Here is a simple and important question to consider: What is your scarcest resource during the work day?

Most people have a ready answer: My time! Sure, time is a scarce resource for everyone, and most of us feel we don't have enough of it. But this is actually the wrong answer. Consider your close colleagues in the workplace. Most of them work for a similar amount of time every day, yet some are dramatically more productive than others. And these differences aren't just about expertise – the smartest or most competent person isn't always the most efficient one.

So what is the scarcest resource? It is your attention – your capacity to focus on the right things at the right time. This has always been true to some degree, but it is becoming even more important. In a world where information is plentiful, where the costs of searching for the information you need is almost zero, the premium on attention and focus is even higher than it used to be.

Simply put, the most productive and efficient managers are the ones who understand and manage their attention properly. They are sufficiently self-aware to know when they are doing valuable work and when they are wasting time, and they have the self-discipline to switch their attention toward the places where it is most valuable.

In this chapter, we describe a series of techniques and tools that help you manage your own personal time at work. The first, activity logs (#8), is simply about tracking what you are spending time on so that you know yourself better. Then we describe how to prioritize tasks effectively in terms of the amount of effort needed and the impact achieved (#9). We then describe two techniques for monitoring and tracking work – action programs (#10) are a good way of keeping major tasks and specific actions linked together nicely, whereas task scheduling (#11) is useful for planning the days and weeks ahead to make time for the most important work.

Finally, we tackle the psychological dimensions of being effective in the workplace. First, we consider the concept of flow, the state of being where people do their best work (#12), and then we address the problem of procrastination in terms of when it happens and what we can do about it (#13).

8. Find More Time in Your Day by Eliminating Low-Yield Activities (Activity Logs)

In the previous chapter, we looked at how important it is to set personal and career goals to give yourself the focus to succeed (#3). So how much of your time do you spend doing things that don't contribute to your work objectives or your personal success?

Memory is a poor guide because we tend to have a better recollection of the more valuable activities we undertake and we forget about the time spent on low-value activities. This is where activity logs are useful.

To keep an activity log, download our template using the URL on the next page, or set up a new spreadsheet with column headings for Date, Time, Activity Description, Duration, Goal/Objective Contribution (0–10) and How I Feel (0–10).

Without changing the way you work, record everything you do. Every time you switch to a new activity, whether working on a document, answering e-mails, visiting online news sites, talking to someone on instant messaging, making a cup of coffee, or chatting with colleagues, make a note. Record the time spent on the activity, score how much it contributed to your objectives, and score how focused and alert you felt at the time.

Yes, this is painstaking work. One way to encourage yourself to follow through is to agree with a peer or your boss that you are going to do it and share the outcomes with them.

After a couple of weeks, review your activity log. You may be shocked by how much time you spend on activities that contribute little to your objectives! You may also spot times of the day where you're sharp and effective, and others where you feel flat or tired.

Once you have this data, take the following actions:

1. Eliminate, delegate, or automate activities that contribute little to your goals and objectives. Be ruthless with your e-mail and IM. And sorry, the news sites and social media at work have got to go!
2. Change your work patterns so that you do your most important activities when you are most alert. Save more routine, lower-value work for the times when your energy is lowest.
3. Avoid multitasking, and minimize the number of times you switch between activities. Multitasking is inefficient, and it reduces the quality of the work you do. It is also good practice to answer e-mails in a focused way, say for one hour per day, rather than intermittently throughout the day.
4. Keep an eye out for a pattern of doing easy, low-value tasks when you should be doing important work. Procrastination is a career killer – we look at how you can deal with it in #13.

By doing these simple things, you'll achieve a whole lot more with your time and your life. If you're under pressure, keeping an activity log is the first thing to do to fix this!

9. Prioritize Tasks Effectively for Yourself and Your Team (Action Priority Matrix)

Once you've cut the lowest-yield activities out of your day, the next stage is to focus on the activities that create the biggest impact for you and your team. This is the art of prioritization, and it's one of the most important skills you can learn to be effective at work. There are many ways you can prioritize, and you need to use your judgment to choose between them. These include prioritization based on:

• The objectives and key results (#27) set for you by your boss and your organization. This addresses the big picture of aligning your work with organizational objectives.
• Your career and personal goals (#3). Yes, you need to do the things your organization asks you to do, but you should also prioritize actions that help you achieve your career and personal goals. (We look at how you can do this in #10.)
• Work that unlocks the success of other people. Sometimes a small amount of work from you allows others to achieve important results.
• The value and profitability of potential projects that you're looking at. This helps you maximize your business impact.

