Time Study Consulting

Productivity Hurdles

What really bugs people about productivity? We conduct time and motion studies using our proprietary electronic TimeCorder device, gathering thousands of hours of real-time data from employees.

We like to complement the time study results with additional data, so we often provide employees with a brief questionnaire prior to beginning a study. One of the questions asks: “What things, outside of your control, get in the way of your productivity?”

The idea of this question is that some productivity inhibitors such as procrastination are within employees’ control. Some are outside their control. Or apparently so. It’s our contention that many of these hindrances can in fact be managed by employees through better time management training. Nonetheless, employees often believe productivity is spinning out of control through no fault of their own.

The most popular responses to the question are listed below. Read more »

Procrastination Definitions

In the coming weeks, I’ll be launching  www.BuddyHive.com.  It inspires people to get stuff done by randomly connecting buddies who become accountable to each other for achieving small tasks, usually within a week.

In the meantime, here are a number of defiintions of procrastination. Do any of them fit?

• To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay – Piers Steel
•  The intentional and habitual postponement of an important task that should be done now. – Harold Taylor Read more »

How to Prepare for Meetings

One reason that people dislike meetings is that they are not well planned. If you are the chair for the meeting, some preparation steps can make a big difference. And even if you are not the chair, you can ask that these be done.

Writing an agenda in advance forces you to determine which items you want to cover. You can also use the agenda to communicate to participants what they will be considering and what is expected of them. An agenda helps create order and control at the meeting. Ideally, those attending should have a copy in advance.

If you are not in charge, approach the chair beforehand to make sure there is an agenda and that your items are on the list for discussion.

The most important item on the agenda is the purpose of the meeting. You should be able to state it in one succinct sentence, such as, “To review and approve details of the annual budget.” Keep the list of items to be covered specific and focused. Ask yourself what you expect to happen after each item is finished.

Of course, the agenda needs to include the time, the place, and the names of those who will be attending and the start and end times. End times are rarely included, but when they are, you can bring some urgency to the meeting by counting down the time remaining, especially when items run long.

Consider starting meetings at unconventional times. Time study research that we conducted indicates that meetings tend to start more on time on the half hour, rather than on the hour. Also, if you want a short meeting, schedule it for later in the day. Our time studies show that meetings are shorter later in the day. Business has a tendency to move quickly as five o’clock approaches.

A few days before the meeting, send out the meeting invitation and agenda.  Some people wonder whether they should send a follow up confirmation – often this is just a waste of valuable time.

If you’re unable to circulate an agenda in advance, write it on a flip chart or white board before participants arrive. Or give everyone a printed copy.

Meetings become dysfunctional when homework has not been done in advance. Attendees debate issues back and forth based on their impressions, feelings, biases, recollections, and quite often their loud voices. Instead, they need to come to the meeting armed with reports, research, recommendations, surveys, and conclusions from prior discussions. So as chair, encourage attendees to do this work in advance. Then, the meeting agenda will accept reports and recommendations rather than trying to formulate them. “Rubber stamping” a recommendation is not a bad thing. It works effectively when adequate homework has been done.

The investment you take to plan meetings thoroughly will result in meetings that people want to attend. Your time is worth it.

The Story That Never Began

Procrastination is a universal problems that everyone can identify with. Our time study research reveals that difficulty in procrastinating and getting tasks done when they ought to be done is a huge challenge for employees. The humorous story below, deals with one individual’s efforsts to overcome procrastination.

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Before we begin this story, perhaps we should go back to the beginning: birth. Sylvia Slattery’s entry into this world was certainly not without incident. In fact, it was quite a dilly.

Prior to the long-anticipated event, the as-yet-unnamed Sylvia had become quite accustomed to the warm, cozy environment inside her mother’s womb. She really wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Someday soon, she would get around to it. Meanwhile, she spent many a happy hour kicking the inside of her comfortable nesting place and planning a few changes to the upholstery. The color scheme just didn’t work. And those walls would have to go.

