Time Management

Continuing with my post on Prof Randy Pausch, let me now write on his speech on Time Management that he delivered to University of Virgina. It was 850 capacity auditorium and it was full to its capacityon that day.

There are many talks, seminars, books etc on Time Management and I must confess - most of these are boring. But the one that Prof Randy Pausch delivered is just too good. It was a pragmatic lecture unlike the Last Lecture that he delivered to CMU. The speech was very special. We all can talk of time management. We all feel that we have just lot of time for us. But Randy had maximum three more months of his life left. Three months before he gave the speech, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis cancer. His doctor told him that he had 3 to 6 months of healthy living (euphemism for death in 3 to 6 months) ! This talk on Time Management is special because it was delivered by someone who really had a limited time in his hand.

The full speech is available at https://youtu.be/oTugjssqOT0. The power-point slides for this can be downloaded from University of Viginia's website here . I've just finished watching the video. I took some notes from this. Let me share these now below:

• Time is a commodity. Manage time the way you manage money
• Time is money. When we talk about household budget, we mean household money budget. Do we have a household time budget?
• Money can be earned any time in life; but time lost can never be re-gained.
• We just have too many things to do in life ; but time is limited.
• Better time management leads to happier and wonderful life.
• Fun: If you're not having fun at your work, why do it? Life is too short. Why not enjoy it?
• Goal is to maximize fun.
• A typical office worker wastes 2 hours a day. It's a universal thing that plague all of us.
• Being successful doesn't make you manage your time well; but managing your time well makes you successful.
• He said that he was not a smart person. There were smarter people around him. What he was good at was managing his time well. If you have to run with faster people around you, then you have to find ways to optimize what skills you do have.
• Doing things right way is more important than doing the right things adequately.
• Plan: Planning is very important. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Plan each day, each week and each semester.
• TODO list: break things down into small steps. Do the ugliest thing first.
• Multiple monitors at work helps. TODO list, email, calendar etc in separate monitors.
• Speaker-phone helps in saving your time.
• Telephone is time waster. Use it efficiently
• Learn to say NO.
• Know your Good or bad times: Find your creative time. Defend it ruthlessly, spend it alone. Find your dead time and schedule meetings, phone calls etc during it.
• Interruptions: Every interruption takes 4 to 5 minutes for recovery. We must reduce frequency and length of interruptions. New email alert is also an interruption. Turn it off.
• Time journals: Time a commodity. You better track where your time is going. Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments. Update every 1/2 hour throughout the day - not at the end of day.
• Work-Life Balance: You can become more efficient at work. So you can leave office at 5PM and spend time with family. Randy worked fewer hours after marriage and still he got his works done. In grad school, people who completed their PhDs fastest are those who are married and/or have kids.
• Procastination: It's the thief of time. Doing thing at the last minute is expensive. Stress comes in. Deadlines are important. Create fake deadline which is before the actual deadline and treat this as actual dead-line. Usually when he was procastinating, there was a deep psychological reason. We feel embarassed because we think we won't be able to do it. When you're procastinating, identify why you're not enthusiastic.
• Meetings: An average executive spend 40% or more time in meeting. There must be an agenda. A one minute minutes noting the decisions taken in the meeting...who is responsible for what by when?
• Email: Save all of it. If you want something done, only one recipient. If you really want something done, CC some powerful. If you don't get a response in 48 hours, most likely they'll never reply. So nagging is ok after 48 hours.
• Managing Time with bosses: Write things down. When is our next meeting? What's my goal by then? Remember bosses want results, not excuses.
• Important advice: Kill your TV. Exchange money for time at every opportunity when you've young children. Eat, sleep and exercise.
• Feedback loop: Ask in confidence what good or bad you are doing.
• Books: The One Minute Manager, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
• Action Items: Get a day-timer. Put your TODO list sorted in priority order. Do a time journal. Make a note in your day-timer to revisit this talk in 30days. Ask "What have I changed?"

This talk is highly recommended for any professional. I'm going to start with the action items immediately after this post.