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Posted in Productivity
Within the world of work flow and productivity, there are a number of common lies we use to fool others and ourselves. It’s not that we’re deliberately trying to mislead, it’s just that we feel a need to sugar-coat the requests we’re making.
To avoid the time traps they cause, here are five time-management lies to avoid:
  1. This will just take a minute. Has anyone asked for your help with that line? Does it ever just take a minute? Rarely. Even if the task itself takes only a minute, the interruption to your work flow will probably be fifteen minutes.
  2. I want this now. In our “always on” world, we are under a sense of artificial pressure to get it done now or worse yet, yesterday.Things are rarely that urgent. Don’t get caught by another person’s urgent trivialities. Call the liar to task. I’m not sure I can get that done now. What if I got it to you one week from today?” Use an outside deadline to give yourself ample time to prevent getting into crisis management.If they reject your alternate time line, offer three better dates for you. They will continue to try and press their urgency on you. Of course, if your boss says they want it “right now”, you better do it.
  3. I need this as soon as possible. That’s almost always a lie. It will be needed by a certain date and time because there will be action needed on the task provided. If nothings going to be done with it, why is it being done at all?If someone comes to you with, “I need it as soon as possible,” take time to set a firm deadline with the person making the request. It will hold you both accountable to a process.
  4. I can get this done in an hour. Ever notice how it almost always takes twice as long to complete a task as what you thought it would? We don’t have very accurate internal clocks to estimate the time required to complete most tasks. My personal rule-of-thumb, take my first estimate off the top of my head and double it.
  5. By the time I show them how to do it I could just as quickly have done it myself. If it’s a one-off task, this may be true. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend an hour showing someone how to do something you could complete in ten minutes.
    However, if it’s a repetitive task, the statement is a lie. If one hour spent showing someone how to do a task saves you ten minutes a day, you’ll have your training investment back in six days and a bonus of ten minutes a day. Multiply that over a handful of ten-minute tasks and it adds up to hours saved.
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