Have you ever delegated a task, and then become frustrated when it was finished late? Perhaps you and your delegate speak a different time management language.

This week, I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (because I apparently never watch a TV show, see a movie, or read a book until it has been popular for more than 3 years.) In the book, he talks about plane crashes which have been caused by pilots and co-pilots conveying urgency in a way that the other one misinterprets. While hopefully your miscommunications aren’t causing fiery disasters, it can certainly make working as a team extremely difficult! Check out these three tips to make sure you’re speaking the same time management language.

1. Set a deadline

When you’d like someone to help with something, set a specific deadline. “Can you have this done by some time next week?” is very different from “I really need this by 5:00pm next Wednesday.” When you say “next week” you might mean mid-week, but your delegate might think Friday evening is perfectly acceptable. Setting a specific time ensures you’re both on the same page.

2. Repeat it back

After you’ve both finished the conversation, summarize what you’ve just talked about. “OK fantastic! So you’re going to have that report finished by Wednesday, and then I can take it from there. Thank you so much.” Repeating works for both parties. Your delegate can confirm that he understands exactly what you’d like him to do, and you can confirm when it will be finished.

3. Explain why it’s important.

“Urgent” means different things to different people. Some people don’t view a situation as urgent until their house is burning down and they need someone to call the fire department. Others might assign the same level of urgency to being one egg short for their morning pancake recipe. Instead of describing something as urgent or important, explain why to give it context. “I can’t start on my project due in March until I have that report from you, so I really appreciate your help with this!”

Making sure everyone is speaking the same time management language not only makes delegating easier, but it keeps productivity much more stress-free!

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Happy Holidays! From the Schwartz family to all of you.

On Friday morning, my alarm didn’t go off. As it turns out, this was technology trying to warn me of the day ahead. It’s easy to think that if we can plan well enough, have excellent time management skills and stay motivated, we can control our productivity. In reality, there is a limit to how much we can control. The rest lies with how we adapt to the speed bumps we encounter. Let me tell you about Friday…and how you too can deal with your most insane days.

Into the Storm

Friday was supposed to be a wonderful day. It was the last day of teaching for the summer. I had finished a lot of my end-of-year responsibilities early. I had plenty of time for the few things I had left, and in the evening, I was looking forward to attending an outdoor concert with some of my friends to kick off the summer.

Then, my alarm clock debacle in the morning turned into countless other things that went wrong. This included, but was not limited to, chasing a scorpion around my living room for 20 minutes, a 5 minute phone call with my bank that turned into a 3-hour customer service nightmare, a maintenance issue at our rental property, a dying cell phone, an office chair not fitting into the back seat of my tiny Corolla, and a whole slew of other things that I need not go in to.

Surely you’ve had a day like this, where you feel that despite your best planning efforts, your time is slipping through your fingers and your day is spiraling out of control. These kinds of days are frustrating to everyone, but especially to those of us who are planners at heart and don’t like to feel as though we are losing control of our time.

3 Strategies to Keep a Crazy Day on Track

1) Keep Your Cool

When things go wrong, it’s easy to start stressing, but this only exacerbates the situation. Keeping a level head is the only way to keep moving forward with your day with any sort of efficiency.

2) Adapt

You can only do so much to control outside factors that will disrupt your to-do list. Rather than lamenting the fact that your day’s productivity plan is ruined, focus your energy on adapting the plan to fit the new circumstances. This includes prioritizing what truly needs to be done and what can be delegated. (For example, I wanted to be at the rental property to deal with the maintenance issues, but circumstances prevented me from doing so. As it turns out, everything was fixed without my being there.)

3) Don’t Forget Your Desserts

When it becomes clear that we must cut a few things from our day to keep all of the wheels spinning, it’s easy to put our enjoyable Dessert activities on the chopping block first. While this is an easy, short-term solution, it does nothing to help your long-term stress level. You need your Dessert time and you owe it to yourself to try to protect it just like you would protect any other important task.

This is why I was determined to make it to the concert with my friends Friday evening. I’m proud to say that I made it, and getting through the day’s events made that Dessert all that much sweeter.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3v66siNeMM

Photo Credit: Idea Go

Do you remember doing jigsaw puzzles as a kid? We frequently had one going on our dining room table growing up and my sister and I used to love taking a few minutes to put a couple pieces together every time we walked by. Little did I know that I would long for that same sort of casual productivity in my adult working life!

Every kid knows the most productive way to do a puzzle. You can’t just start randomly fumbling with the pieces, you start with the edges first because they are the easiest to find. Then, once you have a good outline started, you can start slowly building pieces toward the middle. It doesn’t take very long for kids to figure this out, but we adults tend to forget this process as we dive into tasks.

Set Up Your Outline

This week, I had frequent 30-40 minute chunks of time open in my evenings that I really wanted to use to be productive. The problem was that every time I sat down to tackle a task, I got overwhelmed because I didn’t really know where to start. I have so many new projects on my plate right now, and yet I was struggling to figure out how to use these short bursts of time.

Then I realized, I would be able to put these small chunks of time to much better use if I first set aside a larger chunk of time to outline what the components of these projects needed to be. I was trying to start the middle of my puzzle without my edge pieces.

Taking Time to Plan

This weekend, I sat down and planned. I have very little concrete product to show for my work, but that’s OK. The product is going to come later. The product will come when I have my next short burst of time available and instead of wasting it, I’ll be able to consult my project outline and start tackling it, once piece at a time.

When we get excited about our work, or feel stressed that we’re falling behind, it can be tempting to just start doing something so we feel productive. I urge you to step back and sketch out your plan. Unless you were one of those kids who liked to do the puzzle without looking at the picture on the box, in which case, you’re on your own!

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Photo Credit: Digital art