Eventually Sylvia was born. Her arrival, about three weeks overdue, was a taste of many things to come. Perhaps it was an omen that the onslaught of her mother’s labor had coincided with the return of an overdue library book, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

While an infant, Sylvia quickly learned the art of procrastination. Oddly timed feeding sessions were not just a daily habit, they became an obsession. Just as mom was ready, Sylvia wasn’t. Sylvia preferred to gurgle incoherently—the sort of behavior normally associated with city councillors.

A few years later, on the first day of kindergarten, Sylvia waited until the second day to show up.

Show-and-Tell sessions proved an exemplary introduction to the fine art of excuse making. One day when it was Sylvia’s turn, she got up empty handed and recited a lengthy apology that displayed a level of intelligence and obfuscation well beyond her years: “With regard to the subject at hand, the aforementioned demonstration of personal artifacts, a temporary deferral is requested until a full and complete presentation is available…” Subjected to this speech, some of the kids screwed up their faces in revulsion, as if they were being offered a bowl of cold rice pudding tainted with Brussels sprouts and chicken liver. Most of them just took a nap. Sylvia’s loquacious style was to haunt her on a fateful November day years later, but more about that later.

In grade nine, Sylvia developed a new series of excuses for failing to complete projects on time. By then her teachers learned that her mother had died six times, her house had burned down on three different occasions, she had been through fourteen different grandparents and her pet dog was run over on a monthly basis. Sylvia’s penchant for exaggeration once got her caught. The dog gave it away.

Of course, when she grew up, Sylvia’s problems were of a quite different nature, but more about those later.

University life presented a whole new set of deadlines and, thus, ever more elaborate excuses for not meeting them. She was known to hand in essays at 7:00 a.m. which were due the day before. She would slip them under a professor’s door, with a predated note. One time, a professor who got wise to her methods called her to assign a mid-term report. “OK Sylvia, I’m assigning you ‘The Effect of Yodeling on Eighteenth-Century Scandinavian Pottery Making: A Comparative Analysis.’ Please call me if you have any questions. And by the way, it’s due yesterday.”

Without even thinking, Sylvia asked, “Can I get a two-week extension?”

“Oh, I suppose,” answered the all-too-wise professor. “I’ll see you two weeks from yesterday then.”

Certain events in one’s life mark a turning point. These significant occasions change us from the way we were to the way we are: the first kiss, graduation from high school, becoming engaged. For Sylvia, it was the discovery of postdated checks.

But that was surpassed by another event of monumental importance. Halfway through her last semester at university, she burst into her roommate’s room. It was a roomy room, exactly the sort of room a roommate would normally room in. Sylvia had a look of ecstasy on her face. “Guess what?” she exclaimed.

Her roommate Ignazia, who had been sleeping, feigned enthusiasm. “A new boyfriend? You got an A on that yodeling thing?”

“No, silly! I just found out you can buy stuff now and pay later! Isn’t that amazing?” The world had rarely seen better days.

Later that year, Sylvia became a charter member of the Last Minute Club. And it was no surprise that her favorite song was “Tomorrow,” her favorite mini-series was The Day After and her favorite play was Same Time Next Year.

Some people set their watches ahead to make sure they’re not late. Sylvia set her calendar ahead, though not always to great success. As a result, she once celebrated Christmas in late February.

When she reached adulthood, Sylvia refined the art of keeping up with yesterday. Her idea of a pleasant Saturday morning took place on Sunday afternoon, sitting on the front porch she hadn’t got around to repairing, sipping warmed-over coffee from the day before, reading the previous Sunday’s New York Times.

But her dilatory tactics eventually would come back to haunt her. The details can now be revealed. It was a usual day at the office, as Sylvia spent the early part of the morning starting to catch up on various tasks she had put off from the day before. As she was reading her mail, a sudden revelation of grave importance was revealed to her, as revelations normally are. Unfortunately, space is limited and so details cannot be provided. Suffice to say that whatever it was would just have to wait for another day.

from the book,  ”A Complete Waste of Time” by Mark Ellwood

Daily Planning – How Much is Right?

