Basic principles of time management at work

“How to do everything? There is not enough time for anything!” Each of us has heard this phrase, and from a variety of people. This phrase can be heard from a businessman who runs several businesses with millions of turnovers at once, and a small entrepreneur who keeps a couple of containers in the nearest market.

You can hear it from the housewife trying to make ends meet before her husband’s next paycheck, and the wife of a rich man with a staff of gardeners and housekeepers who can’t make it all the way through the shops in a day and still not be late for a massage, manicure, pedicure or what is the plan today.

You can hear this from an excellent student who carefully completes all academic tasks and combines studies with an internship in a future specialty, and from a loser who does not have time to visit all the parties in the city and has visited the first couple at the institute only once in his life just because that the day before he fell asleep drunk in the audience.

Moreover, if we offer all these wonderful people to study “Best Time Management Techniques” on our program of the same name, with a probability of 9 out of 10 we will hear that they “do not have time” for this. And there is a certain higher justice in this.

Justice in the sense that we all, regardless of age, profession, education and social status, have exactly 24 hours in a day and not a minute more. And it depends only on us how reasonably and efficiently we can dispose of them.

So, today we will talk about the basic principles of time management in relation to work.

The origin of time management principles

For those who are not a fan of self-development literature, we will tell you in a nutshell what time management is. The term comes from two English words time and management, which literally means “time management”.

This is not some kind of magic: the principles of time management cannot take us to the past or the future, but they can make our present more interesting and meaningful. And so far there is no such magic to make the day longer or shorter: we can only make better use of what we have.

The first ideas about the need for a meaningful organization of one’s time for the benefit of human health sounded at the end of the 19th century. So, the Russian physiologist Nikolai Evgenievich Vvedensky (1852-1922) once remarked that “we get tired and exhausted not at all because we work hard, but because we work disorganized and stupidly” [N. Vvedensky, 2017].

The study of personal effectiveness in terms of the use of time was put on a scientific basis by the creator of social engineering of those years, Alexei Kapitonovich Gastev (1882-1939). He shared his observations in the book “How to work” [A. Gastev, 1972]. Interestingly, Alexei Gastev corresponded with Henry Ford (1863-1947) and presented his ideas to him.

The founder of time management in the modern sense is an entrepreneur from Denmark, Klaus Meller. In the 70s of the 20th century, he developed a notebook for convenient business planning, which is considered the prototype of the modern organizer used in time management technologies. In 1975, Klaus Meller founded Time Management International and began to conduct trainings where he presented his miracle notebook and taught how to effectively manage time with it.

You will learn more about the history of time management from the review “A Brief History of Time Management (Key milestones)”, prepared by a professional psychologist and business coach [ S. Kalinin, 2012 ]. And we will focus on what constitutes the laws and principles of time management.

Content of time management principles

So, time management is a set of knowledge and skills that allows a person to optimally prioritize, plan things, find time and other resources for their implementation. The principles and technologies of time management can significantly increase personal efficiency and achieve your main goals faster. What technologies and principles of time management are the most effective in work? Let’s take a look!

Principles of goal setting in time management

Almost every manual and article on time management begins with the idea that time management is a tool to achieve goals, not an end in itself. It is advisable to outline your goals, even in the most general terms, even for people far from the business sphere. Just because those who do not work on the realization of their goals will inevitably spend their precious resource as time on serving other people’s goals [M. Molchanova, 2021].

To implement the principles of goal setting in time management, SMART technology is used. The bottom line is that any goal must meet five basic criteria, and the abbreviation SMART is just formed from the name of these criteria. What are these criteria?

Criteria goals:

• S – Specific.
• M – Measurable.
• A-Achievable.
• R – Relevant, Resource.
• T – Time-bound.

Now let’s look at what they mean and how they are implemented in practice:

