NVH’s Blog

Time Management Skills
By John Caunt
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Get organised…
• Does the amount of incoming information that you have to deal with seem to be constantly growing?
• Do colleagues bombard you with forwarded e-mails, reports and copies of other written material that you don’t need?
• Do you find yourself unable to decide what to do with documents you receive?
• Do you put items to one side to be dealt with later?
• Are you plagued by junk mail?
• Do you keep hold of magazines and reports intending to read them, but never get around to it?

If you haven’t answered yes to any of these, you are among the minority in today’s workplace! Recent surveys have shown that people are struggling to cope with the vast quantities of information they are required to handle in their jobs and that widespread stress and productivity decline are a result. However, rest assured because there are ways to reduce the volume of what comes your way, and techniques to help you read, sort and absorb information more efficiently.

Identify the important information

Some information is immediately recognizable as junk. Other items scream their importance. But it isn’t always easy to separate the two. You can use the following questions to help you work out the value of the information that lands on your desk or in your inbox:
• Does this information relate to a key element of my job?
• Would I choose to receive the information if I had to pay for it?
• What is the worst that would happen if I ignored it?
• Is it information that I need at this point in time?
• Eighty per cent of the value comes from 20 per cent of the information. Is this item in the top 20 per cent?

You can’t be sure of getting it right every time, but this is usually a good way of teaching yourself how to focus on the most important information and learning how to filter out surplus information that you don’t really need.

Adopt a systematic approach

There is a common myth, perpetuated by some time management programmes, that every item of information should be tackled only once, in order to save time. But, as we all know, it doesn’t work like that in the real world and you might need to come back to an email or a document for a variety of reasons. If it is possible to complete the task immediately then that’s what you should aim for, but if not, don’t panic. Instead, try to make sure that no email or document is returned to the “inbound” pile (or inbox) untouched, and that every assignment receives a positive action straight away.

This action should be one of the following 5 Ds. The ‘5 Ds approach’ can help you to effectively manage your time when dealing with lots of information at once:
• Discard – Ask yourself if you actually want the information and if not – delete it from your inbox or bin it! It should be clear if an item has no use for you, so don’t waste time and energy studying irrelevant websites or reading useless material.
• Deal with – You should deal with all items when they first come to you, even if it’s just working out a timeframe for the bigger tasks rather than actually completing them straight away. Obviously smaller items can be dealt with more quickly and easily – but don’t use them as excuses to put off doing more complex and time consuming assignments.
• Determine future action – A concertina file marked with the dates of the month makes a useful ‘bring-forward’ device. Place the item in the compartment corresponding to the date when you wish to re-visit it. Adopt a similar approach with e-mails by using the ‘flag for follow-up’ facility in Outlook.
• Direct – If you want to direct some tasks towards others to deal with, make sure you give them clear instructions as to what further action to take. Try to avoid passing items to colleagues in order to get them off your own desk or out of your inbox!
• Deposit – Be sparing in what you file – do your best to think about what to do with each item carefully and don’t just file something because you’re not sure what else to do with it.

There are lots of techniques that you can use to both organise and reduce information effectively, which will help you to deal with your workload more quickly. Try not to be overwhelmed by the masses of tasks that come your way, because very often there will be a way of handling them – it’s just a matter of keeping your head and dealing with them one by one.

Avoid information overload!

However effective you become at handling material and managing your time, you will not achieve all that is possible unless you try to reduce the volume of information that daily comes your way. The most important step you can take is to examine your own behaviour. Your motto should be ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If you aim to protect yourself by excessive copying and forwarding of material to colleagues, they are likely to do exactly the same to you! Think carefully about who will need the information – and don’t pass it to other people unless it is relevant to them. This practice within the workplace will reduce the amount of surplus information circulating and will create a more manageable workload for yourself and your colleagues.

Here are some other ideas to prevent you from becoming weighed down with information:
• Don’t invite junk mail by handing out your details unnecessarily – and don’t waste time on the junk mail you receive. You can dump the majority without even opening it!
• Remove your name from mailing lists if they provide you with nothing of value.
• Think about internal communications – ask to be left off circulation lists for documents which don’t concern you in any way.
• Have a look at subscriptions to periodicals – those which haven’t yielded anything worthwhile in the last six months may be due for cancellation

To sum it up…

As you can see, there are heaps of ‘easy-to-implement’ tactics to help you reduce the amount of information that comes your way and to provide guidance on how to deal with it. Everyone can be more organised and learn to manage their time more effectively – but it’s important not to allow yourself to become overwhelmed by hundreds of emails or an overflowing in-tray. Stay in control of your workload by dealing with one thing at a time, adopting a systematic, pro-active approach to each new task and steering clear of procrastination. Follow some of the tips above, and you’ll soon find that you have much more time in the day to achieve more than you believed possible!

