Effective Time Management

Time is Precious

Time is the one quantity that we cannot buy or get more of. Therefore we have to make the best use of the time that we have. How do we make sure that we spend our time making ourselves successful and not risk spending too much time making other people successful instead. How do we do time management ?

Many of the roles that we have can create situations where we have far more work than we can possibly do, but how do we manage that challenge ?

Being overworked is one of the biggest causes of general health and mental health issues in the workplace. So this is not just about creating a more effective work environment, it is about creating a healthier work environment where you can look forward to starting work every day.

Just to be clear though, being in sales engineering means that there will be times when the workload peaks – especially as we drive closing some big opportunities. That is why we get paid the big bucks. We should recognise that these short periods of high workload can be part of the role, but it should not be a constant.

This is the first in a 2 part series on how to manage our time. This article will cover our goals, what we are doing in our roles and why, how we organise our time and how we can optimise what we do. The second article will look at the Fine Art of Saying No so that we do not take on more than we can accomplish.

We need to concentrate our time on the things that create success for us in our roles and therefore success for our customers and for our company.

Our Primary Goal

In Presales we are often seen as the go-to group in the company when it comes to the products and services that we deliver. This is great for our egos but it also means that we have all sorts of groups making demands on our time.

Most SEs want to help – after all that desire to help solve problems is at the heart of what we do, but that willingness to help can take a toll. Have you ever considered that your desire to help another team be successful could actually limit YOUR ability to be successful as an SE that is measured on helping to close business.

Our primary function as SEs is to help the AE win new business and to help sell expansion deals to existing customers. We do this using a combination of our technology skills, our business skills and the trust and value that we build with customers. There are many secondary functions like working with marketing, product management, etc., but there is a balance to be established.

You NEED to truly understand what are the business priorities that you are working to. This should be agreed with your manager and the team around you. Then, when someone asks for additional work you can legitimately push back and refer back to the agreed priorities. We will talk more about that in the third article.

Being clear about work priorities and expectations is the foundation of great time management. But then we need to address the issue of what we are actually doing

What are we Doing ?

When I am coaching people one of the first things that I ask them to do is to tell me about their work and the types of things that they do. This might seem like a basic entry level question, but it tells me a huge amount about the person and how they organise their work.

I often find that people think that they know what they are doing but when they try to quantify their time they are completely wrong and the results shock them. So here is an exercise for you to try.

This sheet will help you record exactly what you have been doing during each 10 minutes of the working day. You can download a copy of the sheet using the link in the first comment below or just create it in your favourite spreadsheet tool or editor. I suggest that you print a copy of the sheet for each day that you run this process.

Note what you are doing for the 10 minutes but don’t fill in the other columns just yet. In fact, fold the page over so that the other columns are hidden from view until we do the analysis.

If you want to get really granular then you can track to every 5 minutes, but I suggest 10 minutes to start with. You could always do a followup in a few weeks with a more granular assessment of your time.

You should run this exercise for at least 2 days but longer if possible to catch all of the things that you are doing. By the way – the reason for a printed copy is so that you can still write what you are doing even if you are on a video call or in the middle of using an application.

Why are we Doing It ?

Now we need to analyse what you are doing, look at why you are doing it and then decide how to move forward with it.

You should review each task and determine who should be doing the task. The classifications are Me, Prior Role, Team Task, Other Team, or Manager. You can add other people or groups if needed.

You need to review anything that is ‘Me’ a second time and be very honest. Ask yourself if the task is something that you REALLY should be doing or should it be done by someone else. Could a more junior member of the team do it, and help build their skills. Could a member of the Admin team do it ?

Does the task actually need to be done at all ? There are many examples of tasks that have been done for years and no-one knows why. So ask the question – Who needs the information and what will it be used for ?

This comes back to focussing on the key priorities that we have as SEs. Are we maximising our time to support customer interaction and opportunities? If the task does not directly relate to an opportunity with a customer then should you be doing it ?

This leads to the next step – determining WHAT to do about the task. Should you Continue, Stop, Delegate or Reassign – usually to another team.

Again, you need to be honest about what to do. Deep down you might know that you should delegate or reassign, or maybe you know that you should stop doing something, but you fear the implications of pushing back. Article 3 in this series will help you with this, but in the meantime, talk it through with your manager or team to get advice.

