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The Executive's Corner

How Well Do You Manage Your Time?   Management guru Peter Drucker says "Time is the scarcest resource." Everyone has exactly 24 hours in their day. If you waste one minute, out of the 1440 you have each day. you know you'll never get it back. But the person among us is rare who operates his or her life as if it actually mattered. Most of us live our days as if we had inexhaustible "time accounts." Thrift with our money has no correlation to our management of our time. How we spend our time is mostly a matter of habit, based largely on our upbringing and social background. Answer these 26 questions as honestly as you can. You should get an idea of how well or badly you manage your time, as well as which habits are your worst time-wasters. For further help with time management, see "Manage Your Time" in the Articles section, or contact Allies Consulting. 1. When you are faced with a task that requires careful attention to detail, how are you likely to react? a) I hate highly detailed work. I avoid it as much as possible. I'll gloss over the details and try to get the "big picture" quickly. b) I love highly detailed work. I could spend my life doing it. In fact, when I have such work to do, I'm likely to stretch it out because I enjoy it so much. c) I fall between the two extremes. I can do highly detailed work, but I know when to wrap it up and get on to other things. 2. Do you generally put in longer hours than other people who work at jobs similar to yours? a) Yes, just about all the time. b) Yes, frequently. c) Occasionally. d) Rarely or never. 3. Is it very important to you to feel popular with coworkers? a) Yes. b) Somewhat. c) Not really. 4. Would you be more likely to agree or disagree with this statement: "If you want a job done well, you usually have to do it yourself." a) Agree. b) Disagree. 5. When you tell someone you will meet him at a specific time, do you usually arrive when you said you would? a) Yes. b) I'm occasionally late. c) I'm often late. d) I'm just about always late. 6. When an important decision has to be made at work, you generally prefer to make it: a) On your own. b) In conjunction with others at a meeting or brainstorming session. 7. Are you a pack rat? Do you have trouble throwing things out even when you know there's virtually no chance you'll ever need them again? a) Yes. b) Somewhat. c) No. 8. Do you have trouble saying no to people? a) Yes. b) Sometimes. c) No. 9. Do you worry a lot? a) Yes. b) Yes, but probably no more than most people. c) Some, but not much. d) No, hardly at all. 10. Do you take up various interests, sports or hobbies only to abandon them before you've achieved any real competence in the area you've chosen? a) Yes, frequently. b) Sometimes. c) Not usually. 11. Do you often make false starts at work, beginning projects and then not finishing them? a) Yes. b) No. 12. Are you a perfectionist? a) Yes. b) No. 13. If you have two tasks to do and one is easy while the other is difficult, which one will you try to do first? a) The difficult one. b) The easy one. 14. When you have several things that need doing, do you have trouble setting priorities and deciding which are the most crucial? a) Yes, a lot. b) I have some trouble doing this. c) I have little or no trouble setting priorities. 15. Do you often try to do more than one thing at a time (like studying or reading reports while you watch TV)? a) Yes. b) Occasionally. c) No. 16. Do you usually get things done on time? a) Yes. b) No. c) Sometimes yes, sometimes no. 17. When faced with a task, do you usually set a deadline for yourself, even in instances where no official deadline has been imposed? a) Yes. b) Sometimes. c) No, I usually assign it a lower priority and do it when I have time. 18. Do you tend to leave things until the last minute? a) Yes. b) Sometimes. c) No. 19. Would you be more likely to agree or disagree with this statement: "I find I often underestimate the amount of time I need to get things done." a) I agree. b) I disagree. 20. How's your attention span? a) Very good. I can concentrate for long periods of time without getting distracted. b) Pretty good. I can concentrate when I really have to, but if I'm not under heavy pressure, my concentration sometimes slips. 21. Would you say that, deep down, you really know what you want out of life? a) Yes. b) No. 22. Do you feel you never really have enough time to do all the things you need to do? a) Yes. b) Sometimes I feel like that. c) Not usually. 23. Do you often work on holidays and weekends, and postpone or cancel vacations because you have too much work to do? a) Yes. b) No. 24. By the end of the day have you usually accomplished the things you set out to do when you began the day? a) Yes. b) Not always, but most of the time. c) No. d) I don't generally set an agenda for my day. I take things as they come. 25. Is the area where you do your primary work messy and disorganized? a) Yes. b) Somewhat, but it's not badly disorganized. c) No. 26. Which of the following statements most closely reflects your decision-making style? a) I often make impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decisions. b) I don't make a decision until I have every possible relevant and useful fact at hand. c) I'm between the two extremes. SCORING For each of your answers, find the assigned point value below, and add all the values. The highest possible score is 130, the lowest is 26. 1. a=1, b=2, c=3 10. a=1, b=3, c=5 19. a=1, b=5 2. a=1, b=2, c=4, d=5 11. a=1, b=5 20. a=5, b=5, c=1, d=1 3. a=1, b=3, c=5 12. a=1, b=5 21. a=5, b=1 4. a=1, b=5 13. a=5, b=1 22. a=1, b=3, c=5 5. a=5, b=4, c=2, d=1 14. a=1, b=3, c=5 23. a=1, b=5 6. a=5, b=1 15. a=1, b=3, c=5 24. a=5, b=5, c=1, d=1 7. a=1, b=3, c=5 16. a=5, b=1, c=2 25. a=1, b=3, c=5 8. a=1, b=3, c=5 17. a=5, b=3, c=1 26. a=1, b=1, c=5 9. a=1, b=2, c=4, d=5 18. a=1, b=3, c=5 If you scored 96 to 130 points: You are extremely thrifty with your time. You manage it well and don't get sidetracked easily into doing things you didn't plan to do. You are probably extremely good at setting priorities and you don't let minor things take up major portions of your time. You are not necessarily one of those people who seem to have something scheduled for every minute of every day. Such people, though they seem efficient, often are the biggest time wasters. They look busy because they manage time poorly and consequently are always on the verge of being swamped by the things they have to do. Actually, people who score high on this psychograph often look like time-wasters. This is because they organize their priorities so well that they have plenty of time left over to do as they like. The executive who spends large chunks of time on the golf course or the tennis court is often the most effective type of manager. He knows how to delegate work so he doesn't get bogged down in minor details that his subordinates should handle. Those in this high-scoring category may sometimes appear to be chronic daydreamers. But their daydreams are not wasted. Someone like Albert Einstein may have looked like he spent large amounts of time puttering around and daydreaming, but it would be hard to argue that he didn't use his time productively. 61 to 95 points: You are about average when it comes to wasting time. When something is really important, you'll usually get it done on time and in good order, but in other areas of your life you tend to be lackadaisical about organizing your time. Things you would like to do get put off because you never seem to have time; non-critical work assignments keep slipping further and further down in the growing pile of paperwork on your desk; the dreams of accomplishment you once had seem to recede further and further from your reach. If you don't get organized, you'll find your life has sped by without your ever doing the things you most wanted. Look at any answers you chose that carried point values of 1 or 2. These are your weak areas; start working on them. 26 to 60 points: You are a spendthrift when it comes to time. You very rarely get full value for the time that slips through your fingers at an alarming rate. However, since time-wasting is basically due to bad habits, you can do something about it. To improve your habits in using your time, work on these areas: concentration, setting priorities, and keeping a time diary. For further help with time management, see "Manage Your Time" in the Articles section, or contact Allies Consulting.   | Home page | Site Map | © Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved Allies Consulting POBox 9635 San Rafael, CA 94912 (415) 459-2272 www.AlliesConsulting.com