The marketing movement. Why we fine left? Welcome to Time Management Live. I am your host, Megan Bowen.
We're going to have a fun session to actually have a few slides to walk through all of my core time management principles and then we'll have about a half an hour for Q&A. I've given this presentation probably like, I feel like, I don't know, 50 or 60 times since 2012, believe it or not. So there's always a ton of great questions. I'm excited to get to that portion, but we'll kind of cover all of the classic time management principles that are still relevant today.
Welcome to Time Management. The whole goal of this session is that by the end of it, you'll feel that you have a lot of really tactical, straightforward strategies so that you can rule your time and not let it rule you. Before I get into everything, I'll go ahead and also say a few words around this concept generally. I was trying a little bit with Angelica and Todd before we brought you into the room.
Time management is something that you're never really done with. This is a lifelong endeavor to continue to focus on how you're constantly making sure that you're focusing on the most important things at any given phase and point in time in your life. I'm actually at an interesting phase in mind where I'm noticing that I'm starting to make a lot of the classic time management excuses. I'm too busy.
I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that. And so I'm going through my own reassessment of my calendar and my time and I'm excited to make some changes upcoming. So although I'm going to be sharing with you some of these tried and true practices, even if you're great at time management, you will often find yourself at a point in time where you need to reassess, take a step back and reset your calendar and your time.
So this is a lot of these principles are things you'll be able to use on an ongoing basis, depending upon where you are. So let's get into it. The first thing I like to talk about is the myth of the time crunch. And so the reality is we don't actually need more time.
You always hear people say, if I only had, you know, there are more than 24 hours of the day, if I only had more time, then I could get it all done. Really the crisis that exists with time management relative to this is not making the right choices. Everybody has the same 24 hours in a day. And you can compare how some people use that time and others.
So it's really about making the right choices for yourself based on your priorities and the things that matter the most to you. And so we're going to talk a lot about this throughout the session today, but a lot of it is really taking ownership that every single thing that you spend your time on is an explicit choice that you're making. We can't let the victim mindset creep in. People will say, well, like, I have to go to my job and I have to go to this meeting.
But the reality is, is when you reflect and acknowledge the honest truth, that every single thing you can do is to make the choice. You have the agency to decide if you want to continue to do those things or not. Now, choices have consequences. So you could be like, I don't want to go to work this week.
And I'm not going to tell anybody about it. And that could cause a problem for you. Right. So it's not that your choices don't have consequences.
Like you could choose not to do certain things and that could mean consequences exist, but it's important to be realistic and honest with yourself about what you want to be doing, the choices that you're making and the consequences that you'll experience from those choices. But once you get your mindset in the right place, it's very liberating because it really gives you a lot of time to look at everything as, is this something that I really want to be doing? Now, one of the things that I recommend that everybody do as a starting point here is do a one week time log. And so human perception of how you spend your time is grossly incorrect.
If you had to reflect back on your prior week, you'll be like, Oh, I spent this much time doing this, this much time doing that. I don't have time to exercise before I did my first time log, I was working really hard at a startup, and I was like, I have no time to exercise. There's just no time. I just can't work out.
I just can't do it. There's no time. I went ahead and did this time log and I actually realized, Oh, I spend 18 hours a week watching TV. Could I repurpose five of those hours to exercise?
Yes, I definitely could. I just didn't. And so the perception is often very far from the truth. And when you actually take the time to log your time and 30 minute increments for a full seven days, what you're doing at work, as well as what you're doing outside of work, including sleep and eating and all of the things that we all have to do every day, you'll actually have a data set that you can look at objectively to assess how you're spending your time.
Whenever anybody does this, it's typically very illuminating. There are things that you spend way more time on than you thought. There are things that you thought you dedicated a lot of time to that you really don't. And so there's always some really good takeaways from that exercise.
I actually have been doing this time log exercise about every six months for almost 10 years, believe it or not. And to my comments at the beginning, you're never really done with time management. We're human. We get caught up in the grind.
We get caught up in the grind. We get caught up in what's going on. It's normal. It's okay.
And we often need to reset. So the first step that I do is I do the time log to get an accurate picture of what I'm doing and how I'm spending my time. And the next step is to actually identify where you need to make some changes. And so one of the things that I like to do.
