Ten Tips for Time Management
You cannot manage time. You can’t make it faster, slower, or create more of it. However, you can manage yourself, your focus, and your priorities. What results are you trying to achieve by controlling how you use the time you have more effectively? From triaging priorities to task management to controlling interruptions, we will explore some techniques to leverage how to effectively use time to reduce stress and fulfill commitments.
- Schedule Your Days
If you are a MS 365 subscriber and receive the Viva Daily Briefing email or occasionally review Viva Insights, you have probably noticed it is always trying to get you to block time for “focus time”. No matter what calendaring system you use, use it well. Block time for “hard coded” work – appointments and events that require your physical presence. Don’t forget to block time for travel, if necessary.
For tasks with hard deadlines, you can also book them on your calendar – though don’t wait until the due date to start working on them! Then, block time for focused or deep work. Don’t avoid adding personal appointments to your calendar. In MS Outlook and Google Calendar, you can mark personal appointments as private so details are not showing if others can view your calendar in the firm/org. Your calendar should reflect your day, so add everything to it.
If you use an electronic calendar add it to your smartphone so you can easily update, change, and review upcoming events. Add appointments and events immediately to your calendar so you don’t double book your time or forget to add it.
- Reduce Distractions
Most executives and time management gurus share the same tip – don’t start your day by going straight to your email inbox. You may become distracted, worried, feel overwhelmed, or frustrated by what you find. A better way to start the day is to review your calendar and your to-do list and prioritize. What requires your presence? What is due today? You may have to do a little triage to adjust for shifting priorities. What about scheduling time to check and respond to email? If you can do that, great! However, if you need to check email throughout the day you don’t always need to respond immediately. Flag it for follow up, respond with a “I’ll review and respond shortly”, move it to a “For Follow Up” folder, or if no response is necessary folder it or delete it. If you subscribe to mailing lists you can add labels or write rules to move those emails automatically from your inbox to the appropriate folder.
When you are doing deep work (legal research, writing, crafting strategy) and billing for time, do what you can to reduce distractions. Close browser tabs, close your email, forward your calls to voicemail, put your smartphone on the other side of the room, close your office door and prepare to immerse yourself in a task for at least 20 minutes. Then take a break, and if necessary, start again.
- Create a To Do System, not a To Do List
Does your to-do list exist on multiple scraps of paper, in notebooks, in multiple apps, sitting in your inbox? You need to create a system to identify, document, and track your to-dos. You need it to be simple, be with you everywhere, and give you the ability to add context to the tasks such as emails, documents, and other information essential to getting the task done. For MS 365 subscribers you have To Do, which compiles tasks from across the MS product ecosystem. But there are lots of task/to do tools out there like To-Doist, Notion, Click-Up, Evernote, practice management applications, and more. What you use is not as important as how you use it – consistently and strategically.
- Break Up Tasks
Most tasks can and should be broken into multiple tasks. Breaking up a task into discrete multiple tasks not only helps you gauge the actual time needed to accomplish it, but you may also find that you can delegate parts of it. For instance, when you add a new client, you need to run a conflicts check, input their information into the system, set up the billing, send out the new client welcome package with the fee agreement/engagement agreement, request necessary documents and information, etc. Once you have taken larger tasks and broken them into discrete tasks you can begin to document this process into a checklist, which can be reused and refined over time. You can start estimating the average time it takes to accomplish the task and add it to a project management or practice management workflow.
- Ask for Help
Sometimes it is hard to ask for help. And, asking for help often involves additional time to explain the task or assignment, review and correct it, and follow up. You may fall into the trap of thinking you can do something better or faster yourself. However, if you start the process of asking for help and getting someone trained (whether internally or externally) to provide assistance you can create a system that lets you do the things only you can do.
- Just Say No
Do you have a way to determine the value of a commitment when you are asked? If you do not have time to do something effectively, or if it simply has no return on investment for you personally or professionally, you should consider saying “no” or at least “not right now”. For some people, this tendency to saying “yes” to everything is actually a procrastination style.
- Leverage Technology
There are all sorts of tools you can use to reduce administrative tasks or workflows with technology. Learn how to use the technology that you have more effectively. This may take some time commitment initially, but putting the effort into creating templates, clause libraries, adding automation, and more can help you whittle down your task list.
In addition to time saving tools, you can use technology to reduce distractions and delegate. Appointment tools like Acuity, Calendly, or Bookings are fantastic because they reduce the number of steps it takes to schedule an appointment. You can manage how many appointments can be scheduled, automate reminders, anticipate cancellations/no shows, and get a lot of help maintaining your calendar with the help of a simple automation tool.
- Always Set Deadlines
Any task you assign to someone should have a deadline. Any task someone assigns to you should have a deadline. Any tasks you add to your list should have a deadline. If a task has no deadline, then it has no priority and it will either be pushed back and off your list over and over. If the task truly has no due date, is it something you need to do at all? Setting deadlines for yourself and others – even if they are false – will help you establish priorities. Task and time management is always a dance of competing priorities and triage. Deadlines are an essential part of your daily/weekly/monthly planning so you can get things done!
- Start Early
You breathe a sigh of relief. The court filing deadline is not for two months. Plenty of time to get it done. So, you put it on the backburner. The deadline sits on your calendar, the task on your to do list, and you keep putting it off because you have plenty of time. Until you don’t and you end up staying in the office pulling an all-nighter. If you have been breaking tasks into sub-tasks this will help you get started whittling away at bigger assignments or projects so by the time the deadline looms, much of the work is done.
- Get Organized
Numerous studies have shown that employees spend a lot of time searching and looking for information to begin substantive work. While you may or may not have control over how your firm or organization creates shared knowledge repositories, you can start with your own personal knowledge management. Being able to quickly access information is often key to moving projects and tasks forward. Organize your files and emails, leverage better search tools, clean up your desk, store information you might need later in the same logical place so you don’t have to scan emails, files, the web and printed materials to lay your hands on the citation for that case you read about the other day, or that statistic that helps with an argument you are preparing, or the phone number for the expert witness on her card in that stack of materials you brought back from the conference. Tools like MS OneNote and Evernote can help you corral information into one place and add to your personal knowledge management.
Conclusion
Adopting a few time management tips and techniques can help you start to feel less busy and more in control. With time saved on work, you may be able to regain time in your day for family, friends, self-care and more.