Do you determine your time or does someone else?

The big question in regards to time management is if you or someone else decides how to use your time sensibly and has a great influence on our self management. The higher your degree of self-determination is in relation to foreign persons or bodies, the more influence you can practice and therefore also using your time sensibly. The relationship between self - and other is one of the key success factors for good self management. It is important, as possible, to increase the degree of self-determination.

Other priorities

How often you say or hear it from others: "I have no time!" Basically this statement actually means: "I have other priorities." Or even more accurate: "I am not taking more time for this right now,because I am using this time differently." In this context in regards to the meaningful use of time, you've certainly often heard two words which sound similar: Effectiveness and efficiency. Often these are used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same:

Effectiveness & efficiency   

Effectiveness means to do or complete the essential, right thing in order to achieve the desired effect and to achieve goals. Efficiency means, however, to do it properly. The make and complete things, therefore, with minimal effort, or that you will achieve as good results as possible with the resources available.

Ideally, you can reach both together, of course. In case of doubt, it is however more effective, to do the right things rather than to do things right. Or in other words: You can do the wrong thing very efficiently, but then at the end of the day, things were completed efficiently but not effectively. The task or thing is indeed completed, but the really important things remain incomplete You can, however, also be effective when you progress slowly, however, while going in the right direction.

Efficiency: 80:20 or perfection?

A good time management gets downright to increasing efficiency. This is back on the list - especially in times where employees at companies need to reach more and more opportunities with fewer and fewer resources. To optimize the efficiency of your own work, there is a known and proven principle: the so-called <link https: de.wikipedia.org wiki paretoprinzip>Pareto Principle - also known as the 20:80-principle. Many of my clients have ever heard of it, yet it is used in practice much too rarely. It shows its effect like so many principles only once applied..

For many activities, we already achieve 80% of the result with 20 per cent of the effort. For the remaining 20% quality increase for which the final result would come to 100 per cent and arriving at a status of “perfect” we would again need 80 percent effort - so very much disproportionate.

Implemented in the daily work of...

A practical example is the meeting minutes from a meeting: These can be written during the meeting notes, documenting the decisions having been made during the meeting and distribute directly after the meeting. Or you can sit down again and work on the whole spellchecking with nice layout for corporate identity, unique annotations and an introductory text provided with bullet points, bold, and italics etc. Only after this fine-tuning work will the meeting minutes be distributed. This second version is perfect even though  the imperfect version would serve the purpose entirely. This also applies for many other activities.

Of course, the degree of self-determination is crucial here: activities whose results only you are concerned with you can decide yourself easily if you satisfied 80 percent. A seminar participant was recently laughing loudly out loud when we discussed the principle and explained how he had to create an Excel file to calculate something for himself, he then had to redo the whole file to make it look “nice.” And already time has passed, nearly a  half-hour of lost time. If someone else is concerned in regards to the results of your work - your supervisor, your customer, the colleague in the other division, etc. -, you might help to clarify the exact expectations in a conversation.

Again, check your tasks and activities against the background of the Pareto principle: Are you making more effort than is necessary? Guided by your own perfectionism tendencies, or the high expectations of others - based only on assumptions? Could you complete more important things through a reduction of the result to 80 percent quality for others? I wish you great insights!