Time Management Under Stress

Posted by cscpa on October 10, 2011 · 1 Comment 

By Steven Nichols

Building a time management system that can help you survive the busy season is essential to plowing ahead instead of being plowed under, but even the best systems may need some tweaks as deadlines draw near.

Here are three tips for prioritizing and managing tasks when the hours are long, and the workload is overwhelming:

Know what to cut

Address every project, problem, or priority clamoring for your attention with one simple question: Is this worth my time?

Either a request is important, or it isn’t.  Totally ignore what is not important.  Get it off your plate and out of your mind.

Then divide the important stuff into three sections: 1) Immediate, 2) Soon, and 3) Someday.  Make a list, and tackle tasks in a prioritized order.

During stressful times, tighten the time management filter up.  More requests are discarded as “unimportant”, put off until “someday”, or listed as “soon”.  Only truly pressing matters warrant immediate attention.

Be sure to collect the useful, but not pressing, tasks in a someday list.  Then, review the list when there is more breathing room.

Ignore your email, or at least most of it

Email is the worst time and concentration-stealing culprit for information workers.  It must be managed carefully.

First, block off time for handling email.  Don’t chase down every email as it arrives. Stick to the rule of reply, remember, or recycle.  Reply to quick requests, remember long requests by creating a task, and recycle everything else.

If the busy season is upon you, consider creating an autoreply email that reads:

“I will be extraordinarily busy until X date, and will check emails only once a [day or week] until then.  If your request is urgent, and you need my immediate response, please forward your email to my emergency email address, EMERGENCY[yourname]@example.com and I will respond very quickly.”

Then set up the new emergency email address and only sign in to the emergency account in the morning.  If a request comes up, you’ll know that it is urgent, or at least that the sender thinks it is.

Set and share deadlines with others

Break large projects into individual tasks with their own timelines for completion.  Set and share these deadlines with other people in your organization.  Living up to your goals is easier with the encouragement of your peers.

Setting public goals allows others to trust you to complete the project on time, and gives them transparency into how busy you are.

After the busy season has ended, take time, then rewind.  First, get away from the office for a day or a week.  Think about Renaissance art or children’s soccer for a while.  Recharge.

When you feel more centered and calm, think through all appointments, deadlines, and stress of the busy season, and ask these three questions:

1) What did I put off or forget to do?
2) How could I have been more efficient?
3) How can I better prepare for the next fire drill?

With a few slight adjustments a good time management process will you help survive any deadline.

Author Bio: Steven Nichols works with Mission Critical Systems a Denver training company, offering Time Management training classes.  CSCPA members receive 15% off public classes with the promo code CSCPA1.  Steven can be reached at (303) 383-1627 x 1104.

Filed under Business, Productivity, Tax Season · Tagged with E-mail management, time management