Time Management Mastery by Science for Sport

TIME MANAGEMENT MASTERY 5 SIMPLE AND PRACTICAL TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY

Time Management Mastery

The Author

Ben Daly Ben currently works as National Performance Coach with Hong Kong Rugby Union. Ben also works as a day-to-day contributor with Science for Sport. He completed his MSc in Strength and Conditioning from St Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s University, Twickenham and has previously worked in private facilities and team settings in Ireland, Texas, and Sweden.

Time Management Mastery

How this book will help you As coaches, our time is notoriously fragmented between meetings, planning and conducting sessions, writing and responding to emails and doing everything in between. This time management guide will help you maximize your efficiency, prioritize your work, and set aside the essential time for additional reading and development. At Science for Sport, we support thousands of coaches to develop their skill set through research reviews and the Performance Digest, practical tips on networking, training recommendations, and even money management. This Time Management Mastery tool is another piece of the puzzle to help you be the best coach you can be by maximizing the efficiency and quality of your work.

Time Management Mastery

#1 Set Your Goals Before you even begin to manage and organize your time to complete jobs efficiently, you should firstly outline what your goals are. After all, if you don’t have a clear purpose or destination, then how will you know what the process or journey looks like? Like any goal setting we do with athletes, make these goals clear and attainable. This is best done by selecting your end of year ‘goals’ (e.g. decorating your apartment or peaking for specific competition), then fragmenting them into ‘projects’ (e.g. paint the living room or planning training mesocycles with a specific training goal), and finally, then break those projects into ‘tasks’ (e.g. buy paint, pick up ladder from mums house, get dust sheets from martin/planning sessions to develop outlined physical requirements).

Time Management Mastery

#1 (Continued) Set Your Goals When you have crystal clear end of year goals, you know exactly where you’re heading and what you want to achieve by the end of the year. But trying to achieve your big goal can be daunting and feel like a mammoth job. That’s why it’s crucial that you firstly fragment the goal into projects and then into highly-actionable tasks. Only when you have defined your goals, can you then identify projects and tasks required to achieve your goals. Finally, it is absolutely essential that you set deadlines for every goal, project, and task.

Tip #1 – Identify your end goal and break the larger scale project into smaller, manageable tasks.

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Time Management Mastery

#2 Prioritize Your Workload The reality of coaching is that there are often a hundred jobs to do during a day or week and not enough time to do each task. To maximize your working efficiency you need to reflect on what tasks are a priority and will result in the greatest effects, and which ones can be put on the back burner. Many of us will be aware of the Pareto Principle which explains that 20% of your work will contribute 80% of your results. With this in mind, you must ask yourself which daily, weekly, and monthly tasks will result in the greatest output and performance. The Eisenhower Matrix has been frequently used for exactly this reason, to prioritize what work is important and what will reap the greatest results. Stemming from the ways of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this tool creates 4 task definitions based on their urgency of completion and overall importance.

Time Management Mastery

#2 (Continued) Prioritize Your Workload · Important activities are those which will contribute most to achieving our goals, although may not need urgent attention. · Urgent activities are those which demand immediate attention whose consequences are instant. Time management is all about knowing what tasks are both important and urgent, and not consuming all of our time with matters that require immediate attention and potentially limit our time to conduct really meaningful work. It is all about working efficiently and effectively and using the Eisenhower Matrix (see next page) allows you to decide on what tasks are highest priority.

Time Management Mastery

#2 (Continued) Prioritize Your Workload

Time Management Mastery

#2 (Continued) Prioritize Your Workload · Important activities are those which will contribute most to achieving our goals, although may not need urgent attention. Urgent activities are those which demand immediate attention whose consequences are instant. Time management is all about knowing what tasks are both important and urgent, and not consuming all of our time with matters that require immediate attention and potentially limit our time to conduct really meaningful work. It is all about working efficiently and effectively and using the Eisenhower Matrix allows you to decide on what tasks are highest priority.

Time Management Mastery

#2 (Continued) Prioritize Your Workload How to manage tasks base on their important and urgency: Important and Urgent – conduct immediately and personally Important but not Urgent – Schedule and do personally Unimportant and Urgent – delegate to someone else Unimportant and Not Urgent – ignore and delete The key thing to remember about this second tip is that “the goal is to keep the goal the goal.” So, you need to decide each day when you’re prioritizing your tasks is whether or not that task is moving your closer to your goal or further away from it. Try to only do tasks which move you towards your goal(s). Tip #2 – Separate important and urgent work, and delete anything unnecessary

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Time Management Mastery

#3 Work Deeply One you have highlighted what aspects of your job and daily tasks take priority, you must ensure that you conduct these tasks with the highest possible focus and concentration to ensure efficiency and productivity. The importance of fully-focused work is extensively highlighted through the magnificent work of Cal Newport in his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (see next page). Coaches are by definition “knowledge workers”, utilizing a very specialized skill set in order to maximize the performance of our clients and athletes. In order to develop these skills and continue to provide maximum value, you must develop an ability to perform “deep work”. This is essentially undistracted, fully-concentrated work.

