"Pull away even though it feels like career suicide. Go home. Rest, sleep, recharge, have fun with your kids, play with the dog and watch how much more effective you will be."
- Julie Morgenstern
"Wait a minute," my colleagues asked as I was preparing the room for a time management training my boss asked me to do for the team. "You're telling me that you do all this work, managing people and programs and you play in a band, play soccer and you still have time to go out on dates with your girlfriend?"
"That's right," I said as I prepared my introduction on how I became a super-efficient manager, according to my boss. "But you forgot to mention that I also teach music to little kids on certain days."
"What? Really?" My colleague exclaimed. "I don't even have time to sleep! How do you do it?"
"Well," I looked at the time to see if I would be ready to present 30 minutes before my scheduled time, "I listened to Julie Morgenstern."
There are a few books that changed my life completely but there are two main books that I felt helped me get recognized a bit more at work and eventually helped me with my career. The books weren't about leadership or about business. The books were about time management. The books helped me become extremely effective, efficient and productive and pushed me to prioritize my balance between my life and work.
Julie Morgenstern wrote two important books that helped me in my career; Time Management From the Inside Out and Never Check E-mail In The Morning. The books were actually recommended by a Franklin Covey instructor many years before. I always thought my time management was decent, but those two book changed the way I did things at work and at home. Later, I was the one asked to do time management trainings to teach others what I was doing with my time. Here are five of the lessons I learned from Julie Morgenstern's time management books that helped me with my time management, work-life balance and eventually with my career.
Never check e-mail in the morning
This lesson was not only the title of one of Julie Morgenstern's book but also the hardest lesson for me to master. It was common practice at our company to always check emails in the morning and to answer emails within 24 hours. According to Julie Morgenstern, some people are the most productive in the mornings and if you spend your time doing simple, unproductive tasks you are going to waste all that energy and brain power. I decided to try it and I found myself getting much more work done in my first three to four hours in the office than I did the rest of the day. I began to check emails after lunch.
Does it go in your calendar or is it a simple task?
Yesterday, I wrote a blog about to-do lists (Read 3 Reasons Why Your To-Do List Is Not Effective). The interesting thing I learned from one of Julie Morgenstern's book is that there is a difference between putting something in your calendar and putting something in your to-do list. Something in your to-do list has no time, but if you write down the time it will take you to complete your tasks right next to that thing, you'll start to notice how much (or little) time you actually have to complete your entire list. I put a projected time frame of completion on all my items on the list I had and began to add up the time. Most of the time, I realized that I could complete my entire week's work in only a few days. Therefore, instead of putting bigger tasks on my to-do list I put them on my calendar and planned to spend the time I projected working on finishing up those bigger tasks or projects.
Time everything
I eventually got in the habit of timing everything I did, from checking email, conducting meetings, doing my reports, etc. I got so good at knowing how productive I was that later I developed a strategy to know what will automatically go in my calendar. For those tasks that were quick to complete (less than 10 minutes) I would keep them on my to-do list, but for those items that took me more than 10 minutes, they automatically went to my calendar. I later competed against myself to see if I could complete certain projects faster than the last time I did them and with more accuracy.
Don't rely on memory
I always believed I had a bad memory so this wasn't much of an issue for me. However, most people that have a great memory always want to have their to-do list in their head and things will start slipping away with more responsibilities and with more complex projects. Julie Morgenstern's books got me in the habit of writing everything down, and I mean everything. If I'm speaking to someone and they ask me to call them, I quickly send an email to myself so I don't forget. This includes the most simple tasks you can imagine such as checking the mail, call the internet company or to tell someone they're doing a good job.
Don't sync your email to your phone
At one point at work, I thought we were all competing to see who would reply to emails quicker. Some people even bragged about their respond time. To me, having my email synced to my phone created a few problems: (1) it slowed down my phone because I was getting to many emails (most of them were just emails I was CC'd on); (2) I was constantly interrupting myself with checking my phone; and (3) it took over my entire days. I decided to keep my calendar synced but to disactivate my email notifications. Now, I only use my phone at work to make phone calls. I haven't checked emails using my phone in about 4 years - never had a problem.
Now, I conduct time management trainings to other companies as well, teaching them the lessons learned from Julie Morgenstern's book but also helping them put things into perspective a bit more. Time is precious and most of us might feel like we're scrambling for time, but time is always on our side - we just need to learn how to use it.
Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.
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