Journyx Project Management Blog

As a topic, time management is about as exciting as watching flies buzz around a no-pest strip. But would you be interested in learning about time management from someone with only months to live?

The time management expert in this case was Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who passed away on July 25 at age 47 from pancreatic cancer. Along with his now-famous “last lecture” about achieving your childhood dreams, Pausch also delivered a lively, inspiring speech on time management to the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science in November 2007. You can watch a video of the lecture or read the transcript.

Pausch’s comments weren’t revolutionary, and he admitted to adapting some of his points from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s The One Minute Manager.

But Pausch’s talk combined practicality, compassion and self-effacing humor, peppered with the wisdom and bravery of a man whose days were numbered. I highly recommend his speech to anyone who feels time-starved—and who doesn’t these days?

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about Pausch and his speech in a column called “Mobile Computing.” The reason: Efficient time management is especially challenging for mobile professionals. You spend a lot of time in airports, in the air, or driving long distances. In addition to these time constraints, you’re got the constant waves of e-mail, voice mail, and other interruptions everyone else has. So it’s more challenging—and therefore more important—for mobile professionals to maximize their time. If you don’t, you forfeit time you could have spent with people you love, something Pausch understood all too well.

Read the entire article at CIO.com.

Check out a new podcast interview with Journyx CEO Curt Finch over at the Employee Benefit Adviser’s Audio Arena. In the interview, Curt discusses relevant issues like how companies can cut costs during a recession without losing valuable people and projects, and how time tracking helps both individuals and businesses of all sizes.

We grow ‘em big here in Texas. Honestly, it was the size of my forearm.

It’s leap week. By which I mean the week that contains February 29th. We only get this extra February day once an olympiad and I’ve always felt that it really should be observed as a holiday. Every business should be closed this one day out of every four years. No furniture sales, no floral deliveries. Nothing outside of emergency medical care.

On this one special day, everyone should be allowed to focus on what they are most passionate about. Reading, playing guitar, restoring that classic car out in the garage, gardening. Whatever that one thing that you never have quite enough time for is, you should be allowed this one day to dedicate your time to it. It’s a pipe dream, to be sure. But wouldn’t it be nice?

Ah well. Dreams aside, I thought I’d make my first report on the great time boxing experiment. The first thing I have to admit is that I’m doing a terrible job of using any sort of official form or policy to enforce the time boxing. I’m just a little too informal by nature for that sort of thing, I’m afraid.

That said, the good news is that I’ve embraced the concept thoroughly and I’m making it work on a somewhat intuitive level. Case in point: Last Sunday my wife and I needed to get to the community garden to set her plot set up for planting (this is Texas, spring comes early). Neither of us really wanted to put down the Sunday Times, get up from the couch and go shovel… compost. But I knew that if we didn’t do it, then it simply wouldn’t get done. Worse, the window for it would slip by completely and we’d be terribly unhappy that we’d been lazy.

So we turned to the magic of time boxing. We agreed that we’d spend exactly one hour working at the garden. We’d get as much composting done as we could and then we’d walk away, at least for the day. And you know what? We got 80% of the plot covered, on top of some weeding and general cleanup. In the end we went over our hour by about 20 minutes, but that’s fine. In fact, that’s one of the hopes inherent in time boxing for tasks you just don’t want to do - that you’ll get into it and get even more done than you would have without that built-in limit. Sure, we didn’t finish the project, but we got a hell of a lot more done than we would have by simply not going. Or, frankly, than we would have if we hadn’t known that we were going to stop at a certain point. Believe me, I’m lazy enough about stuff like this that if we’d made ourselves go with the intent of working until we were done, I’d have dragged my feet for hours.

Now, imagine taking this approach to those annoying tasks at the office. You may not wind up with zucchinis as big as your forearm, but you’ll get stuff done. And that should help you have enough time for the things that you really want to do.

-Andrew Trent, Journyx Director of Web Content

And now for a variation on our regularly scheduled “Mondays with Curt,” here is a link to the Student Operated Press, where Judyth Piazza had a chat with our fearless leader.

The two discussed issues like project accounting and time management, as well as some of Curt’s philosophies on business, technology and leadership.

Okay, it’s January. But it’s now late enough in the month that all those New Year’s resolutions have likely melted away like ephemeral icicles in the Texas sun. Alright, maybe not for you, but definitely for some people. Like me.

In any case, this is my favorite time of the year to make real efforts at change. When all the glow and shine is off and things are starting to get back to normal. In other words, when no one is looking.

This year, as befits someone who works with timesheet software for a living, I’m going to approach my problems with time management. And I’m going to do it with time boxing. I’m not the sort who can dive whole-heartedly into a complete Getting Things Done methodology (I know, I’ve tried) - but time boxing I think I can get into. If nothing else, it will help me address my chronic near-ADD. It’s not really diagnosable ADD, of course, but a propensity for feeling soul-crushing boredom with whatever task I’m actually working on. I know that something more interesting is out there, just waiting for my attention, but normally I’m too bloody-minded to break my work up in the way that time boxing pushes you to.

To help me on my way to a time boxing title, I’m going to be using David Seah’s Emergent Task Planning form, which comes from his excellent Printable CEO Series.

Now if this works, I’ll finally have time (and focus) enough to take up that other pursuit I’ve been meaning to look into… Kickboxing.

-Andrew Trent, Journyx Director of Web Content

Remember in The Matrix when the little kid said to Neo, “There is no spoon”?

