The Art Of Time Management: How To Be Efficient

October 6th 2008

Good time management involves being both effective and efficient. You have to be able to pick out the right tasks and then do them in the most economical way. In the first part of this series I looked at effectiveness. As I discussed then, that is certainly the most important stage. However it also needs to be tied with efficient work practices to really save you time. It’s no good deciding you’re going to write that life changing book you’ve always wanted to do if you are going to procrastinate all the time. Likewise, focusing on preparations for a big work conference is all well and good but if you’re not breaking the workload down into manageable chunks you’re going to be wasting time.

Unlike effectiveness, there are many, many ways of being efficient. In fact this is pretty much what productivity is (was?) all about. Much of GTD covered how to get work done in the most economical way possible. However, that was also its achilles heel. As Tim Ferriss (of Four Hour Work Week fame) said, doing something unimportant well does not make it important. Trying to detail the hundreds of productivity hacks and good work habits out there in one post is a pretty pointless endeavor so instead I’m going to discuss what I believe is the top fundamental tip for being more efficient.

In the previous post I mentioned Tim Ferriss and how he recommends using the Pareto principle to more effectively choose the right tasks to work on. To complement this, he also encourages people to use Parkinson’s law to become more efficient. In basic terms the law states that work expands to fill the time alloted to it. This typically means that you will idle along at a casual pace because you have so much time available or doing more than is necessary and complicating your work to fill up the time. Thankfully, by some proactive manipulation, Parkinson’s law can be turned to your advantage. Bring deadlines forward or wait till you are nearer to the deadline before starting the project. Speaking of the latter, while I would never encourage somebody to leave work till the last minute, understanding the difference between whether you want, should or need do something will really help you create an happy balance.

If you want more ideas be sure to check out the archive and visit my list of other productivity blogs. On Wednesday I will describe my own personal experiences on becoming more efficient and effective so be sure to keep an eye out for it (you can also subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it).