Unlock the Secrets to Multiplying Your Time
Unlock the Secrets to Multiplying Your Time
Strategies for achieving more while continuously making tomorrow better.
👋 Welcome to The Influential Project Manager, a weekly newsletter covering the essentials of successful project leadership.
Today’s Overview:
Time management is one of a leader’s biggest challenges. Most of us manage our time the same ways: by writing to-do lists and prioritizing the items on those lists.
This approach doesn’t yield a return on time invested. Multiplying time requires an additional layer of intention.
The secret: by thinking about how we use our time today, we can free up our hours in the future.
Tweet: 13 simple sentences to save 2 hours/day.
How to Multiply Time
The struggle is real.
How is it that we have more tips, tricks, tools, technology, calendars, and checklists than ever before? And yet we still always seem to be stretched for time?
How is it that we know more about time management today and yet stress in our industry is at an all-time high?
Time is a precious non-renewable resource, and proper time management for a project manager is vital to any successful project.
Time management is one of a leader’s biggest challenges.
Due to ambition and success, time management is the biggest struggle. People are doing a lot and often feel buried, behind, and overwhelmed.
This leads to stress, frustration, anxiety, and sickness.
The top 1% PMs know how to do something the others don’t.
They know how to multiply their time.
They get more done in less time while continuously freeing up more time for things like strategic thinking, creative work, and relationships.
How do you multiply time? Doesn’t everyone have the same 24 hours?
You multiply time by spending time on things today that will give you more time tomorrow.
In other words, you take time and turn it into more time.
How do the most successful leaders in the world today think differently about time?
The most successful leaders calculate (3) things when it comes to thinking about their time:
Urgency: How soon does something matter?
Importance: How much does something matter?
Significance: How long is this going to matter? How are the things that I’m doing right now going to affect the future?
I already wrote in-depth about The Eisenhower Matrix productivity tool and how it to use for prioritizing tasks (Number 1 & 2).
This 3rd component (significance) is the filter that creates more time in the future and makes tomorrow better than yesterday.
Rather than asking “What’s the most important thing I can do today?”, time multipliers ask “What’s the most important thing I can do today that would make tomorrow better?”
From studying the most productive people in business, here is the thought process that time multipliers go through in their head unconsciously when they are evaluating how to spend their time.
It's why some people create extraordinary, explosive, exponential results. And other people seem to kind of just create linear traction.
Here's the simple, powerful framework that helps me focus my energy in the present and wake up to a better future.
Start by visualizing all your tasks funneling through the following mental process:
1. Eliminate tasks
The first question you should ask is: “Can I eliminate this? Is it even worth doing?”
Effective PMs realize that next generation time management has much more to do with what you don't do than what you do.
Before you spend time optimizing a recurring task, I have a challenge for you.
Stop doing it.
See what breaks.
Listen to who screams.
Odds are, nothing happens.
From reports that don’t get read to form attachments that are never opened, you’ll be amazed.
Anything that we say no to today creates more time for us tomorrow.
Think of Warren Buffett’s 5/25 rule. Give yourself permission to ignore certain tasks as they will not give you time tomorrow.
If it can’t be eliminated, then it moves on to the next filter.
2. Automate processes
The second question you should ask is: “Can I automate this? Can we create a process for this?”
Anything that I create a process for today saves me time tomorrow.
Automate routine tasks like data entry, invoicing, and reporting to save time and reduce errors.
Examples:
Use technology like automation tools, AI and machine learning to help in automation.
Adopt project management software and other productivity tools to streamline the project management process.
QR codes to automate the flow information
Use tools like task scheduling, time tracking, and reporting to save time.
Kyle Note: I’ve talked about how 95% of PM’s aren’t using their software and technology to their full advantage in passing, but I’ve never written a piece on more specific strategies for how to optimize on your projects. If you’d like to see that, reply YES to this email.
Just like compounding interest takes money and it makes money into more money, automation takes time and it makes it into more time.
The way that wealthy people think about money is exactly the same way you should think about time. Invest + compound.
If it can’t be eliminated, and it can’t be automated, it moves on to the 3rd filter.
3. Delegate tasks
If it can't be automated, then the next question to ask is can it be delegated?
Can I teach someone else how to do this?
You can delegate anything. But if you ask an average PM if there are things that can be delegated to someone else, they will say yes.
Then why don’t PM’s place more of their focus on training someone else to do it?
The non-influential PM would say “it is because they can’t do it as well as I can.”
That may be true the first couple times. But if you think longer term, you’ll realize they too have the ability to master the task.
That’s how you multiply your time.
Give yourself the OK for temporary imperfection because over time, they’ll be able to figure it out.
Delegate tasks that do not require your expertise to team members or subcontractors to free up time for more important responsibilities.
Start by assigning tasks based on the strengths and skills of team members and train them to improve their skills over time.
4. Prioritize Tasks
Now, if you can eliminate, automate, or delegate a task, that task drops out the bottom of the funnel.
At this point, there’s only one remaining question.
Should I do this task now? Must it be done now? Or can it wait until later?
This is the art of prioritization and the best tool to use for this is the Eisenhower Matrix.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a 2x2 visualization tool that forces you to differentiate between the urgent and the important in order to prioritize and manage your time more effectively.
I write a lot about productivity, but I have never found a single tool that is more useful than the Eisenhower Matrix.
I find myself turning to it regularly, especially when I have a lot on my plate and need to reset my focus.
The matrix will help you focus on high-priority tasks that have the most significant impact on the project outcomes.
5. Sacred Hours
If the task must be done now, then it’s time to focus and get to work.
That takes us to your Sacred Hours.
Sacred Hours are blocked-off chunks of time that are, you guessed it, sacred.
It's the permission to protect.
No distractions. No responsibilities. Nothing else to check up on.
Just you and your work for at least 90 minutes. Ideally two hours.
This is one of the biggest indicators of a solid leader. Someone who has sacred hours built into their day. Anything that makes it through the 4 step framework, gets executed during sacred hours.
Think of these hours as un-cancelable meetings with yourself, every single day.
Most project managers are bogged down with distractions like emails, phone calls, and meetings during critical work periods.
Prioritize undisturbed work time for urgent, important, and significant tasks that can’t be eliminated, automated, or delegated.
Once you start honoring these sacred hours day in and day out, the compounding results will shock you.
How to find your own Sacred Hours?
There are two key questions you need to answer:
What time of day am I most productive?
What time of day can I be least responsive?
Your Sacred Hours lay in the intersection between these two times.
That is how the most successful leaders multiply their time.
By using this framework, project managers can achieve their project goals more efficiently while also having more time on their hands for value driven work such as:
Leading, coaching, & mentoring
Strategic thinking
Creative work
I'd love to hear from you:
What is the most important thing in your professional life right now?
What are the things that risk pulling you away from it?
Reply to the email or tweet at me @KyleNitch and I'll do my best to reply to everyone.
Until next week,
Kyle Nitchen
Twitter Thread
In the spirit of productivity, here are 13 simple sentences from Liam Kircher on saving 2 hours per day.
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