Over the last 4 years we have taken over 300 professional services advisers through our time management training experience In Time.  Following each Workshop, we run a combination of competitions, conference calls, 1:1 coaching, email coaching, onsite visits and post-implementation surveys.  During this follow-up process, we have learnt a lot about changing time management habits.  In this article, we examine five of the most common mistakes we see in advisers as they change their approach to time and planning.

5 – Failing to expect things to get worse before they get better

When you change your time management habits, often things actually go slower as you relearn and change your response patterns.  Many participants do not anticipate this slow down, get frustrated and revert to their old habits.  What this means is that you shouldn’t try and change time habits during busy periods.  Undertake your time management training during your quieter periods so you can safely experiment and learn your new habits without worrying about getting behind in the short-term.  Management also needs to manage workflow during this period to encourage participants to “have a go” without too much pressure on them.

4 – Focusing on tools, not habits

We often show participants many new time management “tools” – software, email rules, folders, tasks, filing systems.  Many of these tools give quick and easy efficiency gains.  But this is the small stuff.  It’s changes in habits that leads to the big time management gains – tools are only as good as the user after all.  It’s important management spends more time on participant’s habits, attitudes and internal processes...than setting up a bit of new IT.

3 – Not accounting for some chaos

During In Time we discuss the issue of “chaos” - professional advisers cannot account for every moment of their day as they are exposed to unpredictable elements like clients or markets.  It is therefore critical that advisers allow for a certain amount of “chaos” each day AND PLAN NOTHING FOR THAT PERIOD.  This may mean actually keeping specific hours free or it might be more fluid and require that each day only include a certain amount of planned activities and allow for a certain amount of chaos.  Remember, you can always bring forward future actions on those quiet days...but it is harder to push back planned actions if you are continuously caught up with unexpected events.

2 – Setting up too many complications or rules

Time management means setting boundaries and having rules.  We look for the fewest rules possible.  A few solid, easy to understand rules which still allow for a degree of flexibility where required.  Sometimes we find participants attempting to devise a rule for everything!  Every little thing needs to be managed by a rule or a process or a system.  Often, however, this leads only to inefficiency.  Time management is a real case of the 80/20 rule.  Let’s account for 80% of events.  Attempting to get that last 20% is often a time consuming, not time efficient, process.  Professional services are just too chaotic.  We’d rather you be happy at 80% and spend extra time on forward planning and execution.

1 – Over-estimating what they can do

Here’s our number one time management rule – time management isn’t about getting everything done, but about choosing what doesn’t get done.  Time management training provides you with greater through-out, better ability to foresee bottlenecks, an ability to prioritise resources to key objectives and fewer missed deadlines.  However time management training isn’t a “magic pill” cannot solve fundamental problems in your business - poor job descriptions, lack of resources, lack of skill/know-how or simply too much to do.  Time management can help you get more done...but not everything.