Time, priorities and delegation

Time is the only project constraint that can’t be negotiated. The budget can be revised, the scope can be reduced, people can be added; but days still have 24 hours and weeks 7 days. Managing time, then, doesn’t mean fitting everything in: it means choosing what fits.

This guide is for people who run projects and for people who simply run their own days.

Planning your time

Before the techniques, a habit: look at the week before it starts. What must be true by Friday evening? What are the two or three things that really matter? Everything else is organised around them.

• Time blocking. Divide the day into blocks devoted to one kind of activity: email from 9 to 9:30, the main project from 10 to 12, meetings in the afternoon. Treat the blocks like appointments. And leave buffers: a day planned to the minute falls apart at the first phone call.
• One list, not ten. Everything to do in one place, ordered by priority, updated every day. Ticking off what’s done helps more than you would think.
• The Pomodoro technique. Invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s: twenty-five minutes of focused work on one thing, five minutes’ break, a longer break every four rounds. It works especially well for tasks you tend to put off.
• Breaks. Getting up, moving, switching off for a few minutes isn’t wasted time: it is what keeps you clear-headed until evening.

Choosing what comes first

Priorities aren’t invented: they are derived from a few reference points. The project’s objectives, the client’s expectations, the resources available, the value each task produces. From there, a few tools.

The Eisenhower matrix

Attributed to President Eisenhower and made famous by Stephen Covey, it crosses two questions: is it important? Is it urgent?

	Urgent	Not urgent
Important	Do it now, in person	Plan it, and do it calmly and well
Not important	Delegate it, or keep it to a minimum	Drop it

The box that makes the difference is the top right one: the important things that never fall due. If they don’t find a place in your diary, sooner or later they become urgent, and then they get done badly and in a rush.

MoSCoW and ABC

The MoSCoW method splits a project’s requirements into four groups: Must have (essential), Should have (important but replaceable), Could have (desirable, if time allows), Won’t have (not now). It is perfect for negotiating scope with a client when time runs short. The ABC method is simpler: high, medium, low priority.

And when everything seems due today, there is a trick Angelita uses in the book: take the hours out of the count and think in a generic unit of time. You break the psychological barrier of urgency and start seeing importance again.

Interruptions

Every interruption costs more than the time it lasts: getting back into complex work takes minutes, sometimes many. A few defences:

• focus slots, when you can’t be reached, communicated to the team and to clients;
• notifications off during those slots, phone included;
• email and messages in batches, two or three times a day, not every time they arrive;
• “back to this later”: if an interruption is urgent, note where you had got to before answering.

If putting things off is a recurring problem, I talk about it in the guide Why we put things off.

Delegating

Delegating means giving someone responsibility for a task while keeping control of the result. It isn’t only about freeing up time: it helps people grow, motivates them, and often improves the result, because it brings different points of view.

1. Clarify the expected result: what, to what quality, by when, with what costs and risks.
2. Choose the right person, by skills, interests and availability. Not whoever is free: whoever is suited.
3. Explain, and listen: what you expect, why them, with what resources, how the work will be assessed. And what doubts they have.
4. Follow without smothering: agreed checkpoints, help when needed, no daily intrusion.
5. Assess and acknowledge: honest feedback, and credit to whoever did it.

The most common mistakes come in two pairs of opposites, plus a few omissions: delegating too little or too late, when you are already swamped; delegating too much or too early, without having clarified what you want; delegating to the wrong person; checking every step; delegating without explaining, without following up, without giving feedback.

When there is never enough time

If the feeling of not coping becomes constant, the problem is no longer organisational. Exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix, detachment and cynicism towards work, a sense of no longer being effective: these are the signs the World Health Organization associates with burnout. Productivity techniques won’t help there: what helps is an honest conversation about workload and priorities and, if needed, professional support.