Timely Advice

I’d like to tell you a famous story about the use of time. The details vary but the basics are the same wherever you read it.

In America in the 1930’s, Charles Schwab, the head of Bethlehem Steel, the country’s largest independent steel producer, asked a well-known management consultant, Ivy Lee, for his advice on increasing the company’s efficiency.

Schwab agreed to ask his managers to put the advice into practice for a month and then pay Lee whatever he felt it was worth.

A month later, Lee received a cheque for $25,000, almost $300,000 in today’s money. Schwab later said that it was the single most useful piece of information he had ever received and he believed it was immensely significant in the success of the company.

In my next blog, I'll tell you what the advice was!

Andy
My Web Site

The Pareto Principle 3

People often ask me for examples where the 80/20 rule might apply. A very good example is marketing. Someone I know examined which of the pages on his website were getting the most hits and discovered his portfolio page was most popular. He made that page his home page, to reduce the effort visitors had to make to reach the information they wanted, and increased the number of hits and enquiries made about his services. Simple but very effective.
Andy
My Web Site

The Pareto Principle 2

You can also extend the rule by examining what is happening once you have identified the critical 20% - within that 20% of time, when does the 80% outcome occur? During the first 20%? The last? Or in the middle? Can you refine your use of time further?

This is a continual process of noticing what gets you results. Don’t just do something and forget about it – evaluate what you have done and reflect on what works.

Andy
My Web Site

The Pareto Principle

Now I’m going to ask you to look hard at your activities again, but from a different point of view.

You may already be familiar with the ‘Pareto Principle’ (also known as the 80/20 Rule), named after the 19th century Italian economist who first noticed the phenomenon that 80% of all results tend to be produced by 20% of all efforts.

So the theory goes that 20% of your clients provide 80% of your turnover. 80% of your problems come from just 20% of your experiences and so on. Does this fit in with the use of your time you have already observed?

Andy
My Web Site

Use of Time

You might like to keep a diary of your days, divided into quarter hour chunks, and record how you are actually spending your time. It is easy to overlook all those chats with colleagues, the coffee-making when stuck for an idea, the surfing on the internet. You may be surprised by where your time is going!

Once you are aware of your habits, you can start to think about changing them for more productive ways of using your time.

As usual, I welcome feedback, but enough for now – I’m off to make a coffee!

Andy
My Web Site

How Do You Spend Your Time?

As always, knowing yourself, your preferences, your strengths and weaknesses, is the best start. Start looking a little more objectively at the way you work – what do you do promptly? What do you keep putting off? Which parts of the job do you enjoy and which are a drag? What is your best time of day – do you breeze into the office before everyone else, keen to crack on, or is it a struggle to do anything before coffee time?
Andy
My Web Site

Can We Manage Time?

So many of us seem to feel there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything we want or need to do, despite the increasing sophistication of labour-saving devices.

And so we start thinking that we need to manage our time better. But when you think about it, you can’t really manage time at all – all you can do is manage yourself better and prioritise the demands on your time. The next few blogs will be looking at simple ways to do this.

Andy
My Web Site