Purpose of this Guide
Over the past one hundred years, even the past ten years, communication has changed at a rate never seen before in history. If you asked anyone today, they would honestly tell you that the way we communicate (or even the way they communicate) is very different from even a few years ago. The pandemic exacerbated a digital revolution in communication, and whether that is a good thing or bad thing depends on our personal management of that technology.
The internet changed everything. Suddenly, information that was only accessible by poring through books in a library or by attending the world’s most prestigious universities was made public and easily accessible for all of humanity. What can we compare the change it brought about to? The closest thing we can compare it to is probably the printing press. The printing press allowed for the spread of information at a rate no one thought could be possible. Even at its inception, a printed book could cost the average clerk about three years’ wages. Now in a similar way, access to information has become cheap, even free, but as a result we must deal with a unique problem – there can be, if we aren’t careful, too much information for us to handle. As a result, communication changed drastically.
Before the internet, communication was much slower. Before smartphones, communication was also much slower. But as these different mediums of communicating information grew, so did the rate at which we communicated. It might have been the case in the past that we’d receive a letter from a friend or relative every few weeks or months–it was a rare occasion. We may have had plenty of verbal communication at social gatherings, social events, and et cetera, but they were infrequent and you could easily disconnect.
But now with technology, communication moves like lightning. And so we have an issue – how do we manage it all? When we received a letter in the past, we might think about it for a day or two and then write back, and then wait a couple more weeks to hear back from the other person. Once we got to email, there was still an expectation to respond within a day or two at times. But now for some of us, we might receive several hundred messages a day instead. We need to find a way to become organized amidst all of this. Let’s consider some time management strategies to handle digital communications.
Task Management Strategies
How to Divide Your Work
One of the most famous techniques for managing your tasks is the “Get Things Done (GTD)” technique, developed by David Allen. The main idea is to take all information that comes at you, capture it, and route it to several different “lists” for processing.
For example, if it’s something you can do in less than two minutes, write it down and plan to do it at your earliest convenience. If it’s something that will take a bit longer, either defer it (put it on your calendar) or delegate it to a team mate if it’s urgent and you won’t have the time. If something isn’t actionable in general (maybe something you need to think about, or a thought not worth entertaining), you can throw that away or file it away for reference later. This way of organizing information allows you to manage your digital communication especially, by dividing what you will do and when. For those we can take action on, let’s think about each of these three a bit more in depth.
Do
There are some things that are quick to do, but if we aren’t properly organized we can easily lose track of them. That’s why, as soon as a task comes our way or pops into our head, it’s best to write it down right away. Or, for example, if you receive an actionable task on a chat app like Telegram, create a private channel where you can forward that message, so that you can get back to it ASAP or at least decide what to do with it when you get the chance.
If you are being asked, make sure to let the person asking know when you plan to get back to them, and don’t forget to save their request and update them once it’s accomplished.
Delegate
One sign that you may want to delegate is that you find yourself often being the bottleneck in a certain process and larger tasks. For example, if work is being held back because you aren’t able to make necessary calls or visits during the day, you might need help from someone else.
I do also want to emphasize that this shouldn’t be an excuse to push your own work onto others. If a task is entrusted to you specifically, or you are the only person qualified to accomplish it, you have to find a way to make time even if it means canceling other things.
If there are certain tasks or projects that come up frequently, take them as an opportunity to bring in a colleague and work on it together to help them develop skill in that task or area of expertise. That way, next time a responsibility like it comes around there will be at least two qualified people to tackle it.
Defer
For many things we do in our day-to-day schedule, it’s difficult to reliably accomplish them without setting aside an hour or two. These are the things that often get pushed back when we procrastinate. However, if we block out time on our calendars to do them, they get much easier. Additionally, if we still have trouble even after setting aside time, it can be helpful to schedule a meeting with a colleague (especially if they have the same thing to do) for accountability. It will be much harder to cancel or skip that task if someone else is waiting for you to show up.
