In my column last week, we asked, "Have you ever noticed that work expands to fit the time available?"
Half of the respondents said "Yes, often," 25 percent replied "Yes, sometimes," 18.3 percent said "Yes, most of the time, while 6.3 percent said "No, never."
Then, we asked, "If you provided any one of the "yes" answers to the first question, do you think it is worth trying to change this?"
68.8 percent replied "Yes," and 31.3 percent said "No."
Finally, we asked, "Again, if you have been answering "yes" above, how do you suggest going about changing this phenomenon?"
Here are the responses:
>There is always more work to do than time to get it all done, so you do all you can in the time allotted.
>Prioritizing tasks and not becoming a slave to incoming emails and voice mail.
>Better planning of expected work, not getting caught up in time wasting on "pet" projects (the things you like doing and/or really good at)
>I like the idea of scheduling a "standard" work day for yourself. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I am going to try to adopt this. In a greater sense also, I am going to plan a certain amount of hours per month for certain tasks. I tend to take care of the immediate work required. However, to be truly effective in my job there are about three medium term tasks and two long term tasks I need to address. These are more developmental type continuous improvement projects, that I rarely get to, because I get so focused on day to day and hour by hour work. Time planning must be a bigger part of my work habit.
>Try to think rationally about how much time a job really needs, both for yourself and for subordinates. Change management attitudes to that the widespread tendency to ensure that ALL the budget gets spent, even when it is not all really needed. I have seen the latter issue for 50 years, but usually got into trouble with colleagues and bosses when suggesting cutting back on waste. This stupidity common in larger organisation is they key reason small guys like us can prosper, despite lacking the economies of scale.
>Take time to plan everyday and prioritize.
>Budget time as you would any other limited and critical resource. Keep an inventory of necessary but not time-critical items to fill free time. Keep some not-necessary but fun items for those few times the other lists are empty. Avoid "dazing" time.
>A common danger is to attack work as it comes in, treating it as the most urgent thing. If you planned your day in the morning and committed to not adding any new work (that wasn't urgent), you could probably often finish the day with all of that work done and some time to spare. But that is difficult to make happen in practice.
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