Managing your time more effectively - where do we begin?

Mind mapping
Time management is something that every busy professional thinks about from time to time - are we getting the best out of the time available to us in the working day? How much time do we simply fritter away, starting one task, starting another, and feeling like we never really fully accomplish what we set out to achieve?

I took part in a session really which was all about the concept of 'mind mapping' and how this tool can be applied to many aspects of life - not just to help you become better organised at work. It can be used to help you plan a project, or assimilate a large amount of information such a studying a particular topic for an exam.

I was intrigued to discover that I have been using mind maps on a basic level since I studied for exam at school - and also for planning essays! Basically, you start off with a blank sheet of paper and in the centre of that sheet of paper, you write down the topic/subject, and then from that, you have a number of different branches stemming from this main topic. These branches you draw initially are the 'parent' branches, and are labelled with just one key term. From these parent branches you then add sub branches, allowing you to drill down into a particular key topic by as many level as you wish. It was also suggested that if there are any links between ideas on different branches, then show this link with a dotted line.

You can also use images on your mind map - a lot of the time it just depends how your mind works - some people remember things better in graphic form, others (like myself) are more 'wordy'. That having been said, I did study for a physics exam at school by illustrating practically every unit in my textbook into a mind map!

I don't think the concept of mind mapping is necessarily new - in fact it is in my eyes more of a step up from the 'spider diagrams' we were taught to use at school, for example when brainstorming ideas for an essay. I think they are a great way of breaking information down though, and in the workplace, I would like to consider using them more for large scale enquiry project planning, or where I am simply trying to think of all the various options open to me when carrying out research.

The session I was involved in definitely reminded me that mind maps can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be, but fundamentally they are an excellent way of helping you organise your thoughts, problem solve and analyse situations.


Improving time management

I came across an interesting white paper produced by Citrix online which focused on how to run meetings in the workplace more effectively. This is definitely something that I have always found particularly frustrating - when a meeting is allowed to drift on long after it's 'official' finishing time. This can often be caused by poor chairmanship - it is up to the person running the meeting to ensure that it does not overrun significantly. The key suggestions to prevent this from becoming an issue are:

- Determine who exactly needs to be at the meeting in order to achieve the desired objectives - eg. who are the primary decision makers; who only needs to be there for a short time and so on.

 - If you are chairing the meeting, make sure that the agenda also fits in with the objectives and what you want to achieve, or be decided by the end of the meeting. Make sure you politely stop people who simply like the sound of their own voice! Summarise decisions/results as you go along to make sure everyone is on the same page and knows what is happening.

- View the agenda as the plan for the meeting - and make sure you stick to it. If you run out of time, suggest another meeting rather than letting this one drag on painfully.

- Someone should always make sure that minutes are taken and consequently all decisions/discussion outcomes are documented. If you don't do this then the meeting will have been pointless.

It is interesting to know that only 20% of meetings produce 80% of the results - food for thought next time you are planning that team meeting!


Controlling the inbox
Time management also touches upon a subject that is of great interest to me - information overload. The white paper gives us a few suggestions with regard to how to keep on top of your inbox and prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.

- Decide quickly whether to respond to a message immediately, archive or delete it.

- Remember the telephone! Nowaday it's almost instinctive to hit the 'compose new message' button but sometime a 60 second call can clarify what a chain of emails will take far longer to!

- Don't feel that you need to respond to people immediately - within 24 hours is normally acceptable.

The last point is one which can't really be applied in the law library - if we were to simply leave enquiries sitting in our inboxes, we would not curry much favour with the fee-earners! However there are other emails that we can put this into practice with, eg. non-urgent communication from suppliers and so on.

Email overload is also looked at from the opposite perspective, i.e. what can we do to make sure that we don't contribute to other people's overload? This is a point that I have addressed in the past - as information intermediaries, we are at risk of bombarding our users with too much information - how much is too much is the million dollar question and to be honest, it varies from lawyer to lawyer in my experience!

