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As a manager, you're expected to motivate your staff, control resources and adapt to change. Your style and skill largely determines your success. But of all the skills you need to manage well, none is more revealing than how well you manage yourself.
Imagine Two Managers.
Felix is organized. His office is neat and tidy with plenty of open space and bare surfaces. His bookshelves contain only the latest reference texts, and his files are dated to purge. Much of his work is done online; his e-mail inbox has only current messages. Everything that enters his office is immediately sorted and then delegated or purged. His peers think he's always in his office, but Felix works in short bursts of an hour or less, frequently leaving his desk to interact with staff and peers.
Oscar is disorganized. His office is piled high with stacks of paper and old magazines, legal pads scribbled with notes, minutes of meetings attended long ago, unopened mail and an extra file cabinet. His bookcase is crammed tightly with reference texts, outdated catalogues, outdated coding books, and old procedure manuals. And while Oscar has two computers in his office, both covered with sticky notes, he can only get to one of them. His inbox has countless unread e-mails. Oscar seems to rarely be in his office, but in fact works late hours and an occasional Saturday catching up, often with the door closed.
Felix and Oscar have the same time to do similar jobs. But Felix is more responsive and able to take on new projects. Oscar is still playing catch up. Which extreme is more likely to adapt to change and motivate staff? Who would you rather work for? Who would you rather be?
While you may never be Felix, a simple strategy and a few guidelines can improve your self-management skills.
Time Poverty
According to Stephen Rechtschaffen, MD, cofounder and director of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, over 90 percent of those attending his workshops declare a sense of "time poverty." Greater speed and efficiency of technology has created ever-decreasing units of work time, making us too eager to reach the next event. "We divide our attention and awareness," Rechtschaffen writes, "between the task at hand that we're rushing to complete and the next item on our planner."1
Indeed, a group of activists have designated October 24th as "Take Back Your Time Day," a nationwide day off to acknowledge our overworked, overcommitted, and overstressed lives.2 They lament that the U.S. is alone among industrialized nations in not protecting vacations and have called for Congress to guarantee three weeks of paid vacation for all workers.3
But the problem isn't new. In 1974 the Harvard Business Review asked, "Why is it that managers are typically running out of time while their subordinates are typically running out of work?"4 While a manager's time is divided between supervisors, peers and subordinates, "boss-imposed" and "system-imposed" time can't be controlled.
But you can control "self-imposed" discretionary time, defined as time left over from tasks that must be done to avoid penalty (two examples are mandatory meetings and performance evaluations). You may have more time than you think.
Your next step is to decide what to do with it.
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