Managing one's workload - Covey, Drucker and David Allan (recommended TED talk) each

present a method for managing one’s workload. Although there are similarities across the
methods, they each vary slightly.
Apply one of the “time management” techniques proposed in this module to your own situation.
Reflect on your application of the technique. Was it beneficial?
Would you recommend this technique to others? Why or why not?
What is one thing you will do differently after going through this process?

In Drucker great book “The Effective Executive”, Drucker tells us that TIME is our most
precious asset. I am strongly agreed with it! You can lose money and get it back. You can even
lose some health and get it back. But once your time is gone, it’s gone.
Basically, Peter Drucker’s time management system is broken down into three steps: 1) Analyze
your time; 2) Cut time wasters; 3) Time block

First of all, I will prepare an activity log which is an hour by hour record of what I am doing
throughout the day for 2 weeks. To facilitate the record, I will keep a pen and a notepad on my
desk and every hour I write down the time and what I’ve done during the past hour. In order not to
forget about the recording, I will keep my notebook visible.

After that, I will go through all the recurring activities in my log one by one. To check whether
the activities is worthwhile to spend the time on, I will ask myself: What would happen if I would
stop doing them?” If the answer is: “Earthquake!” I won’t change anything. However, if the
answer is: “Nothing would happen.”. It means that I am doing activities that have ZERO return.
Those activities are called time-wasters and will be eliminated.

Finally, I will consolidate my time to reserve the largest possible blocks of time to do truly deep
and important work.

I believe this time management is beneficial because when we will review our daily activities. We
will discover whether we need to handle these activities personally OR there is someone in our
team that can help OR these activities should be eliminated. Also, the additional benefit of such a
simple exercise is that it forces us to think about our daily routine. Often, we tend to start with
time-wasting activities, and sooner or later they will become habits. If we are aware of these time-
wasting activities, we are able to break those bad habits.