Spending time

3. Check for alignment with your superiors and colleagues

Run your time allocations by your manager and key colleagues; ask them to share theirs, if possible. Sharing time allocations with a team gives a group focus and cohesion.

Managing your time

Now that you have a plan for leveraging your time, all you need to do is be ruthless in your execution of it.

Audit your time.

Take out last week's calendar, and evaluate it using your newly established time allocations for each category. This will give you a sense of how much adjustment will be necessary going forward. Record how you spend your time in a time-management log — for many, this very discipline is half the battle. (See the sidebar "Sample Weekly Time Log for a Management Consultant.") "The last time I kept a time log, I was surprised to learn that, when I am in the office, I spend almost half of my time on the telephone, either taking calls or leaving messages for people who aren't available," writes Elaine Biech in The Consultant's Quick Start Guide: An Action Plan for Your First Year in Business (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2001).

Time audits, says Blank, can also "reveal when and how you get distracted from things that matter." For instance, is multitasking really helping you? This skill is regularly held up as the sine qua non of modern-day managerial aptitudes, but a 2001 study by Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer, and Jeffrey Evans indicates that people experience something akin to writer's block whenever they have to switch tasks. The more complicated the task you're switching from or to, the greater the time cost, that is, the longer it takes you to shift over to the new task, adopt its mindset, and then get warmed up again once you return to the original task. All told, the study estimates, these switching costs could reduce a company's efficiency by 20% to 40%.

Practice time-boxing.

To-do lists will be only marginally useful if you don't set parameters for how much time to devote to each task. When you make your list, carefully estimate the time each task will take, and box it into your calendar. This discipline not only will help you finish your list, but it also will improve your ability to estimate time and manage expectations of those around you. Particularly if you are in a new position or are confronting new tasks, ask for help estimating the time for each task — otherwise, you run the risk of missing deadlines and mismanaging expectations.

Pay attention to the areas where you're weakest.

If you always delegate the tasks you don't do well, your weak points will haunt you. Acknowledge your weaknesses, but use structure to shore them up. For example, many managers have difficulty saying no to colleagues who make impromptu requests for their time. Let these people know your priorities for leveraging your time and encourage them to schedule meetings with you.