A520.2.6.RB - Time Management

Prepare a Blogger entry by reflecting on the following:

Assess your time management skills.
Evaluate how these skills have increased your locus of control.
Identify three new areas in which improved time management skills would reduce stress.
Add an action plan to integrate these to your daily routine.

To further evaluate this, I took a time management quiz located here.

As noted in "Evaluating and Improving Your Management Style", I have a supporting style of managing: "The supporting style has the manager elicit ideas, listens to individuals, and encourages self-reliant decision-making and problem solving" (Walter, 2002). My personal mantra is from Tuna Fey, who states, "In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way." I do not hover over my supervisees and I see myself as much as a resource as they are. I enjoy helping and advising them, and I make sure not to step on their toes. There's no dumb question, and I do not see myself above any duty. We have good communication between each other and I care about them as people. In a lot of ways, I try to function like Jim Goodnight at SAS - placing "enormous emphasis on three things: employees, customers, and products." I want them to love work and to enjoy their time in the office.

To manage my time effectively, I need to set goals. I need to know where I am going; then I can figure out what exactly needs to be done, in what order. Without proper goal setting, I may waste time away in a confusion of "priorities". People tend to neglect goal setting because it requires time and effort. However, ignoring goal setting now saves an enormous amount of time, effort and frustration in the future.

Prioritizing helps to figure out what needs to be done. Without it, I may work hard, but I will not achieve the results I desire, because what I may be working on may not be important at the moment. I like to reward myself for getting jobs done, no matter how small, as I see reminders of the consequences of not doing tasks through other people. When someone needs something from another person and they do not follow through, the relationship between them suffers; it is hard to trust people who always makes excuses for not completing work or whose work always looks rushed, particularly when they blame others for their downfalls (Whalen, 2007). 

At work and at home, I have "to-do" lists. I can admit that it is just a collection of things that need to get done - I could use more structure in getting things done. I have to ask myself, "How do I arrange this? Top down, bottom up, easiest to hardest?" At this point, I see myself doing the least tasking things first, or most interesting, so I can build my confidence in completing goals. It helps to see that I've achieved so much within a day, and it motivates me to keep up the momentum. I know that in order to work efficiently, I need to work on the most important, highest value tasks. By doing this, I will never need to think about scrambling to get something done as the deadline approaches. I am very good at doing this at work; I set false deadlines for myself that are days to a week out in order to look over my work and make edits if necessary. I also like sending in my work to my supervisor ahead of time so they know that I have not forgotten tasks that are far off in the distance. It also gives them the opportunity to add their input so that they get the product they want.

Minimizing the interruptions I face during my day has started to become a priority, due to a supervisor's stress over people asking them questions more than they would like. I have been having this issue at home when attempting to complete classwork - I become very involved in making sure work is done before I move forward with coursework. It is widely recognized that managers get very little uninterrupted time to work on their priority tasks - but as a higher education professional, it is also important to be available. There will always be phone calls, information requests, questions from employees, and a plethora of concerns that pop up. My job requires me to be available for people when they need help; therefore, I see interruption as a natural and necessary part of workplace life. I always want to make sure I am not scaring people away from interrupting me when they should do so!

References

FISHMAN, CHARLES. (2012). SANITY INC. FAST COMPANY. Accessed at http://www.fastcompany.com/36173/sanity-inc

Walter, Jeffrey J. (2002). Evaluating and Improving Your Management Style. Electric Energy. Accessed at http://www.electricenergyonline.com/show_article.php?mag=5&article=38

Whalen, J.D. (2007). The Professional Communications Toolkit. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.