It's a really great exercise. It actually comes from this book 168 hours. You have more time than you think. Create a list of 100 dreams.
Think about all the things that you love to do. All the things that you're good at. All the things that bring you joy at work in your personal life. All inclusive.
As you make that list, what is going to provide you is some clarity on the things that matter the most to you. The things that bring you joy. Typically it'll include your strengths and the types of activities or tasks that will induce a flow state and get you really energized about what you're doing. That list is really a way to uncover and identify what are your core competencies.
What are the things that you love to do and that you are good at. As well as more aspirational dreams of if I had more time, I would love to do these cool things that get me really excited. So going through that exercise gives you a chance to get some clarity on those things. So in your one week time log, you have your list of 100 dreams.
And now you need to spend some time doing a time makeover. And a time makeover is an excellent exercise. It allows you to actually with your time log and your core competencies identify here are the things that I need to stop doing. I'm spending way too much time on these things.
They are not aligned to my goals and core competencies. They're not making me happy whatever it is and make a plan of how you can spend less time on those things and create space so that you can spend more time on the things that you want. What I suggest is actually designing an ideal week map out a full seven days of how you're going to spend the time how often you're going to sleep, when you're going to work out, what you're going to do at work, what you're going to do in your downtime, what you're what you're going to do for fun. Everything and then challenge yourself to live that ideal week.
Spoiler alert usually when people do this, they don't quite live up to the exact ideal week and that's okay. That's any closer to where you need to be. And it'll also uncover areas where you need to keep working to ensure that you're spending your time on the things that matter the most. So there are a few additional time management tactics and strategies that can be really beneficial.
And I want to share a few of those with you right now. So the first is the golden rule of time management, if it can be done in less than two minutes, do it now. So there's a really interesting, like sort of scientific phenomenon behind this. The human brain was not meant to remember things.
The human brain is created to problem solve, to be creative, to think through things, critical thinking. But if you're relying on your brain to remember something because it's not really what it was optimized to do, your brain is going to constantly just bring it up. And it's what is called an open loop. And so imagine you get an email that you could respond to in two minutes, but you're like, I don't want to do that right now.
What's going to happen is you're going to, you thought about that email, you thought about not responding. An hour later, your brain is going to be like, you never responded to that email, you're like, I got to get to that email. And you're literally going to keep thinking about this thing until you do it. Now, an email that would have taken you two minutes to respond to you.
Now we said 10 minutes of your life thinking about this, right? And you're creating stress in your brain because it doesn't want you to forget. But the only way it knows how to tell you is just to keep reminding you until you do it. And so this two minute rule, as well as this getting things done workflow that I'm about to show you are ways that you can minimize the number of open loops and create rules and systems for yourself to handle things so you're not relying on your brain to remember them.
So I also my amendment to the golden rule is if it can be done in less than five minutes, do it now. So I like to round up a little bit. It's hard to get a lot of things done in two minutes or less. This is the getting things done workflow.
So there's a great book by David Allen called getting things done. I highly recommend you read it was actually written in like the eighties. So there's a lot of fun. The original book is like our in mail and a fax machine and a memo.
But they've read on it for the digital age. But the core principles of this workflow still apply. I know when you first look at this, this can seem a little bit overwhelming like there's a lot of things going on. But I want to talk you through it.
And when I first learned about this particular system, I actually printed this out and would have it up posted by my desk to remind me of the order of operations about how I should handle everything that's coming at me to ensure that I could put it within a system that would allow me to put it within a system that would allow me to put it within a system. That would allow me to get to it when it mattered or delegate it, defer it or trash it. And so I'm going to talk through this. What's really cool is if you're really deliberate about using the system, you will find that you're actually train yourself to do it naturally without even thinking about it.
So today, because I've been using the system for 10 years, every time something comes at me, I basically compute all of these steps within 30 to 60 seconds and have a plan of what I'm going to do with that thing. So let's talk a little bit about this. So you see how here we have the inbox, you have the envelope, the light bulb, the telephone, the man, this is all of the inputs coming at you. So right in today's world, we have slacks, we have LinkedIn messages, we have emails, we have phone calls, we have text messages, you have all of these things coming at you all the way on your bosses like hey can you do this hey what's going on with that.
