The Big Secret of Time Use

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I telephoned the secretary of an executive officer. He was busy but would call me back, his secretary told me. An hour later, he did.

That says much about this man's ability to use his time well. You might suppose that the highest-placed executives would be the most frantically busy and therefore the least likely to return phone calls promptly. But it is not so. With few exceptions, the opposite is true. High-placed people like this man are the ones who return calls quickly and courteously. The people who make you wait for days--or, worse yet, don't even trouble to return calls at all--are almost always in middle management or below.

And, unless they learn to do better, will probably stay there. How does a CEO of a very large and complicated company manage to return a phone call in an hour? Is it that he is less busy than others, has less on his mind, less to do? Not likely. The answer is that he knows how to get the most out of his minutes and hours. This skill has undoubtedly been among the factors that have helped him climb so high.



The higher you go in the business world, the more complex your life will become, the more problems you will be required to take care of, seemingly all at once, and the more desperately you will need the ability to utilize time. Without this ability you will be severely handicapped. Others who do have it will leap ahead of you. At best, lack of the skill will hold you back; at worst, the lack can wreck your career.

I recall a very sad case. It involved the sales director of a small auto-parts manufacturing company and its ad agency. In the course of a business trip, one of the ad agency's account executives stumbled onto a lively lead. A large company had a sudden need for certain parts made by the smaller outfit. It needed them in very big quantities, and it needed them in a hurry.

Any ad agency likes to do what it can to boost clients' sales. The higher the sales volume goes, the better the ad experts look. The account executive therefore placed a phone call to his client's sales director, intending to pass on the lead for fast action. The sales chief's secretary said he was in a meeting, but she would have him call back.

Unfortunately for him and his company, he didn't.

The problem was that he had a habit of putting off tasks that he considered unpleasant. He thought he knew what the ad agency man was calling about: the agency contract was in process of renewal, and there had been a lot of argument over certain clauses. The sales director had not reached any final decisions about these clauses and didn't want to face the ad people's impatience. He knew he would have to do so sooner or later, but he was a chronic procrastinator. And so he failed to return the account executive's call. After waiting a day, the account executive called again. He asked the sales director's secretary to tell her boss the call was urgent.

She reported this promptly to the sales director. This time he decided he would return the call at his earliest opportunity. However, he was now in the midst of one of the frenzies that overcame him from time to time. He had put off many other chores besides that one phone call, and now--as will inevitably happen--several of them had abruptly grown to crisis proportions. Panic reigned in his office. Another day went by before he was finally able to pick up the phone and return the account executive's call. He was too late. The potential big customer had taken its business elsewhere.

That large order, and the repeat business that could have followed, would have done wonders for the smaller company's earnings Statement. Nobody played tattletale against the sales chief, but the story was bound to drift around. Eventually, by chance, the president heard it. The sales director had been in trouble over procrastination before. This was the last straw. He was fired.

The Key

This article is not about time saving techniques in an efficiency expert's sense. There are countless numbers of such techniques and tricks: making lists and schedules, overlapping and combining similar tasks, and so on. These must be tailored to individual personalities and specific jobs. What works for me in my daily activities might have no relevance to you or your job.

But I can give you the main key to good use of time--the one element without which nothing else will work. It is this: Don't put off what you don't want to do.

That is the big secret of time use, the secret known to successful executives. Put nothing off. If something must be done, do it promptly. Never procrastinate over tasks that irritate you, scare you, upset you, or displease you for any reason. If you know you've got to do them sooner or later, do them now.

Failure to obey this cardinal rule is the most important single reason why business people get into situations of intolerable time pressure. If you keep shoving unpleasant or annoying tasks into your bottom desk drawer, it is virtually certain that, at some future time, two or more of them will rise up simultaneously and demand Instant attention. Note my choice of words. I didn't say it is possible or probable; I said it is virtually certain. You can count on it. The more tasks you push into that bottom drawer, the more fearsome and intractable is the time panic you are preparing for yourself.

What happens to people who put off tasks is that they get trapped in a crisis situation. Events start happening to them so fast that they can only react instead of anticipating. They can barely resolve one problem before a new one appears. As the frenzy quickens, more and more tasks get put off. The tasks lie about, ferment, and eventually develop into problems requiring panicky action.

The supply of back-to-back crises becomes continuous. The unfortunate procrastinator is now chronically pressed for time. This is the kind of person who will not return your phone calls for days, if ever.

The Roots of Procrastination

There are four main reasons why business people put off tasks and get themselves into fearful time binds. The four are mortal enemies of yours. I urge that you get to know them, recognize them on sight, and be prepared to strike them down as soon as they appear. They are:

SINGLE-PROJECT ORIENTATION: This situation arises when you let one project assume overwhelming importance in your life. A project may rise to exaggerated status because it has some special personal interest for you, or because your boss has overemphasized its importance to him or her, or because you see it in some way as a project that can make or break your career. Whatever the wellspring may be, the result is that you devote inordinate amounts of time to this one special project, and you put everything else aside. You can be perfectly sure of one thing. Sooner or later, "everything else" will confront you.

Never try to let any one project overwhelm all else except in situations of extreme crisis. Certainly, there will be times when one project will assume special importance and will require more personal input than other tasks. But be sure those other tasks get done all the same--done on time and done well.

FEAR OF AN UNPLEASANT CONFRONTATION: This was the particular problem that caused the downfall of the sales director I mentioned earlier. He put off returning the ad executive's phone call because he expected some mild unpleasantness. He thought the ad man was going to demand faster action on some delayed decisions. As it turned out, he was wrong; the ad executive was really calling about something else. But that is beside the point. The point is that putting off tasks is almost bound to get you in trouble one way or another, sooner or later.