Killer Presentations – wake up your audience!
Published: 20 September 2006

Microsoft estimates there are 450 million users of PowerPointTM giving around 1 million presentations a day – the vast majority of which have a dark background and bullet points with white text. This is more commonly known as death by PowerPoint.

The sad reality is that most presentations are too long, lack structure and fail to hold the audience’s attention. Why is this? Why does the audience switch off, or at worst, fall asleep? Can all these presentations really be that dull and boring?

The good news is that this situation can be changed, once you learn a few tricks of the trade.

The success of achieving the objective of the presentation largely depends upon the charisma of the presenter to retain the audience’s attention - but audiences can only pay attention for 20-30 minutes. The audience will make their decision to pay attention - or not - within the first few minutes of the presentation. They have come to see what’s in it for them and will judge your presentation on this basis.

But almost all the presentations we have seen are decks of slides containing lists of bullet points and text; all, unfortunately, written for the presenter’s benefit.

The reality is that whilst the presenter believes that they are conveying key bullet points, in fact, they are sending the audience to sleep.

However, there is a solution to death by PowerPoint, but first you need to change the way you think about your presentation. As a presenter, you should design and structure presentations from the audience’s perspective which means avoiding bullet points and text and, if possible, delivering your presentation in under 30 minutes.

Use pictures, not words – Why?

Bad presentations have Clip Art; text so small that it cannot be read; and distracting and annoying effects, such as words flying in from the left with the sound of a type-writer or screeching tyres. Whoopee.

Use picture not words – How?

Think about the message and then think about what type of picture or photo would help people understand this message. This is the basis of a good slide. It starts on paper with a pencil and a rubber.

Engage the audience, don’t bore them – Why?

Bored audiences struggle to stay awake. If they cannot pay attention, they will not remember the points made. In that case, why bother presenting at all?

Engage the audience, don’t bore them – How?

The manner in which a slide is revealed can also engage the audience. It is far more effective to present diagrams and pictures that reveal elements one step at a time rather than in one go.

Look at how the following slides have been improved by replacing text with imagery.
Examples of improvements you can make to your slides using PowerPoints features

Change your perspective

Business presentations are about imparting knowledge or convincing people to share a point of view. Presentations need to be designed to get information across to the audience without distracting or confusing them – and certainly not sending them to sleep.

Stop writing presentations that are nothing more than scripts. The point of a presentation is not to help the presenter remember all the information, it’s to help the audience comprehend, and retain, the information communicated.

A killer presentation is one that was designed with the audience in mind. Take a visual approach to your next presentation and have the audience hanging on your every word.

Seven ways to leave the office earlier
Published: 26 October 2006

1. Stop going along with unspoken office “rules”. Instead, commit to stopping work on time. Who decided that you had to work until 7pm? How much is your personal time worth?

2. Start meetings before 4pm. Wherever possible schedule meetings to end by 4:30pm. Ideally, start meetings right after lunch. Block out your diary from 4pm every day so people don’t schedule late meetings with you. And don’t ask others to begin projects at 4:45pm – respect their right to a life outside work too.

3. Be assertive. Don’t be afraid to tell others, “I leave work at 5pm every day because I have a 5:30pm commitment that I must stick to.” No-one else needs to know that your commitment is with yourself or your family. People tend to support others when their goals are made public.

4. Schedule “working” time. Block off certain hours in your diary for answering messages and getting work done and only accept meetings outside these times (and not last thing at night). This way you don’t have interruptions distracting you when you’re trying to leave the office.

5. Make preparations to leave. Gather up your coat and put it in a visible spot so others can see you’re getting ready to go. If you have an office, close your door a few minutes before finishing time so people will think you’re busy or already gone. Whatever they want, it can usually wait until tomorrow.

6. Challenge your assumptions. Long hours don’t need to be “the way it is”. If you feel under pressure to get work finished, make a conscious effort to finish your work within the workday, but not to work longer hours. Don’t focus on “catching up” – you will never catch up. There will always be more things to do than there is time to do them. Be more productive during the day and you’ll get the same amount of work done and be able to leave earlier.

7. Start small. Choose one particular day to start with, perhaps a Thursday, and make this “the” day you organise your work more carefully and leave work on time. Keep working on your productivity skills and gradually add more days, until you’re just working the hours you want and are accomplishing even better results.