So you've all these things coming at you. So the process is you need to have a very specific way that you're going to filter through all of this to really uncover what matters and what doesn't matter what you need to spend your time on or what other people can do. And so the first question you mask is is this actionable. We all get a ton of stuff, especially email that isn't and that doesn't matter.
And a lot of us will just let that build up in our inbox or just ignore it, but then it starts to crowd all of your tools and it gets in the way. And so the first thing I like to say is if you get something in and it's not actionable, get it out of your eyesight, trash it, delete the email, get rid of whatever it happens to be so that you're not consuming it. You're not consumed by anymore. A most of the stuff that comes at you, you probably have to do something about it.
So when you ask yourself is this actionable, you say yes, can you do it in five minutes or less. Do it now. Is this thing going to take more than five minutes. And let's face it, movies will take more than five minutes projects, etc.
And that's when you decide okay, what am I going to do with this thing. Now, am I the right person to do this. Is this something that I definitely need to complete and when do I need to complete it. And so if that's the case and you're like, yes, this is my task, I need to get this done.
This is when you can decide, depending on your style, you have a trustee to do list your next actions list, or do you live by your calendar. I'm a fan of my calendar. I live by my calendar. I'm probably not going to do it.
And so what I every time an input comes in, I say, okay, when does this need to get done. How long is this going to take me and when do I have time to my schedule to focus on this. So I will go to my calendar. I will take all of those criteria and I will find a date and time and I'll add a block to my calendar to get whatever it is done.
If you prefer to do list that will work. I strongly recommend calendar. It keeps me really organized. And I'm going to have to worry about finding my list or my list updated.
The other thing that I'll challenge everybody on is sort of this defer or delegate. Do you need to do the thing. Is there someone else that can help you with that thing or not. And so if there is an opportunity to delegate out a task to another individual, you should do so.
But if you delegate to someone, you probably are still ultimately responsible for getting it done. So you also need to have a system to make sure that you can follow up with the person that you delegated to. So I will also use my calendar for this. And I will say follow up with someone so on this date to check in on that item.
But everything's on my calendar. So I'm not worried about forgetting anything because I know my calendar will tell me when I have to pay attention to something. Now, sometimes you might get sometimes someone might say, Hey, we need to rebuild the website. And you're like, Well, I'm not going to be able to block two hours on Wednesday to do that.
That's a big project. And so you can have a separate list for longer term, more time intensive projects. And it's really good to keep that in a separate list because you should never commit to more large scale or longer term projects than you're able to do. And what I like to do, and we're going to talk about this in a minute is our weekly review.
But basically, once a week, I check in on all open projects and I validate if I'm on track or not. So I typically have a separate projects list. I use a Google Doc where I have a list of all of my open, like medium to long term projects, potentially with any links to project plans or anything I might have created, you know, for my broader team. So this system, it seems a little bit complex, but hopefully as I talked through it and broke each of these steps down, you see it's very logical where at the end of the day, every single input that comes in is either trashed added to your calendar or added to a project list.
And everything has a home. You no longer have to remember anything. Now, once you do that, it actually alleviates stress. So if you ever feel stressed because you feel like you don't have enough time, it's because you're leaning on your brain to remember too many things.
And if you're able to use a system like this effectively and record and document everything and then you feel reassured, but you don't have to remember it greatly greatly reduces stress and feel much more in control of your time. If you've never done this, then it's very likely you might have a million different things swirling in your head have to respond to that email have to make that tick tock. I've got to respond to that LinkedIn just DM. I've got a, you know, I have, you know, 15 open slacks that I haven't responded to.
I've got all the things. So one way to reset yourself here is to do what is called a collection. Sit down and just make a huge giant list of everything that is on your mind. Just put it on paper.
Get it out. All the things that are unfinished that you need to get done at some point. And then one by one process each of those items through this system. You only need to do that once if you're, if you're resetting right and then if you continue to maintain this on an ongoing basis, you're golden truth be told about every six months I do my time log and I do a collection.
Because what happens is I do my time log and do my collection. I reset. I get back on and I'm like, man, I am killing time management. I'm on top of my shit.