Mildly unpleasant confrontations are a fact of daily life in the business world. There is simply no escaping them. We all realize that. We also realize how silly it is to try to duck such confrontations, for with rare exceptions, they aren't all that painful. All the same, it is an almost universal human tendency to put them off.

You've promised an associate some figures, but for some reason they are not ready. He is waiting to hear from you. You know you should call and explain the reasons for the delay, but you don't want to handle his annoyance. So you put the call off.

You need to discuss a project with your boss, but you expect her to be grouchy because the project isn't going well. So you keep walking past her office door instead of going in.

Is that situation familiar to you? Of course, it is. Just about everybody is tempted to put off confrontations that threaten to be less than pleasant. But the most successful people in business learn not to give in to the temptation. They are too keenly aware that procrastination almost always leads to time panic.

Even if that were not so, it would still be a good idea to get confrontations over with promptly. They are usually so painless that afterward you wonder what you were worried about. Moreover, people appreciate it when you communicate with them on some project or problem they've been waiting to hear about--even if all you communicate is bad news.

People can handle bad news. What they dislike most of all is sitting and waiting for a phone call that never comes. So don't make people wait. Pick up your phone and say it straightforwardly: "I'm sorry, but we haven't found that missing file yet. We're working on it. I just thought you'd want to know we haven't forgotten you."

Your hearer will appreciate knowing that. Furthermore, by making this quick call you have advertised some good things about yourself. You have communicated the fact that you care. And even though you have been obliged to report a lack of success in finding a missing file, you have still managed to convey a sense of your own efficiency. You are on top of the problem. You haven't swept it into a dark corner, forgotten it, or buried it under a pile of other problems.

Score one for you. You have extracted some good out of what might have become a bad situation.

If there is a good reason why you cannot make such a call yourself, have a colleague or subordinate do it: "George got called out of town unexpectedly, but he knows you're concerned about that file, so he asked me to give you a call..." This, too, shows care and consideration and gives an impression of efficiency.

FEAR OF DIFFICULTY: We also put off tasks that promise to be tough or onerous. I don't know how many times I have seen men and women stumble into this pitfall.

I remember one woman who managed a cost-accounting department. The company controller became concerned about a certain operation that wasn't working properly, and he asked her to review it and strengthen it. The assignment looked complex and difficult; among other complications, it was going to require finding people and putting together a temporary task team. So the woman put the project off.

The controller assumed it was being done.

Inevitably, a crisis came to a head. Such a crisis could have been predicted by the famous "Murphy's Law," which states that if something can go wrong, it will--and at the worst possible time. The crisis involved the troubled operation in the cost-accounting department. The company president wanted to know why this operation had been allowed to deteriorate so badly. He barked at the controller, who in turn barked at the cost-accounting manager. When she sheepishly admitted that she hadn't even begun to work on the troubled operation, she was relieved of her duties.

Somebody else took over the assignment. It turned out to be much easier than the woman executive had feared. The new cost-accounting chief not only straightened out the troubled operation but, in the process, inadvertently stumbled onto an idea for gaining substantial new cost savings. He emerged as a hero. Today he is the company's controller.

My advice: Do the seemingly hardest tasks first. Many or most will turn out to be easier than you expected, thus relieving you of a burden of worry and clearing the rest of your day or week for the easier, more pleasant tasks.

Don't push projects and chores aside and allow them to turn into time bombs. Every task properly and promptly completed is a crisis that won't happen.

IRRITATION: Finally, we put off chores simply because they are irritating.

Trivial examples of this happen every day in both business and personal life. I know a man, for instance, who dislikes paying bills. It isn't that he finds the chore difficult; nor is it financially painful, for he has plenty of money. The problem is simply that he finds the task irritating.

And so, every month, he puts it off. Inevitably, this triggers a series of crises. Creditors begin dunning him. Credit-card companies, department stores, and others bill him again with added finance charges and late-pay penalties, which he hates to pay, thus creating still bigger problems. Finally, several times a year he has to spend almost an entire weekend in a time panic while he lays all the growing crises to rest.

His total expenditure of time per year is probably twice or three times as great as if he took care of the irritating chore promptly each month. He undoubtedly knows this. Yet he still cannot stay ahead of the game.

I don't know anything about this particular man's business life. But I would venture to guess he is the kind of man who experiences frequent, if not chronic, time panics. I would also give you odds that he doesn't return phone calls promptly.

This isn't an article of medical advice, but it should be mentioned that a life full of time pressure is notoriously the kind of life doctors warn against. Time pressure leads to jangled nerves, upset stomachs, and headaches. The time-panicked person may also suffer in terms of personal relationships. This is the kind of person who barks at spouse and kids, talks brusquely or even rudely to subordinates and office colleagues, alienates friends.

Life goes much more smoothly if you get the irritating tasks--as well as the painful and seemingly difficult ones--out of the way quickly. Make promises to yourself: all phone calls are to be returned on the day received, all mail is to be answered within one day, and so on. And then hold yourself to those promises.

I've seen executives go to seemingly ridiculous lengths to keep themselves from piling up pushed-aside chores. One woman keeps a large accordion file on a side table in her office. The file is labeled, in large red letters, "PENDING." She explains: "That used to be where I put all my unanswered mail, memos about things to be attended to, unpaid bills, reports I was supposed to read, and so on. It used to bulge with paper. A time came when I got into such a crisis over things I hadn't done that I almost lost my job. That taught me a lesson."

She keeps the file in sight to remind her of the danger it represents. It is nearly always empty.
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