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People scurrying about or furiously typing on their laptops to meet stringent work deadlines is a familiar sight in most large corporate offices. In fact, ‘buried under truckloads of work’ is fast becoming the standard response to a simple and well-intended ‘how are you?’ these days. Is there some way that we can reclaim a bit of time and sanity in this high-pressure, cut throat environment then?
The answer is yes – through a simple three step process, I call PDA. The three letters here stand for Prioritize, Delegate and Arrange. For those of you who feel that the title of this writeup is somewhat misleading, my sincere apologies. But look at the brighter side, it succeeded in getting you started and if you decide to read on, you might actually pick up a trick or two to make your life simpler.
Prioritization is a simple answer to this complex problem, some might say. There are tasks that the boss wants us to complete, things that we are supposed to do, projects that demand our time, and the list goes on. This is true, of course. But the question is how many of us actually pause to think about jobs that land on our desks and make a genuine attempt to prioritize them? You would be surprised at the percentage of people who are guilty of diving into the sea of work without even pausing to test the waters first. Are you one of them? If yes, try and take out a few minutes every morning to decide on the tasks you should accomplish on the given day and notice the difference.
Another trap that people managers are susceptible to is wrongful delegation or micromanagement of tasks that they have already delegated. If this concern sounds familiar, the first step for you is to decide on the jobs that your team members should be doing and not you. If you end up delegating a high-stakes job, more often than not you will find yourself micromanaging it.
‘If I don’t assign important tasks to my team members, how do I develop them?’ you might ask. Well, like no team tests its bench strength in a world cup match, high stake projects are not the best developmental setting for your team. You might want to begin by delegating other initiatives that require similar skills till such time that you are confident about the said team member’s ability to deliver on crunch projects. And once delegated, you need to learn to keep yourself at bay unless your intervention is requested.
The third cog in the wheel of finding time is breaking tasks into smaller activities and arranging them such that you don’t miss out on simple pieces which might become a cause for concern later. This approach draws from the critical path approach to project management and gives you a visibility of what needs to be done and when. For instance, you might need data from several sources for a forthcoming project, but you do nothing about it as you are busy taking care of other critical deliverables. When you do dive into the project, you find yourself chasing people for data, who are anyway peeved with the urgency of your request. A simple e-mail sent out even as you were engrossed with other matters would have taken little time and saved you the trouble later.
First published in Suburb Life Magazine, May ’19 Issue!