Getting more with less.

This "how-to" article is designed to give physician executives a variety of time management ideas, strategies, and techniques. Time management is a critical skill that enables a manager to accomplish more with less effort. The benefits of improved time management are higher quality professional and personal life, and reduced stress.

With all of the demands on the physician manager's time, it's important to develop an effective system for setting priorities on tasks. You have virtually un limited things to do, but limited time in which to accomplish them. Given that condition, it makes sense to focus on the tasks that will give you maximum payback for the invested time.

Time Leveraging

Time leveraging is the concept of identifying leveraged activities and making them top priorities. Leveraged activities are those for which the expenditure of time now is repaid many times over at a later date. For example, planning is a leveraged activity because the time invested in the planning stage is made up through greater efficiency in the doing star,. Taking time to plan saves time in the long run. Another example of leveraged use of time is training. Taking the time to train someone now means a payback in saved time that could last for months or years. Creating a tickler file is also a leveraged activity. It takes about 10 minutes to set one up, but using a tickler file for followup items saves time for as long as you use it.

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

Management expert Peter Drucker has defined efficiency as "doing the job right."1 He defines effectiveness as "doing the right job.", To avoid the activity trap, where the task and the task process become more important than the task's completion, it's important to focus on objectives. Otherwise there is a tendency to become bogged down in details.

Vilfrado Pareto, an 18th Century economist, popularized the 80/20 rule, sometimes referred to as Pareto's Principle. The rule states that 20 percent of tasks bring 80 percent of the results figure 1, below). You can leverage your time by focusing on these HIPO (high payoff) tasks. (The percentages are not always 80 and 20, as Pareto proclaimed. The point is, there is the significant few' and the "trivial many" with which we must deal each day.)

Applications of the Rule

Twenty percent of the employees do 80 percent of the work. Twenty percent of your to-do list win bring 80 percent of your desired results. Twenty percent of the medications are prescribed 80 percent of the time. Twenty percent of the subscribers of a health plan utilize 80 percent of the doctors' time and equipment expense. Twenty percent of the items in your desk are used 80 percent of the time. Twenty percent of your communications result in 80 percent of your effectiveness. Twenty percent of your clothes are worn 80 percent of the time. Twenty percent of a magazine article has 80 percent of the information you need. And so forth.

Time management expert Peter Turla refers to elephants and ants in his book Time management made easy.2 Each day there are a few significant items that will give you the highest payoff if completed. These HIPOs are your elephants," and they should be the main focus of your job. To achieve maximum return on invested time, develop the habit of elephant hunting.

The trivial many are the ants," and they can be time robbers. Dealing with the ants takes time and results in very little forward progress.

By focusing on the elephants, you can leverage your time and get more "bang for the buck." How can you develop the habit of "hunting the elephants" instead of "stomping the ants?"

An effective way to "elephant hunt" is to develop a thought process when setting priorities that takes two things into account: Payoff value) and priority (urgency).

Imagine the manager who bounces from one task to another on the basis of the urgency of the tasks, driven externally and managing by crisis. Eventually, this individual could experience burn-out, or at the very least frustration, because in this mode he or she is focusing on activities instead of objectives. The idea is to choose the right activity that will lead you to the desired objective.

In the grid in figure 2, page 21, there are spaces to list activities based on Payoff and Priority. Imagine where the activities on your to-do list would fit. Some things are valuable and urgent; they are the 1-As. If something is urgent but does not have a high payoff or value, it would be a 3A.

To better leverage your time, focus on the l's, because they have the biggest payoff. There are two questions that win help determine if something is valuable. What is the best thing that win happen if this is done? What is the worst thing that will happen if this is not done?

For example, if you're trying to decide whether it's worth the time to attend a training session to learn to delegate more effectively, you might consider:

* The best thing that could happen is that you would improve your delegation skills and be more effective with subordinates, be a better communicator, get more done through others, develop your team, build organizational depth, etc.

* The worst thing that could happen if you did not develop good delegation skills is that you and your team would be frustrated, less would get done, you would be overwhelmed, etc.

As you can see from this analysis, learning to delegate better would be high payoff. However, you could put off developing better management skills. Therefore, it is not urgent; it's a 1C. Often that's the problem. Because high-payoff managerial and administrative activities are sometimes not urgent, they get put aside. You may think, "I don't have time to do those things." If you want to be an effective manager, you don't have time to not train and delegate to others.

Because 1C activities are valuable and important but have no urgency, they are the tasks and projects on which you might procrastinate. They lack a deadline and are time-consuming. Instead of working on valuable tasks, you'll spend time stomping ants if you're not focused.

Hunt the Elephants

Set aside a few minutes of quiet time to focus on your most important objectives. List the highest payoff targets in your job. Break down these objectives into several action steps and assign deadlines for them. You eat an elephant a bite at a time by dividing big tasks into small manageable pieces. This win help you overcome procrastination, because it turns a large, difficult, or time-consuming project into a series of small simple steps.

Decide which tasks you can delegate and which ones you need to do personally. Write these targets, objectives, and tasks in a planning system. Use a tickler file or long-range calendar to track your progress. Each day make some progress on your 1C activities. Even half an hour a day focused on the nonurgent, important activities will make a significant difference in your accomplishments.

It is also valuable to "elephant hunt" in your personal life. Life is too short to be totally career-focused. You will miss the joy and fulfillment of a rich and rewarding life away from your career. In the long run, what have you really gained if you are successful in your career but unfulfilled as a person? Make time to decide what you value in your life. Is it high-quality time with loved ones? Travel? Community involvement? Deeper sharing with friends or loved ones? Hobbies or sports activities? Decide what it is you don't have in your life that you would like to have. Decide what you do have that you don't want. Determine the payoffs for these values, assign them priorities, and break their achievement into action steps that will lead to your personal objectives.

It's worth taking time to periodically examine where you are and where you want to go. You're more likely to move in the direction you want to go and seize the opportunities that arise if you've invested time thinking and planning.

References

1. Drucker, P. The Effective Executive. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

2. Turla, P., and Hawkins, K. Time Management Made Easy. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984.

T H E A U T H O R

Ben Adkins is a management consultant, training specialist, and Vice President of the National Management institute, Flower Mound, Tex.