University Times

Why do you procrastinate? Why are you working 50-hour weeks and still not getting everything done? Why do you feel stressed out and tired and guilty when you get home from work?

And most importantly: What can you do about it?

“There are 24 hours in every day and 168 hours in every week, no more, no less. We have to get everything in those hours: our work, our home life. We can’t create more time, so, managing time really means managing ourselves,” said Kristy Busija, organization development consultant at Pitt’s Human Resources. “Hurrying doesn’t help, because it creates errors. Working longer hours not only cuts into your personal life, it makes you overtired and creates more mistakes, and then you have to correct your mistakes, a real ‘time drainer.’”

Instead, Busija preaches at the faculty and staff development workshop she facilitates, “You need to learn to be doing the right things, but also doing things right. It’s a combination of both — efficiency and effectiveness — and it requires learning the skills to manage your time well.”

The benefits of successful time management are enormous, Busija said at a March 11 workshop. They include: providing structure, organization and guidance to your work; reducing stress, frustration and guilt; adding energy, peace of mind and self-satisfaction; increasing personal quality time, and improving your overall quality of life.

The five basic components of time management are: exercising self-discipline, maintaining control of your workload, utilizing appropriate skills, developing sound work habits and balancing efficiency and effectiveness, Busija told workshop participants.

“The skills needed for time management require more time to learn at the beginning, and they do need to be learned,” Busija said. “But when they become a habit, I can promise you, you will become more productive.”

The first step is an individual evaluation of current work practices with an eye toward flagging “time-wasters,” the multitude of obstacles that keep workers from completing all their tasks.

“By identifying your own obstacles -— spending too much time at meetings; putting large projects on a side burner, inability to say ‘no,’ attempting too much instead of delegating, procrastinating, disorganization, inadequate planning, paperwork, interruptions — you can learn how to remove those obstacles,” Busija said.

She recommended first taking an inventory of how you spend your time. That consists of a daily time audit:

• Record the time spent on a particular activity, large or small.

• At the end of the day, give each activity a priority rating (low, medium or high).

• Write comments evaluating your efficiency doing each activity. Did it take longer than you thought it would or should? Could you have delegated the activity to someone else? Did you perform lower priority tasks at the expense of higher priority ones? Did you have to return to any tasks at a later time, and if so, why? How many tasks were relevant to your work versus the number that could be classified as interruptions (e.g., unscheduled visitors, phone calls, e-mails)?

“Then you should follow up with a weekly summary to get an idea of how much time you’re spending on particular activities,” she said.

The summary also will inform the employee which obstacles are recurring.

For example, if you discovers that reading e-mail as soon as it arrives intrudes on productivity, you can resolve to designate a time during the day, say, right after lunch or at the end of the day, to read and respond to e-mail.

Or, if self-evaluating comments include, “I decided to do this easier task first,” or “I know I work better under pressure, so I waited to do this,” or “I preferred to work on this more enjoyable task than this more difficult one,” then perhaps you are rationalizing what actually is procrastination.

To combat these and other commonplace obstacles, Busija suggested reflecting on the “Pareto Principle,” named for Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who concluded that 20 percent of the world’s population owns 80 percent of the wealth.

By applying this principle to other situations, Busija said, Pareto and others discovered the following:

• 80 percent of a problem can be solved by identifying and solving 20 percent of the issues.
• 80 percent of the decisions made in meetings come from 20 percent of the meeting time.
• 80 percent of what we produce is generated from 20 percent of our working hours.
• 80 percent of our success comes from 20 percent of our efforts.

“In your job, try to identify that 20 percent,” Busija said. Efficiency means simplifying things and getting directly to the point, while effectiveness means focusing on what needs to be done, what needs that 20 percent effort, she added.

“From identifying your obstacles you can develop a planning strategy that includes a priority grid, to-do lists and an action plan to overcome the obstacles,” Busija said.

A priority grid means taking a week’s worth of activities and assigning them one of four priority levels: 1 for high priority, high urgency; 2 for low priority, high urgency; 3 for high importance, low urgency; 4 for low importance, low urgency.

“All the activities in the first [group] are the tasks you should be tackling first,” she said.

Prioritizing tasks forms the foundation of an individual’s daily to-do list. “Spend 5-10 minutes at the beginning of each day planning your activities. Write down all the tasks you need to do,” Busija said. “Go down the list and assign a priority number to them. Break larger tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces. The benefit is you always know what to do next. It helps organize your day.”

Other to-do list tips include: Avoid multiple to-do lists, which can be confusing; review the list at the end of each day, and reward yourself for success and achievement.

An action plan consists of attacking identified obstacles with specific resolutions and assigning a realistic date to implement change.

For example, if your obstacle is an inability to say “no,” which causes you to take on extra work or affects your ability to meet your priorities, solutions include:

• Offer alternatives, such as suggesting a less-burdened employee or one better suited for the task.
• Focus on the line between teamwork and being used.
• Practice being more assertive (but remain polite). • Offer good reasons to say no, such as enumerating your other priorities.
• Negotiate for another time to help out.
• Keep track of the tasks you should have refused to measure the extent of the problem.
• Assign a timeframe that meets your personal style for when you can overcome this obstacle.

“In setting goals, make sure you make them ‘SMART’: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound,’ Busija said.

As a visual aid analogous to time management, Busija showed the workshop a fishbowl about two-thirds filled with pebbles. She then produced a bag with a number of rocks. The bowl represented the total time in a workday. The pebbles were all the little tasks, interruptions, and obstacles — time-fillers with low priority. The rocks represented the high-priority, requisite tasks.

“You can see if I try to put the rocks in the bowl after the pebbles are in there, they won’t all fit,” she said. “But if I put the rocks in first, the pebbles slide around them and everything fits.”

The two-hour time management workshop, part of Human Resources Faculty and Staff Development Program, is offered each fall and spring. Pre-registration and, for staff, permission of a supervisor, are required.

For more information, go to the Human Resources organization development web site: http://www.hr.pitt.edu/orgdev/FSDPspring04.htm.

—Peter Hart