As CEO of a project timesheet company, I think about time a great deal. Part of my job involves trying to convince people that tracking their time is worth the effort. One response I got recently from a smart-aleck at a customer of ours (a large pharmaceutical company) was, “There is no such thing as time, so why track it?” He then directed me to an article in Discover magazine.

The following is my favorite quote from the article:

“I recently went to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder,” says Lloyd. (NIST is the government lab that houses the atomic clock that standardizes time for the nation.) “I said something like, ‘Your clocks measure time very accurately.’ They told me, ‘Our clocks do not measure time.’ I thought, Wow, that’s very humble of these guys. But they said, ‘No, time is defined to be what our clocks measure.’ Which is true. They define the time standards for the globe: Time is defined by the number of clicks of their clocks.”

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

“At the end of the day, our attention is all that we have.” - Ken Burns

Ken Burns is my favorite filmmaker. He understands the value of time.

Time is more fleeting today than it has ever been before.

Business people currently confront overwhelming demands on their time. Time has become more critical than money, but most companies don’t yet allocate it with the same care as they would more traditional assets.

Most managers understand that time must be managed, accounted for, and invested in ways that maximize return, but this is easier said than done. Companies seldom possess the right processes and infrastructure to make the most of time resources. They often confuse the core business process of time resource allocation with simple timesheets or time management calendars. This is as dangerous as confusing a simple check register with their capital investment strategy.

To allocate and manage any resource, it must first be seen clearly and then tracked carefully. Time tracking should be a fundamental part of any business. Almost every business tracks time at some level, even if only for payroll.

At the most basic level, some companies employ a simplistic, homegrown system that is based on spreadsheets or paper. Even companies that have fully automated time tracking systems sometimes fail to leverage those systems to drive profits up and costs down.

Leveraging such systems isn’t easy. Some companies understand the potential gains associated with managing time as an asset, but they lack the knowledge, tools or resolve to actually do so. Many others succumb to a misinformed, unnecessary distrust of time tracking. Still others mistakenly believe that time tracking systems are simple, and as a result, they internally develop or buy inadequate systems that fail to deliver real value to the entire enterprise.

A well functioning time tracking system should lead to automation of payroll, client billing and above all, project accounting. If it doesn’t, you’re missing out on much of the value.

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

How often do we say to one another: I just wish there were more hours in the day? Well, there can be. When you use Project Management techniques to your advantage, you can be singing the Rolling Stones classic, Time Is on My Side.

Here are some of my favorite time-saving tips that you can apply both to your business and home life.

1. Avoid the Long, Rambling To-Do List. One thing that gets many of us in trouble is when we have enormous To-Do lists that have no prioritization, and they just continue to grow like a pile of laundry. What’s dangerous about this, is that we get overwhelmed and the To-Do list starts to become the enemy instead of our ally.

2. Prioritize. At the beginning of every day, look at what you have to do and prioritize it. What’s red hot and time specific? Do that first. What do you need to do today to move forward on some of your Big Hairy Audacious Goals? What’s at your Bus Stop? These are things you are waiting for from others. What’s on your passion list? This is what you will you do to recharge your batteries and give you energy.

Read the rest at PM World Today.

In my Time Management seminars which I have conducted for more than 100,000 people from around the globe, I show people how to get more done in less time, with less stress; to help them have more time for the things they want to do in their work and business lives.

If you can recapture a wasted hour here and there and redirect it to a more productive use, you can make great increases in your daily productivity.

Here are five of the techniques I share in our Time Management seminars, each one of which will help you to get at least one more hour out of your day of additional productive time.

1. Maintain Balance.

Your life consists of Seven Vital Areas: Health, Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional, and Spiritual. You will not spend equal amounts of time in each area or time every day in each area. But, if in the long run, you are spending a sufficient quantity and quality of time in each area, then your life will be balanced. But ignore any one of your areas, (never mind two or three!) and you will get out of balance and potentially sabotage your success. Fail to take time now for your health and you will have to take time for illness later on. Ignore your family and they may leave you and cost you a lot of time to re-establish relationships.

2. Get the Power of the Pen.

A faint pen has more power than the keenest mind. Get into the habit of writing things to do down using one tool (a Day-Timer, pad of paper, Palm Pilot, etc.) Your mind is best used for the big picture rather than all the details. The details are important, but manage them with the pen. If you want to manage it you have to measure it first. Writing things down helps you to more easily remember all that you need to accomplish.

Read more at PROJECTmagazine.

What is the major difference between average developers and those who really stand out? Productivity. Those who excel in development positions have learned to get the most out of their time when coding. They have learned techniques that enable them to continuously focus on delivering working software.

Increase your productivity by recognizing and reducing interruptions. Some interruptions are obvious and therefore are easy to eliminate. For instance, email and instant messaging applications interrupt the development thought process each time a new message is received. Although these communication mediums may seem innocent, they require much more than a quick alt-tab out and then back into your favorite IDE. More critically, interruptions of this sort require a change in thinking. They force you to stop thinking about the algorithm currently under development and start thinking about responding to the communication. After changing focus for only a couple seconds, you must reintroduce yourself to the problem at hand.

These types of distractions can be eliminated easily by making a decision to get rid of them. Setting aside dedicated development times with no email, phone, or instant messaging interruptions will improve your productivity exponentially. Try setting aside one-hour blocks of time with your phone, email, and instant messenger turned off. After an hour, spend five (5) or ten (10) minutes catching up on any critical communication and then return to productive development.

Read more at Developer.com.