Time management trainers always encourage you to plan your activities every day.  This makes intuitive sense. But what does a time and motion study reveal about planning time? Read more »

The Impact of Overtime on Non-Work Hours

We usually conduct our time and motion study projects using the TimeCorder device.  However, from 2003 – 2010 we asked visitors to a previous version of our web site to fill out the Tabulator. It tracked 11 major categories; work hours, family time, meal, television, community, spouse time, chores, me time, commuting, personal care and sleep.

I presented the findings in Oxford last summer, talking about the effects of overtime hours on other areas outside of work.

The Globe and Mail picked up the study and reported on it today.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/morning-manager/tv-time-outstrips-family-time-canadian-survey-finds/article2246080/

Unproductive Hours at Work

The world of work is massively unproductive. Or so reported a Microsoft survey from 2005 that a colleague recently sent me. While a few years old, time study data doesn’t tend to shift much over short periods – the data is still relevant. The survey was based on input from 38,000 people from 200 countries.

In the survey, employees reported work hours of 45 hours per week. This closely matches data from our own time and motion study projects from the last 22 years. Our data shows the average work week is 47 hours, including breaks.

The key finding from the Microsoft study that causes alarm is that employees consider about 17 hours per week to be unproductive. That’s more than a third of the work week!

Some of the common “productivity pitfalls” that were reported include unclear objectives, lack of team communication, ineffective meetings, unclear priorities, and procrastination.

Microsoft is in the technology business, and no doubt a couple of its survey questions were designed to support its mission. Sure enough, 55 percent of respondents said they relate their productivity directly to their software. Not surprising. But wait. That leaves 45% who relate productivity to something else. Whatever that is, it is not about technology. It’s likely that employees are thinking about soft skills that enable them to run better meetings, overcome procrastination, set priorities, and enhance other time management skills.

Those are the skills that get overlooked. An on-line service called Google Trends shows relative search volumes over the past few years – what terms people are interested in. A search on “training” shows a decline from a score of 1.5 in 2004 to a score of about .75 in late 2011. Meanwhile “smart phone” skyrocketed from 1.0 to over 2.0 between 2009 and late 2011. Clearly, smart phones today have a greater appeal than training.

Yet what if everyone who lined up for hours to buy the latest version of a smart phone spent their money on training instead? Something needs to be done to address all those unproductive hours. As we study the use of time, our data confirms that employees are not becoming any more productive in achieving their highest priorities than they were twenty years ago. Much has improved about how we do our work, but there is farther to go. Do we need the latest app? Or should we invest in new training methods to improve personal productivity?

The Perils That No One Predicted

Microsoft has produced a film that portrays the world of work a few years from now. I remember seeing one of these from 1990 – a bright cheery world of the future where a woman talked to a computer in her car while the computer arranged meetings and prepared presentations. At the time I wondered if the world of the future would match the utopian vision. Well, the future has arrived, and it isn’t always pretty.

The reality is quite different. For instance, our work measurement studies show that employees spend 3.2 hours per week reading miscellaneous emails that have nothing to do with their main activities. And many employees spend 30 minutes per week fixing technology problems.

The film omits these and other technological glitches that are part of daily life. When it comes to time management, technology can often hinder as much as it can help. Consider this list of hassles that no one predicted:

• Spam
• Voice mail jail
• Unnecessary emails
• Dropped cell phone calls
• Unwanted telemarketing calls
• Car crashes caused by texting
• Drained batteries
• Ringing phones at movies
• Phone interruptions at restaurants
• Broken web site links
• Computer viruses
• Costly smart phone apps
• Expensive downloading costs
• Identity theft
• Billing problems from service providers
• Help desks that offer no help
• Inadvertent pocket dialing
• Hackers
• Blackberry service interruptions
• Social media obligations
• Advertising everywhere

If the world of today includes all of these things that no one predicted twenty years ago, then the world of the future is just as likely to be fraught with frustrations.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what will make life interesting.

Feel free to add comments with your own hassles.