• Specific – specifics are implied here. Not just to expand the business, but to open new stores, establish online trading, offer customers a richer assortment.
• Measurable – the goal must be presented in countable units. This partly overlaps with the first indicator of specificity. For example, open two new stores, make your own online store and exhibit your product on the 10 most popular online trading platforms, increase revenue by 2 times over the next 3 months. Only in this case will you have a clear criterion for achieving the goal.
• Achievable – The goal must be achievable. It is useless to immediately set your business the task of increasing profits a thousand times a year. But to increase revenue for a start by 2 times is a very real task. Sometimes the letter A in the word SMART is also deciphered as Aggressive and Ambitious in the meaning of “aggressive” and “ambitious”. This means that you don’t need to be too modest and set very small goals like “income growth by 10%”. This is not even a goal, but the result of a normal workflow, if you work at all.
• Relevant – the goal should be relevant to your current capabilities and the resources that you can attract on your own in the foreseeable future. For example, you should not set yourself the task of releasing spaceships if you have been selling jeans all your life. But in addition to jeans, it is very possible to start selling sports shoes, skateboards and bicycles. In addition, your new goals should not interfere with the achievement of the previous ones, if the previous goals are still relevant. Or they should be reviewed so as not to interfere with moving forward.
• Time-bound – the goal must have a time limit in terms of reaching it. If you do not clearly state that you need to double your revenue in the next 3 months, you risk getting stuck trying to double your revenue indefinitely.

In general, SMART technology is suitable for a variety of purposes, from developing your own business to promoting yourself as an employee. Both cases involve setting a goal that is specific and relevant to your capabilities.

So, you should not set yourself the task of heading the supervisory board of a large corporation if you have just graduated from a university. At the same time, you shouldn’t “stay” in the starting position of a sales manager for too long. Either you earn money and develop a client base to open your own business, or you grow through the ranks and lead the marketing department.

It may be necessary to break down such a large goal as heading the marketing department into smaller ones. Let’s say that every month you exceed the sales target by 20%, complete an MBA and pass the TOEFL exam at level B2 if you work in an international company and fluent English is required for top management.

To prevent SMART from becoming a well-intentioned goal-setter, it’s a good idea to write down all of your goals and keep the record in a visible place so you can ask yourself every day, “What can I do today to get closer to my goals?” Let the action be small, but obligatory [ M. Molchanova, 2021 ].

It doesn’t even matter whether you undertake to memorize 10 new foreign words every day or sign up for English courses, start actively looking for new customers or think about which of your regular customers you can offer an additional service. It is important that, having your goals “in front of your eyes”, you will begin to actively look for opportunities for their implementation and, as a result, you will be able to achieve them with a greater degree of probability. And you will have even more chances to achieve the goal if you can focus on the main thing.

Pareto principle in time management

The Pareto Principle is sometimes referred to as the 80/20 rule. The bottom line is that 20% of the effort gives 80% of the result. This applies to almost everything. So, usually about 20% of the investments bring 80% of the income, 20% of the range give 80% of the profit, and even just 20% of the books we read give us 80% of the knowledge.

Does this mean that you do not need to read the remaining 80% of books, buy 80% of the assortment and make 80% of investments? Of course not, because the situation can change at any moment, and what brings 80% of income today may turn out to be unprofitable tomorrow and you will need to somehow stay afloat in order to have time to “reformat”. And if you suddenly remove 80% of the assortment from the store, half-empty shelves will simply scare away customers and they will stop coming to you and buying the remaining 20% ​​of the goods, so you will have to forget about profit [A. Markov, 2016].

However, if here and now you get 80% of the result from some action, it will be quite logical to focus on it in the most serious way. Like this? At a minimum, you should understand for yourself what exactly these 80% of the result brings to you and whether there is potential for growth there. If there is, then try to give it more than 20% of the time.

It is quite realistic that soon the total result achieved by you (income, salary, bonus, the number of foreign words learned) will be 120-130% of what it was before. In other words, if there is growth potential, if you devote more time to what brings real results, then the result will be bigger and better.

A logical question arises: what about those 20% of the result, which are also needed, but which take up to 80% of the time? First, see if they really need it. Second, find out if it’s up to you and not someone else to do it. Third, consider if you can do it faster. Fourth, analyze whether you should do it all.

Let’s explain with specific examples. Let’s say you decide to do self-development, subscribe to several newsletters of the corresponding profile and make a list of books to read. However, some books seemed boring to you, some were too banal, and some were still too difficult for you to comprehend. These are books not worth wasting your time on. Therefore, feel free to “clean up” the list and do not read contrary to common sense just because someone recommended this book to you.

A similar situation happens with mailing lists: a promising name, a bright announcement, but in essence a set of hackneyed platitudes or something that has little to do with the declared topic. Feel free to subscribe! Well, or write a response letter asking you not to send you anything else if you are too scrupulous and do not want to worsen the bounce rate for someone.

You can go the other way. For example, give yourself 25 minutes a day to read and read as much as you can. Either way, it’s better than not reading at all. So you will have something in your head, and then you will evaluate how useful this “something” will be for you.

