Generally speaking, when it comes to time management you want to reduce time spent reacting. Yet disruptions happen all the time, from the drop-in coworker to the barrage of daily phone calls and emails almost everybody has to deal with. You can minimize the need to react, but you can’t make it go away. It is important not only to minimize disruption, but to deal effectively with it so that new information isn’t missed and emergencies are addressed swiftly.

With that in mind, let’s take a two-pronged approach to reactive time management:

1. Minimizing disruption.
2. Maximizing response effectiveness.

Minimizing Disruption

Disruptions don’t just take away time from the task at hand, they also cause that task to require more time. This happens because people need time to switch from one context to another. Disruptions can come in a number of forms: Coworker drop-ins, phone calls, and emails to name a few. Some disruptions can be controlled, even eliminated, and some of them can’t.

A strategy I’ve found effective is to first divide tasks into four basic categories using the Eisenhower Method. These categories are:

1. Important and urgent. These tasks must be dealt with now. Examples include meetings, addressing emergencies, making repairs, and meeting deadlines.
2. Important but not urgent. These tasks must be dealt with, but not immediately. Examples include planning, prioritization, evaluating new ideas, mission clarification, process improvement, and building relationships.
3. Unimportant and urgent. These tasks require your immediate attention (or at least, they seem to), but aren’t actually that important. Examples include coworker drop-ins, email, text messages, voice-mail, and phone calls.
4. Unimportant and not urgent. These tasks are not really “tasks” they are more like “distractions”. Examples: Messaging friends on Facebook, surfing Reddit, daydreaming.

The trick is to minimize time spent on “unimportant and urgent” and “unimportant and not urgent” tasks and use the time you gain on “important but not urgent” tasks.

As you begin thinking about tasks in this way, one thing you are likely to realize is that you have been treating unimportant, urgent tasks as if they are important and urgent. If you are like most people, this behavior is your biggest source of ineffective time use: Coworkers distract you away from your work, you pause every few minutes to check email, you answer the phone every time it rings, you check your voice-mail immediately upon realizing that a message is waiting. Don’t do that!

Instead, try these simple tactics for dealing with disruptive “unimportant and urgent” tasks:

Manage messages. Email, text messages, voice-mail and other modern forms of communication are often a source of disruption, distraction, and multitasking. Stop checking your messages each time a new one arrives and instead only look when you need a break from the more important thing you’re working on. If new messages are too distracting to ignore then just shut down the distraction:

• Turn off your mobile phone
• Put your office phone on silent
• Close your email program.

Next, schedule some time each day specifically to review and respond to messages (how much time depends on your job, try starting with 30 minutes and work your way up). Don’t go over your scheduled time unless you absolutely must. Without email, phone calls, and other messages distracting you, you should be able to keep more focused on more important things thereby not only completing tasks faster, but also producing better results.

Defer drop-ins. It’s easy to ignore your phone by putting it on silent; unfortunately coworkers do not come with such a handy feature. When dealing with a drop-in, first go ahead and give them your full attention even if you don’t want to. You’ve already been disrupted, so why not? Second, be polite and be helpful; you might not like being disrupted, but being polite and helpful is the best way to get what you want, even if what you want is for them to go away. It will also help build your relationship with that person, and good relationships are key to making progress as a team. Finally, defer the person’s request using one of the following tactics:

• Add their request to your task list.
• Ask them to email you the request.
• Schedule a meeting.
• Direct them to the person that can best assist them (if it’s not you).

By acknowledging the request, and writing it down you will give your coworker confidence. Before deferring them, be sure to consider that your coworkers request may be more important and urgent than what you’re doing (perhaps because it is, or perhaps because it’s your boss, or both). If that’s the case, your out of luck: Give the new task your full attention and give yourself the time you need to get it done right.

Do less. When you have too much to do then doing less is your only option. Take time, even if you think you don’t have it, to make sure you don’t drop the wrong tasks and that the tasks you complete are the most important ones.

Maximizing Response Effectiveness

So you’ve successfully started limiting the distractions of email and phone calls, and even managed to defer a coworker or two after they popped into your office unannounced. Whether you knew it or not, you’ve been building up a task backlog. That is you have to-do items on your task list and messages that you need to address, and you’ve set aside some time to address them. Now what?

Process information using the Four Ds of Decision Making. As you check email, voice-mail, etc. take one of the following four actions for each message:

• Delete it. If you’re done with the message, delete it (or file it away). That way you don’t read the same message over and over.
• Do it. If it’s a quick request, say less than 5 minutes, do it right now. If the task will take longer than that, delegate it or defer it.
• Delegate it. Should someone else be handling this task? Forward the message and let them know.
• Defer it. If you can’t take care of the request right away (5 minutes or less), add it to your task list. Just as it’s important to defer drop-ins to minimize disruption of a task, don’t let a particular email disrupt the task of getting through your email.

Execute against your task list. If you’ve followed everything to this point, you’ll have created a master task list: a single, authoritative list of everything that needs to get done. Most of your time during the day should be spent executing the tasks on this list. Before you start executing, consider spending a few minutes putting the list in priority order first (more on this in a later blog post).