And then inevitably five months goes by and I'm like, I'm too busy. I'm stressed. What's going on? And I'm like, that's my signal.
Okay, I need to reset. I need to do my time log again. I need to do my collection. And I need to take control back of my schedule because everything I do is a choice.
Hang with me. We're opening up for questions soon. So I just mentioned before the weekly review. So I do this every Friday afternoon.
So I have my trusty system in place at my project list. I have my calendar. And then the weekly review. So every single Friday, before going into the weekend and I do it on Friday on purpose because I want to enjoy my weekend.
I don't want to be thinking about that thing at work that I forgot about. And so I want to go in with a clear head feeling like I know what I need to do and I have a plan for when and how I'm going to do it. So the weekly review is all about reflecting on your week you just had what did I get done. What did I not get done.
What is still open that needs to be addressed. Did I have a good week that I have a bad week taking all of that information and saying, OK, so typically, for example, there might be man, I wanted to get these three things done this week and I did not get them done. Are they so important that I need to do immediately or can I schedule some time next week to get that done and let people know if they were expecting something from me back and a little bit more time. So it allows you to get current on all of your items and either get them done or schedule them for the future.
Additionally, I then say, OK, let me take a look at the week ahead. Is there anything that's on my calendar that I don't think I should be doing anymore. We all get scheduled into a ton of meetings. And so this is a great opportunity to audit your meetings.
Which meetings can I cancel which meetings can I say, you know what, I have this meeting without me. I don't think I need to be there. Let me know if you need anything after set goals for the week ahead. What are the three to five most important things that you want to get done next week.
And you actually have time in your schedule to do it calendar block those things and then assess how they feeling about what I'm working on and I'm working on things that bring me joy and I'm working on things that bring me down. How can I minimize the things that bring me down and how can I maximize the things that bring me joy and what additional changes do I need to make. So getting things done system and the weekly review are just tools that allow you to maintain the focus on using your time in a way that's going to best serve you. The other thing is things change over time, your priorities change the things that you want to work on change.
And so the weekly review gives you an opportunity to get creative. Wow, this new thing came up and I'm really enjoying this. I want to make sure that I can dedicate two hours a week on this, you know, new activity that I really like right. So you can introduce new things.
What I like to do for me personally is whenever an introducing something new that I want to do on a regular basis, I assess. What can I get rid of. Because often if you do that, it was add more things, but every time you add something to your plate, you want to think about what can I remove. Can't always do it every time, but it's important to maintain that balance.
Otherwise you get to the point where you are again overwhelmed have too much going on. So the last thing I want to include here, one of my favorite books is called the seven habits of highly effective people. It's a classic and I like it because it includes these core principles that are really tied to how to time management and how to be effective. And so I'm just going to very briefly highlight these principles strongly recommend you pick up the book to read.
So the first is be proactive. And so this is all about don't let life happen to you like you happen to your life. People can you can sit back and just, you know, not make explicit choices and just, you know, kind of go along for the ride. But life is so much more enjoyable when you're explicit and intentional about the things that you want to do.
Begin with the end in mind. This chapter literally opens up saying picture yourself at your funeral. What do you want people to say about you. When I answer that question, I say I want people to say I was kind, I was funny, I was interesting, I was fun to be around.
I was helpful to people. I had a positive impact. You'll notice all of those things that I said had nothing to do with emails or projects or LinkedIn posts or slacks. It was the type of human that I want to be.
Right. And so it actually encourages you to make a mission statement for your life. What are you really trying to do? Who do you want to be?
And when you have that clarity, it really helps you make those hard choices that you want to make. Because you know what you want to be and where you want to get to. So you know what you want to commit to and what you can say this isn't for me right now at this phase in my life. But first things first, the main takeaway here is humans are very susceptible about like other people impose their priorities on you.
Who's had that oh this has to get done by tomorrow. This is the most important thing for the company. Stop what you're doing pay attention here right. In some there are some scenarios where it makes sense to re prioritize and to do those things.
But I always encourage people when you feel like someone else is trying to impose their priority on you. You have an opportunity to think about that reflect on it and make a choice. Is that my priority also. Is there another way that this person can get what they need without me being involved.
