Get Things Done

Does this cartoon represent you sometimes? Skillful in many areas, but cannot tap into all your potential because time management is an issue?

Managing the time effectively is essential to become a more productive professional or to achieve your goals in life.

This text is a result of the presentation made to students and teachers at Casa Thomas Jefferson on June 28 with the title Get Things Done. The presentation had the objective of providing EFL students with the opportunity to use the English language for authentic communication, without worrying about the language itself.

Click here to access the worksheets and the presentation. If it doesn't work, send me a message and I'll send you de documents.

The exercises and reflections proposed here take you through three stages that aim at helping you improve your time management skills:

•  Raising awareness;
• Analyzing;
• Planning.

Change happens little by little, with simple everyday actions that after a certain time become a routine. Some specialists say that the time for an action to become a habit takes 21 days. Others, 8 weeks.

Each one of us is different, so I tend to use these numbers simply as a reference, not a formula that only gives the desired results if the elements are manipulated in a certain way.

The message here is find YOUR own way. Find what works for YOU.

Here we go, first stage: raising awareness.

In this exercise the bottle represents one day and the stripes represent the hours of the day. You are going to color the number of stripes for each of the activities below, representing the number of hours you spend in each activity.

The idea is to have a graphic representation of all the hours dedicated to the activities you perform every day. So when coloring think of a typically busy day and think of the average number of hours for each activity or group of activities:

How many hours to do spend…

… sleeping;

… working or studying;

… commuting;

… eating;

… getting ready (putting on your clothes, brushing your teeth, taking showers, putting your material together, preparing meals or any other activity that is the preparation for other activities);

… doing the shopping;

… doing volunteer work or working for an association or institution different from your company or school;

… dedicating yourself to your hobbies or free time activities;

… dedicating to family moments;

… doing physical exercises;

… relaxing or doing nothing.

After you finish coloring the stripes, it is time to reflect:

• Is the bottle full?
• Do you need more hours or you have hours unfilled?
• At the end of the day, what words or sentences would you use to describe how you feel: overwhelmed; idle; exhausted; I could go on; it was worth it; it was not worth it; stop the world and let me off; it’s been too much; great, I’m getting somewhere.
• How do you feel at the end of the day?

 Let’s go a little deeper and move on to the second stage and start analyzing the way you make use of your time.

Dwight Eisenhower was the 34^th president of the United States and became famous for being punctual and for being able to complete all his tasks.

To do so, he created a system to prioritize his activities using the concept of what is important and what is urgent:

Well, the world is different nowadays and Eisenhower’s system has been improved by Stephen Covey, who became a specialist in productivity and efficiency. He created the important/urgent matrix and he changed the view of prioritizing. He believed that “the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

In the following exercise, you should judge each item from 1 to 5, where 1 means never and 5 means always. Then, add up the numbers for each set of items. The reflection should take place by comparing your numbers from different quadrants. Do not compare your numbers to other people’s result. Remember, each person is different.

The matrix is divided into four quadrants and the activities are grouped according to their classification as important/not important or urgent/not urgent.

Important activities are the ones that will make a difference to your personal life, your studies or your work. Starting an investment, saving money to buy a house, planning your wedding, spending quality time with you family, studying, working on a project that will contribute to a promotion in the future… Anything that makes a difference.

Urgent activities are everyday demands that appear to you without your planning or important tasks that have not been completed on time and now they became urgency.

Here is the designation for each quadrant in the matrix:

	Urgent	Not urgent
Important	1. Crisis	2. Objectives
Not important	3. Interruptions	4. Distractions

Quadrant two is the one to which we should dedicate most of our time.

It is obvious that quadrants three and four are the most harmful ones. To reduce the time consumed by interruptions, we should learn to say no to others. To reduce the distractions, we should learn to say no to ourselves.

You yourself may create the crisis when you do not complete the important tasks in time and they become urgent. This is something over which you have control and should be part of your reflection after this exercise.

Other types of crisis are just out of your control and you should learn to deal with them. For instance, when you have an urgent request from a client, from your superiors or when the company launches a new project and it becomes a priority.

The aim of the exercise is to help you analyze how you spend your time and reflect on how you can reduce the time spent with interruptions and distractions and increase the dedication to quadrant two, to what makes a difference in your life.

Do the exercise now and analyze your numbers:

• Which quadrant got the highest score?
• In your perceptions, do the numbers faithfully depict how you make use of your time?
• Do the results make sense to you?

Before we move on to the planning stage, I would like to dispel two myths related that affect your capacity to manage time effectively and also give two helpful tips.

Myth	Helpful tip
Multitasking; neurologists and neuroscientists say that our brain is not capable of performing two tasks at the same time. When you are doing your homework and watching TV (supposedly) at the same time or talking to someone and typing (supposedly) at the same time, what is really happening is that you are shifting your attention from one task to the other very quickly.	Focus on the here and now and focus on one task at a time.
I work well under pressure.  I get things done when I’m under pressure. Of course you do. You have no other option now that time is over! Saying that you work well under pressure is usually an excuse not to get things done in time or to keep on procrastinating.	Stop procrastinating.

Now, time to plan. Using the worksheet below, write down at least two actions that you will incorporate per week in the next four weeks. The idea is that the actions have to be very simple and feasible. Obviously, these actions have to affect positively your time management skills.

Examples of these types of actions:

• I will turn off my cell phone when I am studying;
•  I will turn off the message notifications on my cell phone;
•  I will visit my mother, father, children (any relevant member of your family) twice a month;
•  I will read a book for at least 30 minutes every day;
•  I will be punctual to all my meetings this week.

You are writing down the plan to turn it into a serious compromise with yourself.

Well, I hope this has been useful to you.

If you want to talk about it to clarify doubts, to question the ideas, to get extra help or to simply talk, just send a message.