By the way : There is another reason for continuing to do something – it is because you LIKE doing it. We all have our little secrets about continuing with a task that we know someone else should be doing. We all need these happy moments so just make sure that you minimise it for now and then find the fun tasks in your current role to replace them with and reassign the old task.

You now have a shorter list of tasks that you know that YOU have to do which will help you to drive success in YOUR role. These tasks ARE your role.

Transforming How You Work

Now we need to look at how to change the way you work to be more efficient at what you do. How we organise our time is a critical factor in achieving optimal productivity. How great would it be to finish all of your work and know that your evenings and weekends are purely for you ? Many knowledge workers do not have that feeling. So let’s look at some strategies that can help us not just manage but master our time effectively.

Like any change, you need to recognise your own challenges, find the change that works for you and then stick with it. But change is hard ! Many people have New Year’s resolutions to make a positive change in their life, but most have stopped by the third week of January.

Take the list of suggestions that I am about to make about organising and optimising your time and find which ones work for you. Just because it works for someone else does not mean that it works for you. We are all unique…. I’m an identical twin, and my twin brother does things completely differently to me in many ways.

Why Use Effective Time Management?

A few years ago I read a summary of a research paper that discussed how we should consider the brain to be similar to a muscle in our bodies. The paper suggested that we need to take a different approach to how we exercise the brain during the day.

Let’s compare this to going to the gym – something that I will admit that I don’t do very often. At the gym we will try various machines for cardio and stamina, weights for strength and building muscle, etc.. But we regularly move around and do different things to push our bodies.

Yet when we go to work we often do many repetitive tasks – back to back video calls, hours of emails, all just looking at a screen. I previously highlighted some research that was performed by Microsoft about the impact of back to back Zoom calls and it clearly shows stress levels increasing which impacts productivity.

A Different Approach

We need to take a different approach to how we approach our work, and there is a simple way to visualise this, which I am sure that you will have heard of – The Big Rocks, which was introduced by Stephen Covey.

Covey asks us to imagine a glass jar on the desk where the empty space represents the time you have to manage. Next to the jar, there are large rocks, little rocks, sand, and a glass of water. These items represent the tasks that you have to get done.

The big rocks represent your main priorities, big projects and longer-term goals. Next, the little rocks represent your day-to-day work and short-term goals. The sand represents the small unimportant tasks that keep popping up, and the water represents all of the distractions that prevent you from getting work done.

If you start with the water and the sand then you have no room to fit the small rocks and big rocks. Most of us will have heard this before and we know that we need to start with the big rocks, then little rocks, then sand and water. This analogy teaches us that we need to focus on higher-level goals to get more done. If we get stuck in the details then the significant priorities will not get worked on.

Actually Organising our Time

Organising our time sounds great ! But how many of us ACTUALLY do this ? How do we make a change and transform what we do? It starts with planning and understanding what goals that you have. There is an old saying that if you fail to plan then you plan to fail. Do you even have a plan for your goals? A career goal, yearly goal, monthly, weekly or even daily goal ? How do you know if you are being successful?

Let’s start with a simple change – start using daily and weekly goals. Have a set point in your calendar every week that reviews the goals from last week and then defines the actionable goals for the next week.

You should review the goals from last week to determine which you completed but particularly which goals were missed and why. Did you overestimate what could be done ? Was there an emergency that came up, or did you focus on some of the lower priority tasks instead ? This should be your guide to doing something different next week. One tip is to give yourself an incentive if you complete your goals, but make sure that you stick to only getting the incentive if you actually complete the goals.

The Big Rocks

Now plan for the next week and start to break down the big rocks into each day. Add some of the smaller rocks as well. Use a technique called time blocking, where you block out specific time segments during the day to get specific work done.

You might want to make some of the time blocks recurring across many weeks so that they are protected time against other meeting bookings. Time blocking can be used for other items as well – we will come back to that shortly.

As you allocate the time blocks you should be mindful of deadlines and project priorities. But what is really a priority ? One tool here is the Eisenhower Matrix. Prioritise tasks by categorising them using a 2 by 2 grid of urgent and important. The tasks are then categorised as urgent & important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, or neither. This helps in focusing on tasks that truly matter.