And this goes back to having agency and taking control over your choices. The next three are really all about how you can really work well with others. And so think when when is all about creating circumstances and experiences that are beneficial for both sides. So if you're going to ask someone to spend their time on something.
How can you make sure it makes sense for them to right. How can you work on things with people that create outcomes that are good for both sides. And if you think that way, you'll typically be able to get a lot of help and guidance and collaboration from others because you're being consider it about why they should actually spend time on it too and the benefit that they will receive. So you can see first to understand and then be understood.
To me this is all about being a good human. This is really trying to understand where people coming from. Especially when you know maybe you have a stressed coworker or boss that's coming to you and I need this done tomorrow. I need this.
This has to happen. You have to stop that and get this done right away. I always like to ask what's going on. Like why is this so important all of a sudden.
Where is this coming from. What circumstances led up to this being the most important thing right now. Once you ask the right questions to better understand where these demands or asks are coming from often it uncovers a lot more than simply what they're asking you to do. And then you can work with them to find a solution that's going to work for both sides.
Synergize, I hate that word but that whole chapter is all about how you know one plus one can equal three that if you really work well with people that have complimentary skill sets you can get so much more done together. And I certainly believe that's the case. And then this last one said and sharpened the saw. So this is all about self care.
This is definitely a challenge for me. I'm constantly working on making sure that I'm taking good care of myself. But this is the classic story of you know if you have seven hours to cut down a tree. The smart person is going to spend six hours sharpening their saw and one hour sawing right.
So this is about taking care of your physical health and your mental health and your spiritual health. Whatever that means for you. But you can't do any of this right unless you're feeling good. And with respect to your time log and your time makeover make time to get a good night sleep.
Make time for exercise. Make time for rest and for breaks and for downtime. These are all important to us. Make time for the things that restore you meditation or yoga.
Whatever it happens to be. Alright, so I will stop the screen share. I will wind down the talk there. And that's really my core time management principles in a nutshell.
And so I would love to spend the rest of the session opening it up. I'm happy to dive deeper into any of the topics that I raised and any questions that you have. Looks like there's been some fun chatter going back and forth in the chat. And so I don't know if we have any anyone that wants to come on and ask a question or any questions in the chat we want to tackle.
Yes, we've got we've got a couple people asking questions so I'm going to bring on Diana first she's got two. I do hi that was pretty simple and that I know that apps can be time sucks for most of us but I'm curious what apps you find value in or that help you stick to your plan. Yeah, that's a great question and actually over the years I've tried different ones. I was actually using Evernote for quite a while and that was helpful to me.
I don't actively use it today. I would say it's the notes app on my phone is the main thing and so for me it's my sort of collection or my to do list that so I can remove the open loops for my mind. I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like oh my god I forgot to do that thing. I grab my phone and I jotted it notes and I go back to sleep.
And so that said like Evernote or apps like that can be really helpful. What I was finding what I found is simplifying the tools that I'm using allow me to commit to them more wholly. So basically my calendar my Google Doc and my notes app are the three main tools that I use to make this. And then the other one's like completely different and it's do you think that we have a responsibility at the organizational level to define the processes and create the tools that empower employees to individually be able to implement their own systems like it does feel like some of this stuff could be avoided if organization leaders took a made a priority out of cleaning up some of the processes that that kind of stuck away our time.
Yeah, definitely. And so a couple of ways I've utilized some of these strategies as a leader in companies. So typically actually after ZOC Doc every organization that I went into after when I took over a team within the first 30 to 60 days I explained to the team. Hey, I want every all of us to complete a time log.
Not only am I interested in how you spending your time individually and I promise I'm actually share some ways that you can manage your time more effectively. I'm really interested to aggregate with data how our whole team is spending our time. And I'm going to be able to take that data information and speak with leadership or other people at the company to make more meaningful changes to show them what's actually happening and recommend some things you might need to consider changing to improve the efficiency and the productivity of the entire team. Every time I do this with the team insights always come out and it's fascinating when you actually aggregate time logs for 20, 30, 50 people and say, wow, hey, did you realize as an organization, our customer success team is actually spending, you know, 100 hours a week responding to these tier one customer requests.
