creative because my head is not so preoccupied with all the stuff on all those lists. I can focus on the item I'm working on right now, knowing all the other things will come up to be handled in their own time.

- I end up eliminating a lot of projects before I start work on them. This prevents "project seizures" that pop into my mind that I start to work on before I'm sure it's a good use of my time. I now let them ripen on my list before jumping in with both feet.

What about email and all the little stuff that comes at you point-blank every day?

Well, those are things that can go on your Daily List. "Handle eMail" is a to-do item you can work on at designated times during the day. It's always best to complete one item at a time with as few interruptions as possible.

That's how I write this eZine every week. I schedule it for Monday, keep my schedule free of appointments and don't check email until it's done.

The power of this system becomes apparent as you start to put it into action. Give it a solid month to work for you and I predict you won't be using lack of time as an excuse to not do your marketing!

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The More Clients Bottom Line: If you are getting behind, feel overwhelmed and stressed and never feel you are on top of things, you need to put a system into place to manage everything you have to do. If this system doesn't work for you, work at finding another. The best system is one you actually implement.

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Do you have a time and project management system that really works for you (online or offline)? Please share on the More Clients Blog. Just click on the Comments link below.

Comments

[Alyson B. Stanfield]

Robert: I enjoyed listening to the call and reading this. I've struggled in the past to keep lists. I'm not a paper person. It's too messy for me. All of my tasks and calendars are on the computer.

After listening to your call, I struggled with the Projects List thing. I knew that paper wouldn't work for me, so I thought about what MIGHT work. It needed to give me the flexibility for changing it, searching, etc.

I decided to try out my projects in a FileMaker database. I use FileMaker for many things in my business (contact lists, clients, blog posts), but have never considered it for something like this. Yesterday I started my various projects lists and I think it's going to work out very well. I'm thrilled!

FileMaker works for me because I'm using it anyway. It's almost always open, so I have quick access to it. I think this is key.

[Kate Williams]

This past hour I've been trying to think through my planning system and here was your article to help me marry two systems I've used:
1. I use project planning sheets that come in a spiral bound format (which I'll organize using your suggested binder).
2. I have a desk calendar by Planner Pads. An open book shows a week across the two pages. There are three rows blocked across the two page week: weekly lists of Activities by Categories (sort of mini-project lists for the week), Daily Things to do and a section for Appointments.
This visual layout works for me to do weekly planning.
3. I put appointments with notes into my Outlook calendar so that I get reminders when I'm working at my desk.

This system works for me when I stay on top of the project planning.

[Mary Jane]

I'm going to give this system a try and see if it helps with the sense of being constantly overwhelmed with projects that need to be planned, started, continued, finished, etc.

Some days I feel like a hamster with multiple wheels in my cage - and I keep jumping from one wheel to the next. With no sense of accomplishing anything. Actually I do get projects completed, but I never have a sense to forward movement or completion.

Let's see if this gets my musical (I'm a freelance musician and writer) hamster under control.

[Ian Brodie]

My extra half step: keep that daily list in front of you all the time.

The biggest area where I lose time is when I finish a task I'm working on (especially when I'm at the computer). If I don't have my list on front of me it's all too easy to mindlessly surf or switch to a less important task that happens to pop into my mind.

Keeping the list right next to me not only reminds me of the key tasks, but it reinforces what's important and what's not, and it visibly demonstrates (by the size of the list) how much I still have to do and that I have no time to mess around!

Ian

[Lyle Parkyn]

I use a very similar approach and it's been effective for me.

I define my top goals for the year and identify the things that need to be done for those goals. Maybe even setting quarterly targets.

Before the start of each week I choose what I want to accomplish that week that moves me to those goals. Then I plan out what needs to be done for each day that week.

It takes about 30 minutes or so to plan the upcoming week. Usually, I do this on the weekend.

Sometimes I do this planning at the dining room table while one of my kids does his homework. I'm thinking it's kind of beneficial for them to see dad has homework to do as well - encouraging them to do their own homework. I kind of looked forward to that time

It's a good idea to get the planning done before the week starts. That way I don't get distracted on Monday doing planning.

For years I used pencil and paper forms for this planning. Simple and direct.

Earlier this year I switch to a computer application that's more encompassing and stopped using the paper forms.

Recently, however, I've realized that I'm not being as effective. The program presents too much and consequently I get overwhelmed by tasks.

I've been considering incorporating the paper forms again to plan my week. Robert's posting has just given me impetus to do this.

Lyle

[Lyle T. Lachmuth - The Unsticking Coach]

Nice try Robert!

BUT, your system is way TOO STRUCTURED for this Quick Start, (Kolbe)

And, for most of my unstructured, resist structure clients.

My passion has been finding a system that is minimally structured (just enuf structure) that it doesn't hand cuff me ...

Can't describe in few words ...

Watch for the book ...;-)

LL

[Aamer Iqbal]

So easy,simple and effective! Great job, Robert! Bless you for all the good stuff you send our way, especially without keeping score or attaching strings.

[Jeanette Eleff]

Excellent article Robert. And a reminder that the pencil, paper, and three-ring binder are perhaps still the best tools around!