Summary

Minimize disruption by responding to new requests using the Eisenhower Method. Minimize the time spent on “unimportant and urgent” tasks by keeping them in a backlog and batching them within a set time limit. Eliminate “unimportant and not urgent” tasks altogether. Use the time you gain on “important but not urgent” tasks to improve your overall efficiency. When overwhelmed, do less; but be careful to select the right tasks to drop.

As you process new tasks, use the Four Ds of Decision Making to delete, do, delegate, or defer. Deferred tasks should be tracked in a master to-do list and most of your day should be spent completing the tasks on this list.

Do you have other tips for reacting to new requests? Please share them in the comments!

First Generation of Time Management: Reaction

Wikipedia gives the first generation the following description:

Reminders [are] based on clocks and watches, but with computer implementation possible; can be used to alert a person when a task is to be done.

Let me add: post-it notes, coworker drop-ins, phone-calls, emails, and memory.

All of these tactics are reactive: They call your attention to something and give you a chance to react. With any luck, you’ll actually have enough time to react before the next task grabs your attention; but how do you know? Planning.

Second Generation of Time Management: Planning

Wikipedia gives the second generation the following description:

Planning and preparation based on calendar and appointment books; includes setting goals.

If you have a plan and are prepared to execute that plan, chances are you’ll get something accomplished. Within this generation of time management you are perhaps taking those post-it notes and putting them into a logically ordered to-do list and asking your next drop-in to schedule a meeting. To maximize the effectiveness of your plans, you should also be estimating the time each task will take to ensure your plans are realistic.

At this stage, your getting pro-active: You know what you are going to do, about how long it will take, when you’re likely to start, and when you’ll probably be finished. You’re also using tactics from the first generation of time management for things you haven’t yet planned. You’re getting things done, and not losing track of anything (or at least, not much!), but how do you know you’re getting the right thing done? Prioritization.

Third Generation of Time Management: Prioritization

Wikipedia gives the third generation the following description:

Planning, prioritizing, controlling (using a personal organizer, other paper-based objects, or computer or PDA-based systems) activities on a daily basis. This approach implies spending some time in clarifying values and priorities.

If you have a plan, the opportunity to execute that plan, and you know you’re working on the most important thing possible then chances are you won’t just get something accomplished, you’ll actually attain what you value most (often money, but not necessarily)!

At this stage you’re not just pro-active, you’re actually exerting some control over your destiny: You’re focusing where you need to focus, getting done what needs to be done. You aren’t just planning, you’re adapting to new circumstances and opportunities; re-planning and re-prioritizing as new knowledge comes to light. You are using the tactics from the second generation and fitting them into an overarching strategy, and utilizing the tactics from the first generation to manage day-to-day operations. You’re getting the right things done, eliminating what doesn’t need to get done, and staying organized along the way.

Chances are, if you’re managing your time using the first three generations of time management then you’re successful at what you do. You’re also stressed out. Planning, prioritizing, executing, and doing it all on schedule is hard work and any experienced planner knows that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” How do you manage the stress? Do Easy.

Fourth Generation of Time Management: Do Easy

Wikipedia gives the fourth generation the following description:

Being efficient and proactive using any of the above tools; places goals and roles as the controlling element of the system and favors importance over urgency.

This is the point when the first three generations become intuitive, and are executed in the most efficient way possible. Each new circumstance that arises, every new prospect of opportunity, and each new bit of knowledge attained fits effortlessly into its proper place within The System.

I named this generation of time management “Do Easy” because it is well illustrated by the classic short film of the same name by Gus Van Sant:

To work with such effortlessness the mission, vision, and values you operate upon must be known intuitively and shared by those you work with; you must use tools to create leverage and execute not just effectively, but efficiently.

If you are operating within the fourth generation of time management then you have enough experience to both work efficiently now and to change the way you work when a better way comes along. You probably have strong relationships with those you work with; you can lead when its necessary and follow when its most effective. You’ve probably even automated a lot of what used to be (until you automated it) your work: Email, task tracking, status reporting, and so on. You don’t just use your time efficiently, you use it wisely; taking time to stay educated, to improve the overall efficiency of the system, to invest in and grow yourself and those around you, and even to relax when you need to.

Thinking through these four generations was helpful for my workshop, and I think represents a milestone in my own ability to manage time effectively. Do you have any tips or tricks for time management? Which of these four generations does it fall into?

There’s no reason you should be prevented you from getting your favorite email newsletters via RSS, thanks to this simple GMail hack. Here it is, step by step:

1. Create a new GMail account. For example: thefavoritenewslettersofjames@gmail.com.
2. Unsubscribe from all of your newsletters.
3. Re-subscribe using your new GMail account. Take this time to eliminate the ones you no longer read.
4. Subscribe to your new GMail account’s RSS feed.

Note that if you use Google Reader you may be disappointed to find that they do not support authenticated feeds by default. You can get around this using this Google FeedBurner Hack from lifehacker which works with Google Reader and other web-based readers that don’t support authenticated feeds. It works by using FeedBurner‘s secure feed support to publish an unsecured feed:

Of course, you can always use a reader that supports authenticated feeds. This is an especially good idea if any of your subscriptions need to remain private.

That should help unclutter your inbox and save you some time while still getting the information you need. If you use this trick, I’d love for you to post a comment with your experience.