Let's do the time warp

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

There's a statistic that Kerry Gleeson really likes - not least because almost everyone who hears it chuckles in self-recognition.

White-collar workers, on average, spend six weeks a year looking for things.

"And that's the average," says the visiting American time management and efficiency expert. "Think about the person with a problem."

I confess I don't have to think all that hard.

Gleeson, founder and president of the Institute for Business Technology, is the creator and author of the Personal Efficiency Program (PEP) - what you and I might call a time management programme - which claims to help professionals work more efficiently, go home earlier, feel more satisfied and less stressed.

Here's another statistic: "White-collar productivity is often very poor," Gleeson says in his book. "Our IBT coaches find professional people, on average, waste about 50 per cent of their time."

It would be easy to dismiss this as the fevered imaginings of some control-freak, out to squeeze every ounce of life from employees before they leave the office at the end of the day, exhausted.

But Gleeson's not like that at all. He's enthusiastic, warm, funny, and convinced that we all work too hard for too little reward. And he wants that to change.

"The vast majority of people complain about too much to do, too little time to do it.

"Their work-life balance is screwy, they are under stress and these are conditions they don't like."

Yet, he says, it doesn't take much to achieve the same amount in less time, leaving you free to do what you really want.

Just a complete change in behaviour, that's all.

Take the way I handle my email. I log on in the morning, look at the 10 or so emails that have arrived overnight, read each one, decide what to do with it and make a mental note to do it later, after I've had my coffee. If one requires me to do something unpleasant it will wait even longer, until I've psychologically steeled myself.

Gleeson has three words for me: do it now.

"Most people procrastinate; they put things off for whatever reason," he says. "And then that becomes part of the problem, because they are working with all these things and their head fills up with clutter and they can't focus or concentrate. That exacerbates the problem.

"The first thing we try to get people to do is face up to these things and get out of the habit of putting things off."

Brad Young knows how that feels. The ANZ's head of business engagement until recently worked 50 to 60 hours a week. But was he achieving his business objectives? He laughs. "I thought I was."

In an organisation that emphasises work-life balance and frowns on habitually beavering away until late at night, Young admits he wasn't exactly setting a good example.

Many would recognise his working days. A senior manager, he was constantly forced to deal with emergencies in the present rather than thinking ahead and developing strategy.

"My diary wasn't mine. I felt that my diary was taken over by everyone else's priorities."

There was another pressing reason for change. About to become a father for the first time, Young wanted more family time. His work hours were, he admits, causing some tension.

So he decided to go on a PEP course to try to get his hours under control. And, he says, it's working - he's now regularly home by 7pm, works no more than 50 hours a week and actually has time for strategic and creative thinking.

"The big change for me was practising not double-handling stuff. I personally had quite an intense session on either delegating it, actioning it or scheduling it for follow-up."

Another change came later in the programme and took some time to accept. Young receives around 50 emails a day and, like many of us, would read each one as it arrived in case it contained something important.

Now any email he receives as a CC is automatically directed into another folder, which he schedules time to read through twice a week.

Has he missed anything important as a result? "Nope."

Is he relaxed about it? "Yup."

For others, significant amounts of time are freed up once they organise their workplace so they know where everything is and don't spend six weeks of the year looking for things.

Susie Hall, stakeholder relationships manager with the Ministry of Education's strategic development group, says a big behaviour change among her team of six has been their recognition of the importance of office systems.

Describing herself as someone who is "not naturally a systems person", Hall says it was a revelation how some simple organisation and a systematic approach to work could improve efficiency and cut stress.

After changing their work habits, her team self-reported a 23 per cent increase in efficiency, 20 per cent more time spent on priority work, 21 per cent less time working reactively and a 19 per cent decrease in stress.

Hall echoes one of Gleeson's points - that while most of us are highly educated in the specialist knowledge we need to do our job, we have never been taught how to work.

For example, says Gleeson, technology has made it possible to access all kinds of information instantaneously. But how many people have been taught how to access that information efficiently and effectively, rather than just finding a way of doing things by trial and error.

"We are clever people - we figure it out the best way we can. But that might not be the best way to do it."

And then our less than ideal work practices become habits, "so even if you wanted to change, your behaviours are difficult to overcome".

Before you know it, you're wasting half your time and spending six weeks a year looking for things.

Still, you can change, says Gleeson, and continuous incremental change will soon see you working more efficiently, with more time to do the things you want.

Pick something you want to change and consciously force yourself to adopt the new, desired behaviour for 30 days. By then it will be a habit and you'll be able to move on to the next thing.

Now, about that email ...

Eight ways to stop procrastinating

* Do it once. We often read through emails and letters, arrange them in "do it later" piles, then revisit them before we act. But we know what's needed when we first read them. Do it then.

* Clear your mind. If you constantly make mental notes about small things you need to do, your mind will be cluttered by trying to remember them. Act on the small things when you see them - leave your mind free for the big things.

* Solve problems while they're small. We can all detect those warning signs that a small problem will only get worse unless we act on it. So act.

* Reduce interruptions. Many interruptions are caused by people checking to see why something hasn't happened. Gain a reputation for doing things on time and you'll be interrupted less.

* Clean up backlogs. They create additional work. Once you clear them, you can start looking to the future.

* Operate towards the future rather than the past. When you focus on the past, you focus on lost opportunities. You need to free your attention for things you can act on now.

* Stop worrying about it. If you put something off, you will worry about what it is you haven't done. You'll feel a lot better if you face up to the unpleasant task and get it over with.

* Feel better about yourself. Procrastination creates guilt and negative emotions. By tackling jobs and getting them over with, you'll feel better and build self-confidence.

- adapted from The personal efficiency program