Everyone complains about the recent price of fuel. In the last 6 months, I don’t personally recall ever paying over AUD$1.50/L for it. I just went down to a convenience store in the heart of Surfers Paradise and paid AUD$3.20 for a 600ml Coke. Break that down and it works out to be a whopping AUD$5.33 per litre.
Explain to me how a 600ml Coke can possibly cost more than three times that of processing crude oil.
Time management is about achieving the greatest volume of useful work in a fixed amount of time. There is a particularly important word in the previous sentence which you might have glanced over, can you pick it out? If you chose greatest, you would be incorrect in my opinion – it was useful.
Time management could be considered subjective; what I think is time spent wisely, you could consider a waste of time and visa versa. The obvious question should then be:
How do I accurately select items to spend my time on?
The answer to this simple question rests with a phrase you may or may not have heard: Key Result Areas. A key result area (also known as Key Performance Indicators) describe the main areas of responsibility or accountability of a job. A key result area is not a particular task and they are not really goals; they do however group together tasks which help to achieve a result. An example for a retail manager might be customer relations or leadership while for a software developer it might include software quality or business efficiency.
If you were to relate a key result area to your daily job, they would form your primary roles or responsibilities. From a productivity stand point, if everyone could manage to have a high ratio of key result area tasks to non-key result area tasks; everyone would be incredibly productive. Unfortunately in the real world, this is often not the case which is where the management of your work priorities comes into play. You must find the appropriate balance between key result areas and non-key result areas.
Getting back to the two important points, greatest and useful. Without realising it, your time can be consumed very easily by doing a lot of little tasks. Doing a lot of little tasks isn’t in itself a problem, however if those smaller tasks aren’t contibuting to your key result areas or performance indicators then you’re time isn’t being utilised as efficiently as possible. Fortunately, there are a few simple questions to ask yourself to try and swing it back into the favour of the key result area. Does your current or next task:
If you are answering yes to one or more of the above points, then there is a good chance the task will contribute to your key result areas in some way. If you are not answering yes to any of them, you should probably be asking yourself why you’re completing this task and not a more important one. Of course, there will always be situations where you need to complete non-key performance indicator tasks. This is the exact scenario where your time management skills must come into play and find the appropriate balance of these tasks to achieve the highest performance from your company, staff or yourself.
As a self development exercise, take notice of the type of tasks you are performing and how many of them are being attended to. Make sure you are counting all the tasks, even the ones that you don’t complete – as an incomplete task still competed for your attention and work time. Once you have your list, run each set of tasks through the itemised list above. Out of your list of tasks, how many of them satisfied one or more of the above points? If you completed tasks which didn’t satisfy at least one of the above points – ask yourself why it got your attention.
Time management is about working effectively; achieving the most good in a fixed amount of time. If you’re not primarily working on your key result area tasks, then you aren’t effectively managing your time. What you might find is that you are being efficient, in that you are completing a lot of tasks but they aren’t the tasks that you should be completing. Be mindful of what items are actually getting your attention and work time, you might find that the wheels are turning and you’re not getting anywhere.
About two months ago, Claire and I ate breakfast at a new Gold Coast cafe named C Espresso Bar. For those that aren’t aware, it is located in the newly constructed Southport Central precinct at Southport.
We were in the area again this morning and decided to return to the C Espresso Bar for round two, which produced the following synopsis:
All the above points make for a fantastic breakfast, however point four really topped it off. For the majority of people, a restaurant providing gluten free food doesn’t make a lick of difference. Unfortunately for a minority of people who suffer from a gluten intolerance, serving gluten free food is a really big thing. Ordinarily when we go out for breakfast, Claire is generally restricted to having straight bacon and eggs with nothing else. Needless to say, when the owner informed us that they stock a gluten free bread – Claire was all but doing hand stands in excitement!
If you’re looking for a Gold Coast cafe for breakfast that you can get:
then you might like to give the C Espresso Bar a shot.
I mentioned a while ago that when a council has to perform roadworks, that keeping drivers as happy as possible is all about the timing. It would appear that in the last seven months, the Gold Coast City Council haven’t learnt a whole lot.
This morning on the way to work, I was traveling North on the Gold Coast Highway into Surfers Paradise at about 7.30am. I was shocked to find the traffic at a stand still at the Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre, when it is normally flowing smoothly at about 70kph. I looked down the road in a hope to see what was going on and couldn’t see any flashing lights or cars frantically changing lanes to avoid the obstacles. After being forced to sit in traffic for about 45 minutes and moving about 2km, I was greeted with a sign informing me to merge right. I was shocked to find that the roadworks which the sign was warning everyone about, started nearly immediately after the sign.
I would have thought it fairly important to actually give the motorists notification of the changed traffic conditions. I’m fairly sure that if that sign had of been displayed somewhere near the Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre, that most people could have formed a single lane in an orderly fashion. Instead, no one was notified of the changed traffic conditions until it was too late and the start of the peak hour traffic hit a choke point; within minutes the traffic was backed up 2km down the road.
I don’t think anyone has any real issues with councils performing the roadworks, they are essential to keep the roads in great condition. However, a little bit of grey matter from the council workers on duty would go a very long way to keeping the motorists much happier.
In September last year, I posted about The Uplate Game Show and noted that it was possibly one of the worst shows that has ever hit the TV.
I had secretly hoped that with Big Brother 2006 ending, that The Uplate Game Show would have died a swift and quiet death; unfortunately I was wrong. As of last night, Simon Deering aka Hotdogs, has returned for another season hammering. The last ‘season’ of The Uplate Game Show was painful and forced, where Hotdogs babbled on and on. In an attempt to ease that pain somewhat, it appears that Channel 10 have slotted in a co-host. If you’re up to the challenge, try and imagine a female version of Hotdogs that has even more of the superficial fake enthusiasm; I know, it hurt.
I was shocked last time around but I cannot believe that Channel 10 are that desperate for a showing that they’d put it back on. Then again, with the advent of everyone’s favourite ‘please little teenager, SMS and make us millionaires’ tactic, it isn’t really that surprising.