Maximising time
- Philip Brophy
- Mar 26
- 3 min read
Cutting out the fluff • 3 min read
A Harvard Business Review survey revealed that older and more senior professionals scored higher on productivity than their younger counterparts.
Looking at employees ranging from their mid 20’s to late 60’s, productivity scores systematically rose the older the respondents were, reflecting the benefits of years of working smarter.
The higher productivity scores related to stronger habits in managing message flow, creating routines for low-value tasks, delegating tasks to colleagues, and running time-effective meetings.
Introduction
We’ve looked at how we can maximise productivity through effective planning.
Today we’ll look at further ways to do this through the three A’s - awareness, arrangement, and adaptation.
Three A’s in practice
Awareness
This means realistically assessing your time by viewing it as a limited resource. For better awareness, you can:
1. Find your peak performance time by figuring out when you’re most mentally alert to carry out complex tasks, reserving the rest of the day for more routine work. You can do this by breaking your day into three to four time slots. Over the next week, you can rank-order these slots from most to least productive.
2. See your time as money. By creating time budgets, you can plan out and observe how you spend your hours throughout the week, categorising time into non-negotiable (“required do’s”) and negotiable (“desired do’s”).
3. Realistically evaluate your time. By taking a future perspective, you can assess how today’s tasks may impact your time management for next week’s work.
Arrangement
Through better arrangement, you can plan out and organise your plans, schedules, tasks, and goals to effectively use time.
For example, you can:
1. Prioritise activities. Try to remember that while urgent tasks require immediate action, other tasks could be equally as important as they may have long-term consequences, so try to leave ample time for both.
2. Use a calendar app. Try to be disciplined in immediately recording key dates for appointments and tasks, as and when planned.
3. Schedule protected time. Make calendar appointments to ensure uninterrupted time to work on your most important projects.
Adaptation
You can adapt by monitoring how you use your time while carrying out activities, including adjusting to changing priorities and interruptions. For example, you can:
1. Habit stack — stacking a new behaviour on top of an existing one, e.g., setting up a strategy meeting with colleagues, then having your afternoon coffee. You can then read some industry-related articles.
2. Use contingency plans. When you outline possible outcomes of your plans, consider best and worst-case scenarios.
3. Use short bursts of energy. To keep procrastination at bay, and when tasks become overwhelming, give your maximum effort for 15- to 30-minute intervals.
Key takeaways
By harnessing better awareness, we realistically assess our time by viewing it as a limited resource, e.g., finding your peak performance to carry out more complex tasks.
Effective arrangement means better organisation of our plans, schedules, tasks, and goals to use time more efficiently, e.g., scheduling protected time to dedicate to our most important projects.
Adaptation means monitoring how we use our time while adjusting plans for any potential priority changes and interruptions, e.g., using contingency plans to allow for best and worst-case scenarios.
Think big. act small
Can you focus on awareness, arrangement, and adaptation to better manage your time?
You could start by finding your peak performance time.
Try breaking your day into three to four time slots, and over the following weeks, rank-order these slots from most to least productive.
Content sources
Forbes, 2021, Richard Polak, ‘Productivity Begins Before You Go to Work’
Forbes, 2021, Pia Silva, ‘5 Ways to Greatly Improve Your Productivity (In Less Than A Week)’
Forbes, 2021, Council Members, ‘Five Tips to Increase Productivity In The Workplace’ Forbes, 2020, John Hall, ‘Maximise your productivity with these 4 Methods’
Forbes, 2021, David Villa, ‘Five Time Management Tips To be More Productive Each Day’
Harvard Business Review, 2020, Steve Glaveski, ‘Productivity Skills to Help You Gain Time Back’
Harvard Business Review, 2019, Robert C. Pozen, Kevin Downey, ‘What Makes Some People More Productivity Than Others’
Harvard Business Review, 2020, Erich C. Dierdorff, ‘Time Management is about more than life hacks’
Comments