And so, we're going to build a customer support function right to do this or whoa, there's spending all this time on onboarding. We clearly have an inefficient onboarding process and we need to evaluate it and potentially architect that process to minimize the time suck on the team. So it can be really effective when you take it team by team to uncover opportunities for change and that could be process. It could be introduction of new teams or resources that didn't exist to take over significant parts of the work.
And so, we're going to be able to do this with the team. And so, we're going to be able to do this with the team to make the team more efficient, right. And what's fascinating is all of the insights that I would typically get from the time log, the team would be like, well, we know this, we've been saying that we've been spending too much time on it, but without providing real data to leadership, they're unlikely to change. So it can be a tool to inspire, you know, change with respect to resources, process systems, etc.
So, you know, it's been a long time management session to all the teams and companies that I've been at since that and the other piece of it is like, yes, as a leader, you have an obligation to like create the conditions for your team to be successful, but then I want to empower individuals so that they can do this on their own, right. And give them that agency and that choice back so I feel like doing both is ideal and it's typically what I tried to do particularly when it works and every facet of life. Mm hmm. I'm going to do it for one week and I've made a fun, you know, an easy spreadsheet to make it easy for you.
And yeah, like this, you'll have a personal benefit here and this is going to be the impetus for changes that you all typically have been talking about. And we'll be able to help move that forward because of the data that we're able to collect. Thanks. Allie is up next.
It is hard to find people. I know. I do this for DJI. I don't know if you will be shape the skill I have here.
I can't keep track of everything. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just wanted to ask you how you kind of keep things work and personal separate. I mean, because, you know, especially now with a lot of us working from home.
I think your question was really getting at how do you separate your personal and your work life, especially now when we're all working from home, which is a really great question. And so the first thing I'll say is, personally, it's a huge challenge for me. I definitely work a lot and at night and weekends and whenever I get to it. And so it's hard to be really disciplined about that.
One of the things that I've tried to do is to be a little bit less concerned about getting all of my work done within the traditional work week and focus more on how am I looking at my entire week and making sure that I'm focusing on the things that matter the most. So, for example, I actually do spend some time most weekends working, but it's typically on projects that are energizing to me and things that I want to spend some time on and have quiet focus time to work on that. And what that means is there might be some blocks of time throughout the week where I'm going to take some breaks, go for a long walk, take the afternoon off right and so I'm just being realistic with myself of. I am not the type of person that's going to only work nine to five Monday through Friday.
And so I create, I make sure to balance and like, okay, I'm going to spend some time working on the weekend, but I'm only going to work on this project from nine AM to 11 AM and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my weekend. And so I try to think about it in that way to balance, but it's really hard. And I'm not always good at it. We'd love to get another few questions on before we wrap up the session.
Yes, we've got another one from Paula. Thank you. I'm Megan and thank you for doing this. My question is, do you have a strategy for managing the cell phone that's always within harm's reach, because that's probably my single biggest time suck, whether it's Twitter or texts or then, then have a lot of thing.
Then I go to the phone instead of doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. Yeah, it's a really good question. And so there's two tricks in particular that I try to that I use that I think I've had the most impact so one is I try to just turn off all notifications. So I notifications are terrible.
And so I just turn them off like in the way that the way that I like to think about it is like I'm going to be on all these apps anyway, like I don't need them telling me like look at me now like I'm already spent time on LinkedIn and slack and email like you're already getting plenty of my time. And so I'm going to spend time on those apps on my terms. So what was funny is I like I think I turned off notifications for a vacation. And I realized I was like, I was so nice.
I was like, why would I have the money to begin with? And I just didn't turn them back on right. And that said, I still have a little bit of a bad habit of like I'm probably checking LinkedIn or slack more often than I should right Apple has this new thing on their phone that I discovered where you can actually kind of set like a like a sleep time and it'll buffer it. And so basically what I try to do is typically around like 8 p.m.
in the evening to I think it's like 7 a.m. in the morning. I basically my phone is automatically on a do not disturb. And so it's like this I don't know I forget exactly what it is you can set this like sleep time and it'll like remind you like you're about to you know you should wind down and get ready for bed.
And so I actually has been great. And so with a lot of notifications and basically like 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. I'm just like no because at that point it's I should be resting relaxing spending time with my husband my dog etc.