And, finally, the very presence of a set time limiter will guarantee that you will not “drown” in information and will not take all the time in one thing, during which you could do a dozen equally useful things. This setting of the time limiter is the basis of the Pomodoro principle.

The Pomodoro Principle in Time Management

The tomato principle got its strange name because its inventor, Italian student Francesco Cirillo, had a timer in the shape of this uniquely healthy vegetable. Francesco set a timer for 25 minutes, which he devoted to studying without distractions, and then gave himself a 5-minute rest.

Subsequently, such 25-minute segments began to be called “tomatoes”. Over the past three decades, a lot of recommendations have grown around this technique. For example, break any task into parts, the completion of which will take no more than 25 minutes. Or plan your working day like 14 tomatoes, because after every four tomatoes you need to take a break of more than 5 minutes.

In principle, you can set more or less time periods for yourself, and it is not even necessary that they all be the same. Perhaps, while you are full of strength and energy in the morning, you can work with full dedication for 40-45 minutes, and in the late afternoon, when your strength is running out, you should limit yourself to small things that take no more than 15 minutes.

However, you need to make sure that your concentration and productivity do not drop if the segments are too large, and that you have time to do at least something if the segments are too small. And to find out what periods of time will be optimal for you personally, the methods of “elephant” and “frog” will come in handy.

The principles of “elephant” and “frog” in time management

First, let’s explain why we resort to the help of the animal world to solve our problems. “Elephants” we will consider large volumetric cases that require a lot of time and resources. Naturally, a big and important thing cannot be done in one approach, so it needs to be divided into “steaks” [A. Dundalevich, 2019].

Any normal person will eat a steak with pleasure, which will double from self-awareness, what a fine fellow you are and finally undertook an overwhelming task. Such voluminous and unmanageable tasks without additional measures include writing a report, preparing a presentation, opening a new store, market research. These are our “elephants”.

And who are these “frogs”? These are minor, not always pleasant and constantly eluding our attention [A. Dundalevich, 2019]. For example, call a malicious debtor with a reminder of the need to pay, pick up documents that seem to be needed, but not now, give a printer for repair, which seems to be working for now, but prevention would not hurt.

All this should be added to the list and planned for each “frog” its own “tomato”. In other words, the time during which you will not be distracted by anything else and definitely call the debtor, the printer repairman, the manager from whom you need to pick up the documents, and gradually resolve all these issues, i.e. “catch” all the “frogs”.

And, perhaps, we will place one more creature in our “menagerie”. Namely, the fabulous “unicorn”, which no one has seen, but I want to believe that it is somewhere. These are such things-dreams that either seem unrealistic, or there is always no time for them, and therefore we will not undertake them in any way [A. Dundalevich, 2019].

For example, we may recognize the importance of reading industry news and even sign up for a newsletter, but those newsletters remain unread in our inbox. We somehow came up with the idea of ​​a creative strategy in advertising, but we don’t have the time to sketch out a plan and propose it on our own initiative to the authorities, because the authorities are constantly loading them with urgent current tasks: to make a layout of business cards for employees, a booklet for an exhibition, flyers for distribution on the street, etc.

We understand the importance of developing soft skills, including time management skills, and even downloaded Gleb Arkhangelsky’s book Time Drive. How to manage to live and work”, however, due to the fact that no one is “over the soul” and does not demand that we read it, we have so far mastered only the title page and the table of contents [G. Arkhangelsky, 2010]. We have long wanted to learn how to skate (ski, snowboard), play tennis (hockey, squash), sing (dance, draw), but it seems to us that it is too late and that we do not have any abilities for this.

The danger here is this: reading industry news is by no means a whim, but an urgent need. And if today you don’t deal with these “unicorn” mailings, in six months or a year you will have a “elephant” task, what to do with the fallen profit and how to catch up with competitors. Monotonous advertising is boring, and if today you don’t use the creative idea that came to your mind, tomorrow your competitors will come up with something similar, and you will have to calculate losses and urgently come up with something else.

And finally, if your dreams of starting to sing, dance, take pictures remain “pushed” into the background, this threatens with chronic stress and dissatisfaction from life. Especially if you are a creative person and imagined your life differently than sedentary office work and a wife who is always dissatisfied with your salary. Or endless laundry, cleaning, cooking and husband’s claims about every penny spent over the limit.