One of the most useful approaches to help you choose between projects is an action priority matrix, an approach to prioritization that has been in general use for several decades. It asks you to plot each project you're considering on a grid like Figure 2.1

The horizontal axis shows the effort needed to complete a task, and the vertical axis shows its potential impact, for example, in terms of profitability. The grid is split into these quadrants:

• Fill-ins: These tasks are quick and easy to do; they give you a warm “buzz” of satisfaction when you complete them, but they don't achieve much. Some can be done quickly and painlessly; others should be delegated or dropped.
• Thankless Tasks: These are big projects that soak up a lot of time but yield little return. It should be possible to cancel or reposition some of these projects; others may be suitable for delegation to a junior colleague.
• Quick Wins: These are great projects that give you a high return for relatively little effort. It is usually smart to prioritize these tasks.
• Major Projects: These are the most challenging tasks in terms of prioritization, as one major project like this can crowd out many quick wins. Engage with these in a cautious and disciplined way, and work on them alongside your quick-win tasks.

10. Use a Structured Approach for Tracking and Prioritizing Many Tasks (Action Programs)

As managers, we typically have a full workload with many day-to-day tasks. On top of these, we have the career and personal goals we want to work toward (#3) and the objectives our organizations want us to achieve (#27).

It's all very well knowing how to prioritize, but how can we bring many tasks together in a coherent way without getting swamped by the sheer volume of things that we need to do? (To-do lists work well when you have a small number of things to do, but they often become too long to be practical.)

This is where action programs are useful. In essence, they are two-part to-do lists, made up of a project catalog and a next-action list.

To set up your action program, create a new spreadsheet or word processor document on your computer, or use apps like Nozbe or Remember the Milk.

Start with your project catalog. This is a detailed inventory of all the things you need to do, and you use it to make sure you don't forget anything. It can run across many pages, and it lists everything—routine actions that you need to perform, personal and career goals that you want to accomplish (which you should now treat as high-priority projects), objectives and key results that you've set, and one-off tasks that you need to complete.

Group related items into clusters, and tidy your list so that tasks appear only once. Low-value activities and thankless tasks should be deleted. (You can also prioritize projects (#9) at this stage.)

It takes a couple of hours to do this thoroughly, but you'll only have to do this once. You are left with a clear view of everything you need or want to do, which you can add to on an ongoing basis. Even better, you'll ditch forever the sense of anxiety and panic that comes from worrying that you've missed or forgotten something important.

Now create your next-action list. This is one page long, and it goes in front of your project catalog. It functions as a traditional to-do list, focusing on the specific actions you're going to take over the next few days to deliver the most important things in your project catalog.

To create this list, go through your project catalog, identify the highest-priority projects (making sure that these combine goal- and objective-related actions, as well as urgent routine tasks), and list the 10 to 20 logical next actions needed to move these projects forward.

Your action program is now your personal control center. Focus on completing the tasks on your next-action list. Then go back to your project catalog and bring forward the next group of specific tasks. Providing that you're disciplined and you bring forward the right mix of actions each time, you'll soon find yourself making robust, well-controlled progress toward your goals and objectives.

11. Schedule Your Time Effectively

Action programs help you identify the most important tasks, but how do you make time to work on them during a hyperbusy working week?

This is where scheduling your time effectively becomes key. You have to be honest about what you can realistically achieve in a given period of time so that you create time for the things you need or want to do and you turn away low-priority activities (“Sorry, but my schedule is full until the 27th”).

Set a regular time to plan your schedule – for example, at the end of each week preparing for the week ahead. Go through the following steps:

1. Identify the time that you want to make available for work, and block out the time that you won't be available, so no one can book appointments in it. (If you're ambitious, you may choose to work beyond contractual hours. But do this in a controlled way to make time for other important things in your life.)
2. Plan in the high-priority tasks from your action program (#10). Schedule these for the times of day when you're sharpest and most alert (see #8).
3. Add the essential actions needed to do your job effectively. For example, if you manage people, schedule team meetings and one-on-ones.
4. Now add in contingency time for urgent and unplanned tasks – such as dealing with customer issues – that come up in any working day. You should have a feel for how much of this you need – and be realistic, or you'll be working later than you want almost every day.
5. The space that's left in your schedule (if there is any) is “discretionary time” that you can use for other tasks on your action program.

By the time you get to step 5, your schedule may be full or even overloaded. This is where you need to go back through it and prune out the least important activities.

This involves making difficult choices, and you may need to tell people you can't deliver projects until after they want them. However, by having a well-planned schedule you have evidence that you're managing your time effectively and that you're doing everything you sensibly can to deliver these projects on time.

A well-planned schedule also gives you a great basis for negotiating sensible delivery dates for work, and it helps you build a reputation for reliability.

To be clear, this type of scheduling is painstaking and requires a high level of self-discipline to follow through. You may find it useful to work with a colleague on this process to affirm your commitment to the changes you need to make.

12. Keep Yourself Focused: Managing Distractions, Improving Flow

We've looked at how you can organize yourself to make the best use of your time. Now, we look at how you can work better, starting with developing the intense state of concentration known as flow, where people do their best work.