And so your hours might be different whatever it happens to be but those have been the two best tactics that have had some staying power and have actually been effective. So we have a question from Samson. He actually had to log out so I'm going to read it for him. It was what are some ways you keep yourself accountable to finishing the tasks on your calendar on time.
Yes, that's a really good question. I've learned this the hard way. In addition to our perception of how we previously spent our time being incorrect. We typically drastically underestimate how long things are going to take us to do.
So we're like, Oh, I've got to work on this project. I'll just walk off an hour next Tuesday afternoon and get it done. You start working on your project and the hours up and you're like, Oh, I'm like 25% done. This is this I'm not finished here.
And so what I do is when I and I've learned this over time so my instincts have gotten better but until then, whenever I basically a task comes in and then whatever my gut instinct is Oh, I'm going to need an hour for this to work. I'm going to need an hour for this two hours for this. I actually multiply it by three. So three x your estimate of how much time you think you need and block out that much time.
And I do that for two reasons. And instead of two x I go three x because it's going to take you longer and you're going to get interrupted. You're going to get distracted. You're going to get interrupted despite your best efforts.
You're not going to spend that whole time on that one thing. And so I basically set myself up for success and create those buffers. And then the reality is, if you finish it early, cool you have extra time. And so I do.
So I use that sort of times three rule to do it and to that end, let's say I'm like, Oh, this is going to take me three hours and I'm like, Oh, nine hours. I'm not going to get that done in one sitting, right. So let me create multiple time blocks over multiple days to work on that particular project. So Karla has a couple questions.
So I'm going to bring her on next so she can ask those. Hi. Hi, okay. I had two questions.
One is as a manager, what could what do you advise to do to help make your time of your team more productive. Yeah, so I mentioned earlier around the, like the time logging with the team. And so that's just a great like one time exercise to do and whatever frequency makes sense to make broader changes across the team. But typically what I like to do is on a one on one basis is really ask like really truly understand the perception of the other person on how they're feeling about their work.
Everyone is different. And so I find that there aren't really similar things that apply to every single person. So I like to ask like, how are you feeling about being doing feeling overwhelmed. You know, what are your priorities and I try to help them make better choices for themselves.
Additionally, I also especially like most of the teams that I've managed and companies that I've worked at have been kind of like high growth companies. And the reality is in those types of environments, there's typically high workload, a lot of pressure, things move quickly, but things also change quickly because the team is growing fast where people are joining the team. So it's a constant challenge of, are you still the right person to be doing this thing, or are we getting to a point where we need to think about adding another member to your team, or do we even need to do this thing anymore at all. And so I think it's like an ongoing assessment of like key priorities and projects and making sure that you're being focused that you're scrapping things that are important anymore, trying to get ahead of hiring new team members as the workload increases.
But I find for me, I try to kind of have almost like a one on one consultation with a person. And I aim at, I'm not always 100% good at this I aim to try to help people make decisions on their own right sometimes I told people what to do, but I try my aim is to try to like help them think critically about this themselves. And like hey, like you should come to me and say like hey is this important anymore. Like that's a valid question, you know, or you should come to me and say I don't know if I'm the best person to do this like can we talk about finding a new home for this ongoing task like I want to empower the team to be thinking that way so they feel that agency and that they can ask me those questions and that they feel safe to do so.
That's a great answer. And then the other question I had was do you do anything to make yourself feel more satisfied about the way you're spending your time because, you know, a person can I found myself getting so much done, but not taking the time to relish and what was done and not celebrating or selling what was done. And so, you know, I tried a technique which worked pretty well which was to start a meeting with some of the things that were accomplished. And then I found that sometimes those things really weren't quite accomplished yet and more discussion needed to happen and more refinement needed to happen.
And that made us all feel like oh good we're discussing we're not just paying attention what we need to do but what's been done. Do you do you have anything that you do along those lines. I love that tactic that you described I think that that's great. I think actually this is something I really struggle with from a personal perspective I can do so many things and I still feel like I'm never doing enough right.
I think especially people in leadership positions. What I've learned is, I think I have some personal stuff I need to work on to like adjust my mindset there but I also think that's like kind of part of leadership. And so there's a sense of just like this is how it is a little bit you have to like not to get personally and kind of find some peace with it. With respect to the team though, absolutely.
