A number of factors eat away at your time. These ‘time-eaters’ affect your productivity and prevent you from accomplishing the tasks you had planned to do.
You need to realistically determine the amount of controllable and uncontrollable time you have to schedule. Uncontrollable time is the time taken away by interruptions, system-imposed activities, and crisis issues.
Controllable time is time available in your workday to work on things from your ’To Do’ list. When you subtract the total amount of uncontrollable time from you workday, you are left with controllable time.
In this topic you will determine how much controllable time you have from you workday.
What are the benefits of determining controllable time?
□ You will take on more tasks and projects.
□ You will be able to control more time.
□ You will accurately schedule your tasks .
□ You can plan your activities on a realistic basis.
You will be shocked to find out that you can control as little as 15 to 25% of your workday. The rest of your day is blown away by uncontrollable activities. Not being able to control the uncontrollable could lead to frustration.
Observer the following conversation between Jay, a custom service executive, and his colleague John.
John: What’s the matter, you look down.
Jay: Gee, I didn’t do much today.
John: Of cause you did. You served your customs and were responsive to them. What more do you want?
Jay: (frustrated) But I didn’t get time to do administrative work that I had planned to complete today. It has been pending for quite some time now.
In the scenario you just saw, the nature of Jay’s work was to predominately support customers. Responding to these customers in a meaningful and responsive way directly reduce the amount of controllable time in his workday. As a result, he didn’t get time to do administrative work as he wanted to do. That’s why he felt frustrated.
Don’t you experience this frustration too? You can avoid this by being realistic about your controllable time. This helps you to accurately schedule your tasks from you ‘To Do’ list.
Remember, the trick to determine your average controllable time is not to look at just one day. It is possible that one morning you walk into work and get hit with a major crisis. It takes your all day to solve it. So you would have less controllable time on that day than usual.
But if you consider that day in the perspective of a week or two, it tends to balance out. Some days you have less controllable time, other days you have more. You need to determine your average at the end of a week or two.
How can you accurately schedule your tasks you want to do?
□ Determining your average controllable time you want.
□ Be realistic in determining your average controllable time.
□ Be realistic in determining your controllable time for one day .
□ Do not do any plans.
Here’s the first step to determine amount of your controllable time in your workday. Assume that 50% of your time is controllable, and the other 50% is not. If you work an average of 10 hours per day, assume that 5 hours will be blown away by uncontrollable activities and actions.
The remaining 5 hours constitutes controllable time for you. Therefore you can schedule tasks from ‘To Do’ list into those five hours.
The average of 50/50 may or may not valid for you. Over the next week or so, keep track of how much work you are able to do within the scheduled controllable time. Observe the schedule carefully before making adjustments.
Is the following statement true or false? You should firmly stick to the rule of scheduling 50% controllable time and 50% uncontrollable time.
□ True .
□ False.
As you go through your work week and track the activities, you may discover that you are able to complete all scheduled tasks within your 50% controllable time. If you accomplish additional tasks in that period, you probably have more than 50% controllable time in your workday. So next week schedule 60% for controllable time, 40% for uncontrollable time, and see how that works out.
You could also arrive at different realization after going through the first week at 50/50 level. You may have found that often you could not accomplish everything you have planned for that day. This means probably you don’t have 50% controllable time. You have something less than that. So the next week schedule 40% controllable time, 60% uncontrollable time, and see how that works.
Make adjustments until you hit the level where you are able to accomplish what you have scheduled to do in your controllable time. That will be your average controllable time.,
Kevin, the sales manager, finds that he never has enough time to do what he has planned for the day. So he decided schedule himself on a 50/50 level of controllable time. But after a couple of days, Kevin finds he is unable to complete his task in his controllable time due to the crisis in office. What do you think Kevin must do to identify his controllable time.
□ Continue with his 50/50 level for another week.
□ Schedule his time to 40% controllable time, 60% uncontrollable time.
□ Schedule 60% controllable time and 40% uncontrollable time .
□ Do not make any plans.
Determine your controllable time versus uncontrollable time. Controllable time may differ from day to day. Therefore it is necessary to determine an average controllable time over a week or two. Make adjustments in determining your average controllable time until you get to a level that is workable. Controllable time is an innovative concept to schedule yourself realistically and improve productivity.