Then creative work or sports can become an outlet if you are not yet ready to change the situation radically. And if you are ready, sports or creativity may well become your new profession if you master them at a good level. If you wish, you can find enough examples when an engineer or a journalist becomes a fitness trainer, a stewardess or marketer becomes a pop singer, and a doctor or economist becomes a famous TV presenter.

How do we deal with all our “elephants”, “frogs” and “unicorns”? And where do you find time for them? Proper planning of the day will help with this!

The principle of flexible and rigid planning in time management

For the uninitiated, perhaps even the subtitle itself will confuse. How can a principle be rigid and flexible at the same time?!.. In fact, it can, and moreover, this is exactly how daily planning should be. It has been calculated that the average manager of a structural unit in a commercial firm, working, among other things, with clients, has from 14 to 25 new tasks during the day [ A. Neumann, 2020 ].

Given that any leader delegates part of the tasks to subordinates, ordinary employees also have a lot of surprises during the day. And if the company is large and the structural hierarchy is complex, then there are from two to four bosses per employee, each of whom constantly needs something, and all of them urgently. That is why business consultants recommend planning 60-70% of working time in advance, and not in a row, but in such a way that there are gaps between the planned cases [ A. Neumann, 2020 ].

What does it look like in practice? We start with hard planning. First, you put things into your schedule that are rigidly tied to a specific time. For example, a meeting at 9 am, a meeting with a client at 3 pm, an evening workout at 8 pm. Yes, it’s better not to sacrifice training, because by sacrificing training today, tomorrow you sacrifice health. It is better to plan things so that at 20.00 you will be in training.

Next, we move on to agile scheduling and allocate time for activities that are not tied to time, but are tied to dates. For example, if you need to prepare a report on the 25th, it is better to plan the preparation time in advance. Let’s say a couple of hours on the 20th and another hour and a half on the 22nd. This is because it is impossible to write a large high-quality report in one go.

Most likely, it will turn out that you do not have any important data, that sales charts would be useful for the report, that, in the end, you need to rehearse your speech so that it is competent, exciting and moderately temperamental. All this takes time, and all this is best done not at the last moment, when other urgent unforeseen tasks may appear.

As part of flexible scheduling, we prioritize tasks in descending order. Being ready for a report in 5 days is, of course, more important than sitting down to read an industry newsletter right now. However, reading the mailing can fill the usually useless minutes of waiting for the start of the meeting, when the boss is late, or standing in traffic when the “red” traffic light is on for a long time and no one is going anywhere in the next 2 minutes.

And when there is absolutely nothing to do, you can look for new creative fonts for presentation titles or sort through the rubble of last year’s papers in your desk. Flexible planning will allow you to find time for this too!

Does all this seem complicated to you? If you complete our Best Time Management Techniques program, you will see that it is not at all difficult and even interesting. But you still need to master it, because time management actively penetrates into all spheres of life.

If once the skill of time management was the prerogative of business people, today it is normal to talk about the principles of time management in the work of a doctor and nurse. Moreover, special tests have been developed for knowledge of the principles of time management in the work of a nurse. Medical workers study the basics of time management as part of the CME (continuous medical education), and for better preparation for testing, they can look in advance for the answers to the CME “Principles of time management in the work of a nurse” [ 24forcare: Medicine, 2021 ].

There are also tests for the principles of time management at work, which are in no way tied to a specific profession. Here are some of them:

And now let’s summarize the material of the article. We figured out what time management is and what are the basic principles of effective time management. The basic principles of time management are:

• The principle of goal setting.
• Pareto principle
• The Pomodoro Principle
• Elephant and frog principles
• The principle of flexible and rigid planning.

We now know that in order to successfully implement these principles, we need to prioritize, adjust time tracking, master different planning methods and, of course, do not forget about rest, health, sports and creativity.

In addition to the already recommended book by Gleb Arkhangelsky “Time Drive. How to have time to live and work”, we would like to recommend the bestseller “24+2. Time for a leader” [ A. Gorbachev, 2007 ].

And for those who doubt that he will succeed, we advise you to read the very instructive and motivating book “Extreme Time Management”, written on the basis of a real life story [ N. Mrochkovsky, A. Tolkachev, 2012].

And, of course, don’t forget that we are waiting for you on our Best Time Management Techniques program, and after the article, you will have a verification test.

That’s all for now. We wish that you always have time for pleasant and useful things, and you cope with all other tasks easily and quickly!