My Little Beeping Casio Watch Strategy

This must have happened 30 years ago. I had just got appointed to my first managerial position – Head of general affairs in a middle-sized company. Besides my operational assignments in finance, I was responsible for finance, accounting, HR, IT, and the maintenance departments. It was a large remit and in no time I was inundated with the sheer number of tasks and duties. It felt overwhelming and I felt lost. I would start working on a task but it always took more time than I had initially thought. I was falling behind my schedule and my working days were becoming longer and longer. However, I never seemed to catch up.

I was thinking: “I need to do something about this. I need more time. I need to be more aware of time!”

So I bought a nice little electronic Casio watch, that I set to beep at each hour. 😊

Did it help? Of course not.

So why am I sharing this? Well, this was my first failed attempt to get a grip on time and my tasks. Understandably, it was not the last one. Through the years I realized, there is no universal strategy or technique for self-managing somebody’s personal productivity or time management. Life is just too dynamic and whilst nowadays we can choose from so many available tools, employees in organisations seem to be as stressed as ever.

So what is the answer?

Finding your own understanding, your own practical way to be flexible and adaptive to the situation in real time is the key. Time-management gadgets on their own won’t bring relief. This comes from slowing down rather than speeding up and tapping into your own innate common sense. As I have learned to do this myself, my own productivity has dramatically increased. This is a subtractive process rather than an additive one i.e. it's about removing unhelpful thinking that has us speed up. This is one of the things I help my own clients with.

So, what is your experience? How do you deal with the seeming lack of enough time in the day?