Work-Life Balance – Time Management

Why are so many feeling that our Work-Life Balance is out of whack? In this series, I will explore four categories of issues that contribute to the feeling (and actuality):

• Connectedness 24/7
• Email Boundaries
• Time Management (Quadrant II)
• Transition and Transformation

Several years ago I learned some very interesting lessons about time management. I was working with a high level leadership team, all vice-presidents and above. While we were offsite spending time on leadership development issues one of the VP’s on the team finally stopped the process and said something like the following:

“Ron, we think all of these leadership issues you’re trying to teach us are wonderful and important, but until you help us with our time management problems, we can’t even think about putting more effort into improving our leadership skills. We’re all working at least 60 hours a week as it is. We’re destroying our health and our families. Help us with our time management first and then we’ll be ready to learn new leadership skills from you.”

He was right. They were worn out and suffering. I turned to a time management model put forth by Steven Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. In that book, Mr. Covey indicated that all of our time fits into quadrants of a two-by-two grid.

His premise was that once we fulfill all of the tasks in Quadrant I (both urgent and important) we tend to go on to tasks that fall primarily in Quadrant III (Urgent but not necessarily important).

I sent the team off to record where all of their time went over the next two weeks. When they returned with the record of approximately 120 hours each had expended over the last two weeks, we listed every activity for each participant on a flip chart and posted it on the wall. Then we went through a very interesting exercise. Line-item by line-item we went through each chart and identified into which quadrant it should be placed. A very interesting pattern began to emerge. On several of the line-items, the owner of the sheet would say that he/she had spend a number of hours producing a particular report (as an example) that was urgent but not important and they intended to stop performing that task in the future. However, once stated, there always seemed to be a challenge from the room. Someone would say, “If you don’t produce that report, I can’t get my job done. It must be placed in the important row.”

But, when we began to look into what data in the report was required, there often seemed to be a simple solution to the second persons needs that still eliminated the effort needed to produce the report (it’s on the web site, a quick email, it can be found in another location, etc.) The problem was solved and the bulk of the work eliminated.

Once we completed all of the “negotiations” around the room and everyone had agreed on the quadrants into which all work had been placed, a horrifying statistic emerged. Only 20% of all the work fell into the “Important” row. One VP hung his head and said:

“Do you mean to tell me that I just spend 24 hours of meaningful work over the last two weeks and all the rest was just thrashing?”

I’m afraid so.

The lessons that I have learned from this experience (conducted now several times) include:

• It’s difficult (impossible) to determine on your own how much of your work falls into which quadrants. There is always someone else that needs to be brought into the negotiations.
• It takes team support to stick with the decisions. Even after everyone agrees that you have some quadrant III work that can be dropped, there will be those who still want you to do it. It takes a team to help you say “no”.
• If more than 70% of your work falls into quadrant I (both urgent and important), you’re headed for burn out and failure somewhere down the line because you are not doing enough important but not urgent work (prevention, production capability, relationship building, big picture thinking, etc.)

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