Time: cut to the chase

How to fix the damn problem

Financial Review BOSS | Magazine > Time: cut to the chase: "Time: cut to the chase"

By Catherine Fox

There’s only one solution if you find you can’t get through your work, says the time-management expert Brian Stuhlmuller: be realistic and get your priorities right

Tired at the thought of trawling through the email, voicemail and mail before you even get to the day's “must do” list? Still thinking you can get it all under control if you only have enough time, energy or willpower? You don't need a new job, you need to be realistic, according to Brian Stuhlmuller, a US-based expert in productivity.

Most of us are incapable of ever getting through all the work we are given, he says. so it's time to reorganise to keep sane and productive.

The former time-management consultant now runs his own business conducting seminars for clients such as Microsoft and Hilton Hotels around the world. Using the rather cheesy label Mission Control (which should appeal to another client, NASA), Stuhlmuller addresses one of the key issues of modern business life – the stress and panic induced by avalanches of information.

The habits we use for dealing with workloads are firmly rooted in the past, he suggests. “I get 275 emails a day. There's no way I can read that in a day,” he says. The question is why so many of us keep trying in the face of such logistics.

Part of the answer is our conditioning: “When you were in school you had lessons and there were consequences for not doing them, so you trained yourself and there were punishments for not getting work done.”

As technology has dramatically compressed the time taken for basic tasks while flinging more and more data at us, it's little wonder we feel out of control. Our habits are lagging behind the reality of office practices. “In the 1960s you could get it all done and you could catch up,” says Stuhlmuller. “Now it's not going to happen, but people are still organised around the idea they can control it.”

But he is reluctant to blame all our workload woes on modern organisations and the bosses’ demands for greater productivity. Sure, there are more demands, and we are producing more. But some of our dilemmas could be resolved by setting limits and priorities more clearly, giving both manager and employee a true picture of what can be achieved.

In his workshops Stuhlmuller tells participants to say no to more work, because it's the truth and it allows the boss a chance to set priorities.

“Start working on the things that make the biggest difference,” he advises. The first step in the process is to define the most important things you need to do, a task that is yours alone. It's a degree of consciousness we are not encouraged to develop, but it can be learned.

“Then you have to develop a new set of practices to engage with what is coming at you so you can deal with that mass of stuff,” he says.

It helps to map out your work habits, which generally fall into one of a handful of typical profiles. “We keep presenting people with a set of models and cases of typical work habits so they can be aware of them and identify their version. Then they have the incentive to take on new practices designed to handle that level of work. People build their own inventory of how to structure what they need to do – lists and reminders. We give them a system to capture what they need to find and how.”

There are a few simple practices to take the tension out of daily routines, and once they are in place the new regime takes about three months to become like second nature. There's a need for balance between planning well in advance (Stuhlmuller’s diary is planned three months in advance, but with plenty of latitude for the unexpected) and coping with daily demands.

“Never schedule back to back because you need time for last-minute interruptions,” Stuhlumuller says. “I am interrupted all day and you allow for that. Then you track the pattern. People aren't conscious of the pattern in their life and they don't schedule. But confronting the reality of their schedule means discovering they can't get it all done. You feel guilty and stressed and overwhelmed, and that's part of the habit. It's easier to feel guilty than change the habit.”

Email is an excellent case in point. Stuhlmuller recommends learning about the pattern of your emails, what percentage is information, who they are from, and who you need to respond to.

“I look at and respond to maybe 40 within half an hour. I process all my emails, and then allocate some time to respond in more detail, and I put those in a folder. That enables me to keep up with the volume. We use email in the way we used to use office memos or office gossip, but it's a slow medium for communicating some thoughts.”

Stuhlmuller says we are 30 per cent more productive than we were five years ago, thanks largely to technology. But research has found that in the past 15 years there has been no improvement in an individual's ability to deal with the technology they are given. Most people don't learn what technology does because it is more comfortable to stay with what they know. Don't beat yourself up about this, but take time to embrace change. Stuhlmuller suggests spending 30 minutes three times a week learning the technology. “Play with it without being under the gun,” he says. “That may be the most productive thing you can do.”

You should also take as much down time as you need. Recognise there are times you can't do certain tasks and use those periods differently, Stuhlmuller suggests. Understanding the best way to work is a skill for our entire lives.

“I've got one life and this notion of having a work life and a personal life disappeared once I started Mission Control. The organisations don't recognise it, and that's because we don't tell them. If you put up with too much work and not enough flexibility, it will keep happening.''


Time it right
1. Make a record of your daily and weekly work practices.

2. Record tasks you have to do as they occur to you (Stuhlmuller uses a small voice recorder) then put them out of your mind until they go into your daily schedule/diary.

3. Scan emails and sort them into those requiring immediate responses, non-urgent responses, and no response but needed for reference. Put the last two groups into folders. Set aside 45 minutes twice a week to produce the detailed responses.

4. Don't use email when a quick conversation or memo will do.

5. Plan well ahead but always allow plenty of time for the unexpected.