DDDs and ABCs Make Time Management A-OK

 

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the breakneck pace of the things that are happening all around you these days, you are not alone. Especially in today’s business climate – where the watchword is “do more with less and do it NOW” – we are all inundated with demands and deadlines that create awful time management issues. There is not really much you can do about the fact that these demands are streaming at you like they were coming from a fire hose, but you can do a better job of managing these requests, and it is as easy as remembering your alphabet.

The DDDD (4 D’s) Principle

Use these four simple steps to help you sort through the list of activities and requests on your plate. Just remember that your point of reference should be to tie your choices to things that will help you achieve your most important goals. When you are faced with a decision on an activity or a request, you must resolve the situation with one of these four choices:

• Do It – Activities you can begin to work on now; possibly activities that require immediate attention or must be done as a prerequisite for doing other tasks.
• Delegate It – Activities that may be handled by someone else. Delegation is one of the most powerful and effective time leveraging tools you have at your disposal.  It is also one of the most underutilized.  Usually, the failure to delegate often enough is related to the fear that a) nobody else can do the task as well as we can, or the fear that b) by the time we have trained someone else to do it, we could have done it ourselves anyhow.  Please remember: You are not a superhero.  You can’t do everything.  Once you learn to trust others to do the things that don’t absolutely require your personal touch, you will have fewer projects on your plate and get twice as much done.
  • Note: a decision to delegate also becomes a Do It.  If you decide to delegate an activity:
    • Make a note in your planner regarding who you will give the job to
    • When and how you will discuss it with them
    • What will be the deadline you give them for getting it done
• Defer It – Activities that are important, but either can’t or don’t need to be done immediately.  NOTE: If you are going to defer an activity, always make a note in your planner of the date and time when you will come back to it.
• Dump It – Activities that might seem appealing but which don’t add real value to helping you efficiently and effectively accomplish your goals.  It might be nice to do these at some point, but if you never got around to it, there would be no negative consequences for reaching your goals. Probably, you should just scratch these off the list.

THE “ABC” PRINCIPLE

Once you have sorted your activities according to the DDDD process, you might still have to go back and sort your “Do It” activities one more time, because even though they are all important, you can still only do one thing at a time (more on the myth of multitasking later!)

“ABC” is a priority ranking system.  The letters represent:

A = Items which must be done first because of penalties for putting them
off, or because they can be completed quickly (15 minutes or less) so you can then devote your full attention to more complex tasks.
B = Items which should be done soon, but there is no immediate pressure     to do them first.
C = Items that must be done eventually, but don’t require immediate action.     

To put this principle into action:

a. Go back to the list of activities
b. Give every activity with a “Do It” designation an A, B, or C Priority rating, using the far left column.
c. Now you can transfer these activities to your To-Do list (Daily and weekly versions), listing them in A-B-C order.

NOTE: in order to distinguish among activities with similar priorities, you will probably need to prioritize one more time, employing subscripts, such as A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, etc.

This may sound a little complicated, but once you get accustomed to thinking this way, you can execute this process almost automatically. Invest a little time prioritizing at this stage will save you a lot of wasted time the rest of the day or the rest of the week.
 

 

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