You need to decide how much time from each day will be allocated to the rocks. Remember that there will ALWAYS be other things that need to be done. Only you can determine how much time to allocate, but you can experiment to find the correct level. The Pomodoro Technique suggests working in short, focused bursts (usually 25 minutes) followed by a short break. Why not see if that works for you.

The Little Rocks

Next we need to look at some of the other major demands on your time. There are three major challenges that need to be addressed – meetings, email and messaging and then social media.

Meetings are an amazing work avoidance scheme if you are not careful. It is easy for someone to set up a meeting and invite anyone that might be interested, and BOOM – you just lost 30 minutes or 60 minutes of your day.

Be firm on meeting invitations. Is there a clear agenda and defined outcomes ? Do you NEED to be there ? Could you delegate it to someone else. Maybe it could be a 15 minute meeting that gets quickly to the point ? Could it actually just be a shared document that people contribute to and then review at a later date ?

Two great suggestions for meetings that have to happen : Do a standing meeting. No-one sits down (as long as they are able to stand). It makes people get to the point VERY quickly.

The other suggestion is walking meetings. This is great for 1:1s or a very small group. You hold the meeting while taking a walk in a quiet space like a park. No office distractions and the added advantage of being good for your physical and mental health.

Next let’s look at email and messaging. Email, Messenger apps, Slack, etc. are amazing communication tools but they are terrible for being able to concentrate on getting your important tasks done. These apps are designed to create a sense of urgency for you to use the app, but are the notifications REALLY urgent – usually not.

So the fix here is to create time blocks for responding to emails and messaging apps. Make sure that you do not get pulled into quickly responding to an email – use the time block. You could also set a Do Not Disturb setting on your devices when you are working on your primary goals.

Other Little Rocks

Finally there are the social media apps. You need to be aware that these apps are designed to keep you engaged inside the app. They are a major productivity killer. That one notification about a friend could end up in a 30 minute waste of time.

One suggestion is to remove social media from your work devices, but this is not practical for most people. However, pausing notifications from them during the work day is something that most devices will allow you to set up. You will be amazed how much time this gives back.

By the way, don’t forget to build breaks into your day. Coming back to the gym analogy, you give your muscles a break, so make sure that you give your brain a break. Oh – and don’t forget to hydrate it as well ! Why not think about using a mindfulness app in those breaks as well.

And remember, effective time management is a personalised journey. Experiment with different strategies and adopt those that align best with your work style and goals.

Optimising our Time

Technology can really help us when it comes to optimising our time. There are some really amazing time management apps out there. Some are full blown time tracking and reporting apps, some are project management and some just straight tasks managers.

In my experience you need to be careful about which app to implement. Some force you to use their methodology for managing projects and tasks. This is great if it fits with your style and role, but you need to be careful not to try to fit a square peg in a round hole.

You could use a free trial or free version of the app to try it, but be very careful to review how the app works and how it might force you to change your method of operation. Also, is there a tool that could be integrated into your team and so shared tasks and projects can be visualised ?

I have tried a number of solutions in this area. My personal experience has been that most tools like Notion, Trello, Asana, Monday, etc. do a good job but you only get back what you put into them. Try to make sure that the tool that you use also allows you to integrate into your calendar and the time blocks that you have already set up.

The Sand

Next, think about some of the smaller items that you are hit with – the sand in the big rocks analogy. There is a simple rule that you can apply – The Two Minute rule. If a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. This rule prevents small tasks from accumulating and consuming more time later.

Again, block out some time to look at these smaller items and just get them done. You will be amazed at how satisfying it can be ticking off a long list of smaller items.

Aligned with this is the idea of creating a time block for completing similar tasks. Forcing the brain to regularly switch contexts and think about widely different topics can be difficult and also very tiring. A simple approach is to create time blocks for completing similar tasks. The brain does not need to switch context as much and so executes faster and you become much more efficient. There is an added benefit in that you are less tired by the end of the day due to context switching.

As you start to create and use the various time blocks, one additional area to consider is to ensure that your time blocks are regularly scheduled for the same time and same day. This consistency also allows the brain to work subconsciously to prepare for the tasks that you are about to give it.

One More Thing…

The final point to consider in optimising our time for effective time management comes back to the requests that hit us unexpectedly. We have all been there. Your manager suddenly asks for something, a colleague needs you time right now or a message arrives in an app demanding your time.

This is all about how we learn to say NO and is the next article in this series – The Art of Saying No.