How to get more done, set tasks correctly and manage employees' time

Probably, only a lazy public person did not talk about how important it is to plan working hours in order to do more, earn a lot, and generally be "the best version of yourself." But for some reason we are still faced with overdue deadlines, unfulfilled or done wrong tasks. I will share my methods, how a manager can effectively organize the working time of employees, how to build communication and set tasks so that they are completed correctly.

Remove all unnecessary

Time management. I love this word. It is very convenient: I am not at all slow and bad at work, I have problems with time management.

My recipe is to remove all unnecessary, or, as I call it, cut the crap. Delete and disable everything you don't need.

To do more, you don't need 25 hours a day, you just need to spend less time on useless things.

It is necessary to communicate often at work - combine all correspondence in one messenger and never go to others.

Are you a developer? No? Then why do you need more than one browser? Are you sure you need three of the same text editing apps? And so on.

In my work from flow can knock out several things that happen regularly: messages in the messenger, incoming letters in the mail, the person who entered the office, the phone rings.

So I brought together all communication in Telegram, turned off notifications from all chats, archived all channels - so I myself can decide when I have time to respond.

In the mail, I unsubscribed from all mailings, except for the 5-6 most necessary ones. I use the Unroll.me service to collect them in a digest, which comes once a week at a convenient time for me. I also check my mail a couple of times a day, and not immediately after receiving the letter.

On the phone, I just ask me not to call - you can almost always write or dictate a message. And personal meetings take place only according to the plan - I put them in the calendar (it is very convenient to do this using Calendly.com), usually on the afternoon of a weekday.

The recipe is simple and obvious, but, as practice shows, it is not always applied and not by everyone who has “problems with time management”.

Apply follow-ups

Quite often I hold meetings so beloved by everyone. Although they distract people from work, they are still the most convenient way to convey new information. immediately to a large number of people, process objections and give answers to questions that will immediately be heard all.

But how to do meeting effective? Especially when they are held for 20-50 people and there is no way to make sure that everyone is listening carefully.

The easiest and most effective way is to ask everyone to follow up at the very beginning. That is, it is thesis to write down everything that seems important. And immediately after the meeting, send the text to you personally by mail or messenger.

For the presenter, this method allows, firstly, to immediately see who and how perceives the information. And secondly, to get instant feedback: whether the main messages of the audience came in or your speaking skills still need to be improved.

And of course, follow-ups help fulfill the main purpose of the meeting - to make sure that everyone really hears and remembered important information.

Correctly estimate the time it takes to complete a task

At first it seems that it is impossible to correctly estimate the time required to complete any task. A little later, you can see in practice that this is indeed the case.

For this reason, the assessment of each task is a kind of diploma defense. The employee says how many hours he plans to spend on the implementation, and the manager either agrees or asks to explain why it takes so much or so little time.

It is with this "protection" (if it is not carried out for show and the leader understands what he is doing employee) the evaluation of the problem really makes sense.

Different people evaluate their work differently. Someone overestimates the bar and picks up a bunch of tasks, allocating for each one times less time than they have to spend. Someone, on the contrary, is reinsured and puts in every task time for force majeure and “to think”.

A good leader should ask the right questions:

• Why do you need X hours to complete this task?
• Let's re-read the conditions of the problem and the definition of its implementation again. Are you sure you understood everything correctly and took into account?
• If this is your first time doing such a task, have you set aside time for familiarization?

And of course, it is always good when the company has several employees performing the same type of tasks. To the head you can focus on the average indicator calculated on the basis of employee ratings.

Use checklists

Imagine you have a task for an employee. And it sounds something like this: "Launch such and such a new service on your own." An employee has three options for completing such a task:

1. Minimum. That is, to make everything letter by letter, to formally complete the task. The service is launched, but there is no research, no pricing models, no understanding of who and what exactly will do. The sales and marketing department has no information on how and to whom to sell it.
2. Maximum. That is, to approach the task energetically and with great enthusiasm. Conduct a huge amount of research, communicate with other companies in the market, form a dozen models pricing, hold several meetings within the company (with management, team leaders and separately with each team), make several presentations for each potential target audience.
3. Right. This approach is somewhere in the middle between the first and second options: a study of 5-7 companies in a segment is carried out, an understandable concept is prepared, one presentation or landing page is made. A general meeting is held at which key information on the sale of the service is communicated.

To prevent an employee from doing too little or too much when taking on a task, use a checklist - a numbered list of steps that must be taken to achieve a result. It is especially useful to use checklists if you are not sure that the employee 100% understands how to perform such task, - for example, he just hadn't done anything like that before. If you are too lazy to paint, get ready for options number 1 and number 2. You will finish it later, or the employee will spend his time and the team's time on unnecessary actions.