How to Make Time
There’s an old experiment you may have heard of that illustrates a forward-thinking approach to managing our time. An empty jar is placed on a table, with a generous amount of rocks, pebbles, and sand next to it. How do you fill the jar so as to fit everything and fit it neatly? You will probably want to drop in the rocks first, followed by the pebbles, followed by the sand; because otherwise, it will be hard to fit all the rocks in at the top after filling it nearly to the brim with sand. Make time for the large tasks first. Like Mark Twain comically said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
British historian Cyril Parkinson coined what we now call Parkinson’s Law in a 1955 essay of The Economist. In it, he famously said “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Essentially, it means that the amount of time one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task. A task without a deadline will never get done. If we don’t schedule out time for the large tasks, the small things in our schedule will grow to fill up all the space. One of the best solutions to this dilemma is time blocking.
Time blocking is setting aside time in your schedule for specific kinds of tasks. For example, if you find you need some focus time for writing, or for deep work, you might set aside three hours every Friday to devote to those kinds of tasks as they come to you during the week. Or if you have a goal to achieve something by the end of the week, for example gain three new leads from outreach, you might want to schedule two two-hour time slots for focusing solely on those initial outreach tasks at the beginning of the week. That way, by the end of the week you will likely see a result from your work.
An important thing to consider when it comes to this is that in order for it to work properly, you must treat the time as non-negotiable. There are things in your schedule that you already consider as non-negotiable. Maybe it’s working from 9 to 5, maybe it’s going to bed before 12AM, maybe it’s going for a morning walk. If you set aside time for something, don’t allow yourself to be distracted.
A good example of this can be found in Benjamin Franklin’s Journal.
You can see how on the right hand side of the page, he divides his day up into several different kinds of work. General work, reading and lunch, organizing and relaxation, and sleep. On the left side of the page he gives some space for his own planning and reflection, which is also important as we examine the time we’re spending day to day. Today, you can also organize this digitally in Google Calendar or on a spreadsheet.
Elon Musk is also purported to use this strategy, he schedules out different tasks throughout his day in 10 or 15-minute intervals. For example, he might have a 45-minute block set aside for meetings one day to give time for three short-but-meaningful conversations.
If you have trouble focusing during the times you’ve blocked off for various tasks, a lot of people advocate using the Pomodoro technique. Set a timer for roughly 20-minute intervals, and take a 5-minute break in between each period to take a quick break and refocus. You can experiment with the times to find what works for you. Alternatively, you could also set a chime on your phone at the 30-minute mark to remind you to get up and stretch.
If things keep popping up in your head as you’re focusing on another task, try keeping a small notepad or a sticky note. Jot down a bullet point for the things that come up while you’re focusing, and categorize them using the GTD technique once you’re finished with the task at hand.
Application and Reflection
Each of us has a schedule we hold to. Let’s map out and consider how we spend our time. Take a blank sheet of paper, and label the twenty four hours of a day on the vertical axis and the seven days of the week on the horizontal axis. There are already things in our day that can’t be moved. Maybe it’s meetings, maybe it’s family commitments, social commitments, other things. Block those out, you can’t move them.
Now what about the empty spots in your schedule? Let’s think about what to fill it with. Don’t fill in every single minute of time, but leave some space in between. Sometimes things will come up, and without some amount of flexibility our whole schedule can be thrown off. This will help to allow for some unpredictability.
What different categories can I divide my week into? Things such as meetings, study, outreach, etc. Look at your individual tasks, reflect on your past schedule, and discern what categories are needed. It doesn’t have to be the same categories and allotted times every day. Then, estimate the time needed for your various tasks and schedule them in the times you’ve committed accordingly.
If possible, don’t allow things to go outside the bounds you’ve set. For example, if you’ve made the determination to give a one-hour time slot to meetings, don’t allow it to become three hours of meetings and crowd out the time you’ve set for project work unless it’s an emergency. Sometimes, there will also be times you have to lose sleep. As you go from week to week, take time to reflect on how you’ve allotted your time and whether it needs to be adjusted. Instead of allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed, let’s reflect on the time we’ve been given and the great opportunity we have to spend it in a valuable way.
by Greg Bernard
