I’ve broken the rules
I have a confession. I couldn’t even make it through one full week of the new time management system before I felt the need to make changes to it. That’s not playing by the rules is it?
The thing is that I wasn’t feeling comfortable that I was tackling the most important jobs. Yes, I was getting through stuff that needed doing but I had this feeling that I was missing the things that I should be focusing on. The lack of prioritisation just wasn’t sitting right.
So, on Friday morning I split my one list into three – client work, prospects and management (i.e. stuff to do with running the business). Each list was following the system in that there was a backlog and an active list for each. I could then spend the day working through the client list to make sure that I was keeping on top of the paid work. After all making money is what running a business is about isn’t it?
With hindsight splitting it into three lists was overkill – Monday I’m going to combine the client and prospects lists so that I end up with just two lists. I’ll see how I go with that. The idea is that I split my day into blocks – I’ll be happy if I can spend five hours on the client/prospect jobs and three on management tasks. I wonder if I can manage it.
More on time management
Today was day three of my new time management system. I’m at the stage now where in some ways I’m feeling really good about it and others less so. Good because it’s making me deal with some tasks which have been waiting to be done for ages. On the other hand I’m sure my active list is just getting longer and longer.
There have been times where I’ve dipped into the active list to make sure that the more immediate jobs are getting sorted – last thing I want is a client waiting for days for a response to an email because I haven’t reached that point of the list yet. But my goal is to clear everything from my original backlog so that I can draw a line at the end of the active list and start the process again. If I put my head down tomorrow and bash through it I’m hopeful that I’ll reach that point.
Day 1 of Autofocus V. 4
Would it be terrible of me to admit that I’ve been really enjoying trying out the Autofocus time management system? Maybe I should get out more… Last night I set it up at home and this morning I started putting it into practice at work.
I really like the methodical approach – I haven’t been wasting time trying to work out which of my many projects and tasks I should be working on next, instead I could just work through the list in order skipping anything that I didn’t have the resources at hand to tackle straight away.
So far I think this is the most valuable instruction: “Delete each task when you feel you have worked on it for long enough, and re-enter it at the end of the Active List if you need to do more work on it”. This meant that I could happily do some work on a project without feeling like I had to completely finish it – once I’d had enough I could cross it off and add it to the end of the list to come back to. Working on this basis I’ve made progress on some jobs today which have been sitting waiting for my attention for quite some time.
So, after the first 24 hours of using the system I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’ve been happily crossing things off all day and will be able to get straight back into it tomorrow. And of course I get to continue putting it into practice this evening with my home list.
Can’t resist a new time management system
It’s true, I just can’t help myself. Whilst looking through the resources section of the site to check that all the links are still current (a job I still have to finish) I got distracted by Mark Forster’s blog on time management and in particular his Autofocus V. 4 system.
Time management is one of my obsessions. I’m always trying to reinvent my approach to time management. I’ve got a couple of cracking books that I use – I see that I haven’t reviewed either of them yet, so will be adding reviews in the coming weeks. However, I’m always interested in trying something new. I find rejigging things occasionally can give me a new lease of life.
So, I’m going to have a go at the autofocus system. Actually, now that I’ve read about it I’m itching to start. Once I’m up and running I should have a list split into two sections – Backlog and Active List. I can then use the system laid out by Mark to work through the list in a focused way. That’s the theory at least – have a look at Mark’s instructions for a step-by-step explanation of how it works.
Very satisfying day
For once I’m not going to complain about not having a productive day or not getting through as much as I’d wanted. Today was a good day! I planned out my day carefully, choosing A, B and C tasks for the day (A being essential, B desirable and C nice to get done) and worked through them. I think this is the first time that this has ever happened but I got through everything on the list and even made a start on some things I had earmarked for tomorrow. How satisfying is that?
I think the secret was that I’d estimated how long each task would take and planned 4 hours of billable work. I must be getting better at this because for once things took less than I’d estimated rather than more. So, even with interruptions I still managed to get through everything. I’ll have more days like that please!
All in the planning?
Following on from my post yesterday, I actually found it very easy to do my allocated 4-hours billable work today. Why are some days easier than others I wonder? Maybe less interruptions or maybe it was all in the planning. The last thing I did yesterday afternoon was plan out what what work I would do today, with an estimate of how long it would take. Turned out to be pretty easy to achieve my goal, even with starting the day with a couple of hours of training (though I did start mightily early).
Is that going to be the secret – planning it all the day before and working at it until the 4 hours are done?
Wasting my time?
I had a bit of a revelation at the weekend. I worked out what our turnover would be if we both did 4 hours of billable work a day at our standard hourly rate. Bit of a shock because it was around three times what we are actually bringing in. That’s not good is it? Though in some ways it’s encouraging because it means that we do have the capacity to bring in much more with just the two of us working on the business.
So, what are we doing so wrong that we’re not bringing in that much? In an 8-hour working day it should surely be quite straightforward to work 4 billable hours, shouldn’t it? We always seem very busy but are we spending too much time on admin, or is it that we’re just so bad at quoting that we end up working for much less than our hourly rate? That’s what we need to work out.
Based on my findings we’ve started tracking much more closely how much of our day is spent on work that we can class as billable. So far we’re finding that in a normal working day it can be quite difficult to do the required 4 hours – quite a bit of time is spent preparing quotes for prospective clients, which we can’t charge for, and then there’s the necessary admin tasks and keeping on top of emails. Still, I’m not giving up on the 4-hour target, I think we need to work on our efficiency and make sure that we actively aim for that every day. Hopefully this will have a knock-on effect to how quickly we get things finished and our general project management (yep, back to the project management again!).
Let’s see if we can make a breakthrough!