Flow occurs when all your conscious thought is focused on what you are doing. Although it has always existed as a state of mind, it was first described in detail by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who said that flow involves “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.”

So, how can we achieve this state of flow?

Partly it's about doing work we care about and enjoy, and that is challenging but not quite beyond our abilities. If you've used the tools in Chapter 1, you'll hopefully be on your way toward this.

It's also about managing pressure so that we're in the “sweet spot” where we're sufficiently motivated to do a good job but not under so much pressure that we get flustered (we'll look at this more in #17).

However, we also need to manage distractions and interruptions so that we can concentrate effectively. To do this:

• Arrange your workspace so that you're in a quiet area, and consider putting on headphones so that people know they shouldn't distract you. (You can play white noise or music to block out the hustle and bustle around you.)
• Switch off your phone and social media, and disable e-mail alerts, instant messaging, and other notifications.
• Think positively. Silence distracting negative thoughts using the cognitive restructuring approach we looked at in #6. This helps you move into the open, exploratory mindset you need to be creative.
• Don't multitask. There's no way you can devote your whole attention to one task if you're trying to do other things at the same time.
• Keep a log of common interruptions and distractions, and later, take intelligent action to minimize these. Sure, it may take some weeks to sort out everything that's distracting you, but before you know it, you'll be getting the uninterrupted time you need to do your best work.

Reducing distractions is a good way of improving focus, but that doesn't mean you will always reach the nirvana-like state of flow described by Csikszentmihalyi. The broader question of how you shape your career so that you do work you find intrinsically interesting and fulfilling is one we address in Chapter 4.

Use the URLs below to learn more about how to focus and get into flow.

13. Beat Procrastination

Beating procrastination is another important ingredient of effectiveness at work. We are all prone to some level of procrastination, but for 20% to 25% of people, it's a problem that seriously undermines their ability to do their jobs.

Procrastination occurs when someone voluntarily delays important work they know they need to complete. They know this is irrational, they're anxious about doing it, and they know it's going to cause problems, but they do it anyway. The result is that they fail to achieve objectives on time, they are seen as flaky and unreliable, and their career prospects are damaged.

So why do people procrastinate? It's something that can be associated with perfectionism, low self-esteem, and fear of failure – we look at how you can address these in Chapters 1 and 3. It can be linked to having to do difficult or unsatisfying work we don't believe in. It can be caused by low conscientiousness and a lack of self-discipline. And it can be linked to a belief that “I work better under pressure.” (If a job is boring, that can be true; however, when you leave a job for the last minute, you're increasing the risk that you won't finish on time and that you'll let people down.)

Whatever the cause, you've got to get on top of procrastination and control it.

Start by recognizing whether you are prone to procrastination. For example, do you often find yourself doing small, low-value tasks rather than tackling big, difficult jobs? Do important jobs get stuck on your to-do list or action program for a long time without you doing anything about them? Do you wait for the “right mood” or “right time” to tackle important tasks? And do you find yourself leaving work until the last minute and sometimes missing deadlines? (If you have any doubts, use the URL below to take our “Are You a Procrastinator?” self-test.)

If you do find yourself procrastinating, you need to understand why you're doing it. For example, perhaps you find certain jobs boring or unpleasant, and, deep down, you're trying to avoid them. You may feel overwhelmed by them and seek comfort by doing small, easy tasks instead. You may be disorganized with no clear idea of priorities and deadlines. Or you may be prone to perfectionism, and you may subconsciously think, “I don't have the time and resources to do a great job, so I won't do it at all.”

Whatever your reason, procrastination is a habit that you need to break. Some of the strategies below may be useful:

• Set well-defined goals (#3), have a clear understanding of the work you need to do (#10), prioritize tasks (#9), and plan when you're going to complete them (#11). This will help you understand the urgency of the work you're doing.
• Break large projects down into smaller tasks of one or two hours' duration. Get started on one of these, even if it isn't necessarily the most logical one to begin with.
• Give yourself small rewards – a cup of gourmet coffee or a quick walk in the spring sunshine – when you've completed a difficult task.
• Use the Pomodoro technique of working flat out on unpleasant tasks for timed sprints of 25 minutes interspersed with short 5-minute breaks doing something different that you enjoy.
• Discipline yourself to do the day's most unpleasant task first thing in the morning. Not only will you do it when you're freshest and most self-disciplined, but after that, everything will get better!
• Work out the cost of your time to your employer and the importance of your task to your customer. Shame yourself with this if you're tempted to loaf. And remind yourself of the negative consequences if you don't finish on time.
• Get people to check up on your progress. You won't want to look bad in front of them!

You'll find more strategies that address other causes of procrastination using the URLs below. Procrastination is a career killer – if you're a procrastinator, you need to do something about it!

Other Techniques for Planning and Managing Your Time

There are plenty of other good planning and time management techniques that didn't make the cut in our survey. Go to http://mnd.tools/c2c to find out more about them.