And I think there's a couple of things like I love celebrating small wins. And so whenever I'm talking to any team about things, I love to spend some time, you know, especially if maybe we're having a maybe a more intense conversation about like a sticky challenge or problem that we're trying to solve and sometimes things get maybe a little intense or heated or people are starting to feel problem spot or like they're insecure or second guessing like their ability to do something. When I'm sensing those things happening, I like to begin and end those conversations with like a vote of confidence and appreciation. And to your point, acknowledgement of how far we have come and the good things that are happening because reality is is great things can be happening and big problems can be existing at the same time, right?
And typically in most high growth companies, that's the case constantly. And so it's reminding people that, you know, it's fine. The other thing is I have this question. So like this is something I do for myself and sometimes I'll do it with teams.
When I'm getting really worked up about something, I ask myself in two years from now, am I going to care about this? And the answer 99.9% of the time is no. And so because of that, it helps me put things into perspective. And so if I'm speaking with the team member and maybe I'm sensing that they're getting a little bit overwhelmed or stressed out.
And I'm just not really a little bit different. I'm not really a little bit different. But the, the thing that I also use with the team to just help me like, Hey, it's okay. Like we're not here and cancer here, like whatever we're getting riled out about is totally fine.
Like it's not actually that bad. And so I have to do that. I have to remind myself of that because I care a lot and I get caught up in things, but I try to offer myself and for others. Thank you.
Thanks, Carla. Great questions. All right. We've got one more question from Keith.
you'd kind of mentioned around the one week exercise around time tracking and I've kind of gone around and around with this for a while. I want an agency. At one time I was at the, at the, this kind of thought pattern around time tracking was a waste of time. And then, and then my operations director came in and he's like, no, no, no, no, you got to track all this time.
So now we move to tracking time regularly. And I've heard you kind of speak around doing a one week exercise. I just wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, is there value in, do you feel there's value in tracking time all the time or just the one week exercise? What's your experience been with this so far?
Yeah, it's a great question. And so I've actually been a part, I've been, I've worked for companies where I had to track 100% of my time to like get paid essentially. And I've personally found that frustrating and also like, I guess like disempowering. So I feel like the on like sort of like recurring one week time logging has been the right middle ground.
And so I think the most frequently that I've done at a company was once a quarter. And what I found was, you know, everyone always says, well, one week isn't always reflective of all the weeks. I'm like, okay, fine, but like it's directionally correct. And so for me, like, I just log if I do this one week time, long exercise, you know, once a quarter, couple times a quarter, I think it's actually going to give you the same insights and information as if they were logging their time forever.
But it's a bit of a better, it's a better experience for the team member if they're doing it, not all the time and one off. So I found that compromise has worked well for me in the situations that I've been in. The other thing is, I've noticed, and even when you do these at one week intervals at a time, people work very differently. And it's fascinating when you see people have the same job, but they spend their time meaningfully differently to get that job done.
And so also, anyway, that's another reason why I kind of prefer this other method. I know that there are situations where time does have to be tracked or get paid by the hour or whatever that is. So in some contexts, I think regular ongoing time tracking is either required or it makes sense. But generally that's the approach I would take.
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks. That's the only question I had. Appreciate it.
All right, Megan. Well, that was the last question from the chat. Is there anything you want to close in thought you want to finish out with? Yeah, we'll close out.
Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it. This is the first event we've done for the Marketing Movement podcast. If you haven't subscribed, check it out.
We're planning to do more of these in the future. So we'll see how the event schedule will pan out. What I would just like to leave you with is some of the things that I was mentioning at the top of this session. At the end of the day, this is your life.
And every single minute that you spend is a choice that you are making. And so, you know, take back the power of how you spend your time and stop doing things that bring you down and spend more time doing things that lift you up. And so I would encourage you all to exercise that power and find an opportunity to do that. One of them, people ask me like, Oh, what are your long term goals?
And this and that. And one of the things that I kind of settled on about five years ago was I want to create a life where I really love living most of the days of my life. Like that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to create a life where my day to day is fun and enjoyable and empowering and challenging and exciting.
And I make choices to create that reality for myself. But thank you everyone for coming and for all participation.