Test drive: the Personal Efficiency Program
I’m not generally a fan of time management literature, but during a recent trip to the local library, Kerry Gleeson’s The Personal Efficiency Program: How to stop feeling overwhelmed and win back control of your work caught my eye (published 2009 by John Wiley and Sons, 4th edition). Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m working more and getting less done, and I’ve been hearing similar buzz from other freelancers (“I feel like I could work 24 hours a day and it wouldn’t be enough,” “I feel totally and constantly overwhelmed,” “I’m at my desk all day but I can’t seem to get anything done,” etc.). So, I decided to give PEP (as Gleeson calls the program) a try.
I opened this book with a few motivations in mind:
- My e-mail inbox is out of control. Although I have a well-designed system of folders and filters, I currently have 496 messages languishing in my inbox.
- Lately I’ve felt more stressed about work than I’d like to feel.
- I feel like I’m doing less and taking more time to do it. For example, I somehow managed to publish the first edition of my book when I had a lot less available time than I have now. Still, I just can’t seem to finish the second edition.
The foundation of PEP is the mantra “Do It Now.” For example, many of us check e-mail every few minutes, but we take a long time to respond to or act on the e-mails that we’ve read. This creates a bad situation: the e-mail is hanging out waiting for a response, and we’re using mental energy thinking about responding or acting, or feeling guilty about not responding or acting. Then, because we don’t act or respond, we start getting more e-mail (“Did you receive my message?” “Have you thought about a good time to meet?” “Did you get a chance to read the article?” etc.). It’s not hard to see how this leads to stress and overwhelm. So, instead of obsessively reading e-mail, Gleeson advocates setting aside blocks of time to process e-mail. Then, you take action using one of the 4 Ds: Do it now (respond to the e-mail or act on it right then), Delegate it, Designate it (schedule a block of time to respond to or act on the e-mail) or Discard/file it. Gleeson advises checking e-mail only two or three times a day; personally I’m not there yet because I receive too many e-mails that need a fast response. For example, my European clients are only in the office until around 9 or 10AM Colorado time, so I need to respond to them right away. However, I’m trying to set aside 15 minutes every hour or hour and a half for e-mail, and I’ve decreased my backlog from about 10 messages per day to one or two.
PEP also pushes you to schedule, plan and log your time more than most of us do. Here again, I think it’s worth a try. My normal time management system before reading this book was to scribble a list of to-dos for the day in my planner in no particular order and with no particular time frame attached to them. Inevitably I would end up finishing the really critical items (i.e. work deadlines) and copying everything else over to the next day (and so on and so on and so on). Now I’ve switched to using the calendar feature of my e-mail program (KMail) and I’m amazed at how much it has decreased my stress level. Although my day is highly scheduled, I find that I can actually concentrate on what I’m doing because I’m not thinking about what else I should be doing. Instead of working on a translation while thinking “I really should have answered that message,” “I really need to work on that quote,” I can put it out of my mind because I know I have a block of time set aside for that task.
I think that effective time management has a lot to do with your personality type; for whatever reason, I’m quite good at meeting deadlines that someone else sets and not so good at meeting deadlines that I set for myself. So, I find that PEP is a good fit for me because a very detailed time schedule makes me feel that “someone else” (i.e. my scheduling program) is telling me to stick to that schedule. I also like the fact that Gleeson focuses not just on getting more done at work, but on working smarter so that you have more time for your family and leisure interests. Overall, I think that this book is worth a look if you need to take better control of your work day!
You wrote this post for me, right? 😉 I am sure we all see ourselves in there. Also, I think part of it is work-life balance and the many demands on us, but good ideas. I will check out the book – thanks!
Oh my goodness, you’ve described my situation perfectly! Ditto on checking out the book–above all else, my sanity requires it! 😉
Thank you for the book tip Corinne! I have collected a few time management tips in one of my blog posts. For me I just need to see where my time goes too and I discovered the tool “Rescue Time” at rescuetime.com. Very enlightening, try the two week free pro version, no strings attached. When the two weeks are up you are automatically reverted to the free version again.
No need to be paranoid, I’m the one who admitted to having almost 500 unanswered e-mails in my inbox! And Tess, thanks for the tip on Rescue Time!
Time management is definitely a challenge in the high-charged world in which we live. Which is why such management and self-help books sell well.
PEP’s mantra “Do it now” is the modern version of my grandfather’s “don’t put off til tomorrow what you can do today.” His system (as you describe it, Corinne, I’ve not read the book – give us an update in a few weeks, OK?) reminds me of the DayTimer craze a few decades ago: in New York City, if you didn’t have one or it wasn’t your bible, you could *not* possibly be organized and efficient! My days were planned with a capital P, tasks organized for optimization, blocks of time finely carved out so that I could manage my three-handed juggling act.
There was just one little problem – for me – with such finely-managed time. Life. Life happens, and sometimes, if you don’t grab it right then and there (’cause there’s no slot in the DayTimer/on-line organizer for that), then that magic moment is gone.
I put away the DayTimer and kept the To Do lists as insurance against absent-mindedness. And started working on managing my thoughts rather than my time. And I found that most things that created a backlog or ’til-the-breaking-point procrastination were linked to a negative sentence: “Don’t like ironing, I’ll do it later”; “Don’t have enough time to do the accounting right now because XYZ, I’ll do it later”, and so on. You get the idea. And, *speaking aloud*, changed my sentences to a positive: “I want to wear that blouse tomorrow, I’ll get some of the ironing done.” Or “I can squeeze in accounts payable today.”
For me, changing my thoughts and phrasing about something was more effective, I manage my time better, and have wiggle room for serendipity when it occasionally strikes.
Thanks, Patricia! Those are really useful tips, I really like the insight on managing your thoughts; really brilliant about the “negative to positive” reframe! Until I had a child, I totally scoffed at the DayTimer crowd; I think that now I embrace that level of management (or at least deal with it) because my time is so compartmentalized. You take a 6.5 hour school day minus no-school days, minus volunteer time, minus taking the pets to the vet, minus minus, minus, you get the picture 🙂 So although I am really not a micromanagement kind of person, I find I have to micromanage myself or nothing gets done. But I am really, really going to try the “I can fit in accounting before lunch” approach rather than “Agh, tax time again,” very helpful!
Minus hubby who has an IT problem, minus the longer-than-expected line at the post, minus the next door neighbor who got locked out, minus, minus, minus – all the stuff that did not get and cannot be rescheduled – oh I hear you!
Changing your thoughts doesn’t alter that reality, but it seems to reduce stress and auto-flagellation. I patted myself on the back for getting all the ironing done needed for the rest of the week and let go of the negative “would’a, should’a” pointing to what remains in the basket.
I like the one touch idea. I have email under control. My rule of thumb is: if it can be handled in less than two minutes, reply/do the task/move or delete it. I skim and delete rapidly for a great deal of information that comes in that does not require action.
On the other hand, I do not have my paper office under control. I am organized electronically, but not physically. The filing cabinets are in order, but the desk is not (and dare I say the floor on bad weeks). My office houses personal files as well as work files, and is the home’s general catch all. So I always need to work on that.
I read Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstein last year. Similar concept, but for a whole house, not just for time. I am similarly doubtful about the value of these ‘miraculous’ solutions, but I always seem to end up with some practical tips that I apply so I try to read one each year.
You don’t have to have time specific tables in order to be more productive. The whole point of creating productivity ecosystem is prioritization, rather than organization of your time.
Productivity requires flexibility, and having fixed schedule means that you can’t achieve that.