Time Management Mastery

#3 (Continued) Work Deeply â&#x20AC;&#x153;To learn hard things fast, you must focus intensely without distractionâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cal Newport Referring back to the Eisenhower Matrix, the tasks that require the majority of our focus and attention are those that are important, whether they are urgent or otherwise. If we take the example of our crucially important but not urgent work of studying and reading literature, to fully understand and critically analyze the content, we must devote our full attention to the task.

Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world Click here to get this book on Amazon

Time Management Mastery

#3 (Continued) Work Deeply According to Newport, any minor distractions or “shallow work” such as responding to WhatsApp messages will have detrimental effects on your attention. Even the very act of picking up your phone for a split second will cause your attention to drift elsewhere and lose focus on the task at hand. To highlight this problem even further, Gloria Mark, in her extensive research in the area explained that it may take up to 25 minutes to fully regain focus after a single distraction! The importance of deep work for effective time management cannot be understated. In order to produce the maximum return from your efforts, you must engross yourself uninterrupted, fully-focused work. Tip #3 – In order to maximize your time, you must be able direct your full attention on the task and eliminate external distractions.

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Time Management Mastery

#4 Time is Precious - Make is So! Becoming efficient with your work will become a lot easier if you firstly schedule your tasks depending on their importance and urgency. The benefit of this cannot be understated. This can be done weekly or daily, but they key is to find yourself a schedule that works for you - but it must be done. If you do not set aside time to focus intently on your work, then you will not be able to fully commit to fully focused work. In order to be able to harness your full concentration, you need to ensure you can find time where you will be exposed to an environment in which there will be no distractions or interruptions. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and ritualsâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cal Newport

Time Management Mastery

#4 (Continued) Time is precious â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Make it so! When conducting important, scheduled work such as programming training blocks or analyzing literature, you must do everything in your power to eliminate shallow tasks and interruptions. Wherever you decide to go, be it a cafĂŠ or a library, make this space your working Mecca and your time there sacred. This means letting people know that you will not be accessible during this time and turning off any emails or messages on your phone that will entice you away from deep work. If a fellow coach asks for a meeting during this time that is not important and urgent, schedule it for another time or delegate it to another member of staff. If you compromise on your deep work, you undermine its importance and allow shallow tasks to take priority. Tip #4 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; To eliminate external distractions, schedule your important work, find an environment to promote deep work and make this time and place sacred.

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Time Management Mastery

#5 Set a Deadline Procrastination is the greatest enemy of efficient work, and this Time Management Mastery tool has been created to help you eliminate procrastination. By now, you should be able to prioritize your workload and schedule any important work in your life. This alone, however, will not immediately equate to effective time management and efficient work. There is still an opportunity for procrastination on tasks which are not urgent. To counteract this problem, set yourself deadlines for tasks to increase their level of urgency while also making time for other key tasks. The longer a timeline you set for yourself, the likelihood is you will spend longer than necessary on the task. If you wait until the last minute, you will only need one minute. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” – Parkinson’s Law

Time Management Mastery

#5 (Continued) Set a Deadline In the world of coaching, many tasks such as programming or writing a presentation have pre-set deadlines. If the deadline for a presentation is another 2 months from now, you will likely put it on the long finger and complete the full project within the last week or so with significant levels of stress. There may also be more urgent and important matters that spring up at that time that takes away from this work. To manage such situation, break up the assignment into smaller, manageable projects and tasks with set deadlines for each one along the way. This ensures a little gets done over a period of time effectively, both maximizing the efficiency of the work being completed and also setting time aside for potentially more urgent tasks to be completed. Tip #5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Set deadlines for your tasks to minimize procrastination

Time Management Mastery

End Note Our hope is that this Time Management mastery tool will help you organize your days efficiently to get the most out of your efforts. It’s easy for us coaches to get consumed with our work but a healthy work-life balance is essential, not only for a happy life, but for fullyeffective labor. When you’re on, make sure you are 100% on. And, when you are off, it’s vital to switch completely off. Use the above tips, prioritize and schedule your work, fully commit your focus to each task and break each large task into small manageable chunks to which you have deadlines. Do these things well, and you will begin to increase the value you add to your players, clients, and organization as a whole.

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