The white paper suggests ensuring your subject line is clear and concise, a well-structured email using short sentences, bullet points and paragraphs to ensure that the reader isn't immediately overwhelmed by a wall of text!

If you are giving someone instructions make sure you only include a small number and you give a clear deadline.

I think these tips are definitely useful to me from my perspective of giving people instructions by email. Sometimes if I am managing a particular enquiry project, I try hard to ensure that the email containing the details is as clear and concise as possible. It is very important not to ramble, but to ensure that everything included in the email is non-repetitive and necessary.

Conclusion
I think that time management will always be something that will be of significance to any law librarian, because the lawyers we work for are often working to very tight deadlines and this pressure is tranferred to us as a result. It's important to be as efficient with how we use our time as possible, in order to ensure maximum productivity, but also ensure that we feel in control in the workplace and not overly stressed.

Image courtesy of: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2588

CLSIG Time Management seminar - Susie Kay

While I have been in the workplace now for over eight years and feel pretty confident when it comes to organising my workload, I decided to attend this seminar nonetheless simply because the preview explained that there is more to being organised than just being able to manage your time. I was quite intrigued by this, as although I am generally very good at keeping to deadlines and prioritising tasks, my physical environment can sometimes become a bit chaotic, and when that happens, I am aware that I have a tendency to start jumping from one thing to the next, desperately hunting for a scrap of paper that was there one minute, but seemingly gone the next. I felt confident that this seminar would be very helpful and applicable to my working life in general.

The first area we looked at was our physical environment. Susie showed us a picture of the most untidy desk you could ever imagine, with papers piled high all over the place and the computer barely visible among the debris. We discussed the sort of impression that a desk of this ilk would create to internal clients. If you don’t present an in-control and organised image, then people will have less faith in your abilities. Similarly if you are scrabbling around for a particular piece of paper, and then you can’t find it – that too is unreliable and irresponsible and simply puts people off working with you or asking for help. One point that she also made which I felt was very important is that from a damage control point of view, a grossly disorganised and messy desk, that uses a filing system that may make sense to you only, is from a business continuance perspective highly risky. If you were suddenly unable to come into work, would someone else be able to easily pick up where you left off? It’s a valid point and one that I am always aware of, having worked in a previous job with a woman whose methods were unintelligible and I was left in a huge mess when she was suddenly taken unwell – I had no clue of where to start with some of her work. It is vitally important to be organised both externally and internally. Procedures for your role should be well documented too. All too often have I been put in the position whereby a boss of mine keeps all their knowledge in their head, then they are on holiday and I am left with a red face because I don’t know how they manage a particular task because they have never told me, nor have they written it down anywhere! I strongly believe that part of being a true professional is transparency – making sure that your deputies know how to fill in for you effectively.

We then moved onto efficient email management. Again, this is something that I am very aware I don’t always practice, so it is something that I shall definitely try and heed going forward! Suzie advised that as a rule of thumb, you should really only handle an email once, as opposed to opening it, reading it, then thinking you will leave it until later to deal with and marking it unread again! I am aware that I am guilty of this on occasion. We decided the best thing to do is to open the email, action whatever needs to be done, then remove it from your inbox, either by deleting it completely, or filing it. Don’t go through the process of reading it several times over, and just leaving it in your inbox.

I do think it’s important to keep as clean an inbox as possible, therefore over the last few years, I have tried my hardest to remove items from my inbox as soon as they have been dealt with and the matter is ‘closed’. I only keep emails in the inbox that are still being worked on or due to be worked on. When I first started working, I did not do this at all! My inbox literally had about 3000 items at one point. I suppose it’s working in law firms that has made me a lot more aware of filing emails, because as well as running my own personal filing system within my inbox, we have a firm-wide file management system that asks you if you want to file your message just before you send it. In our team we file all of the work we do in folders by practice area, so that we can find it again easily if need be, or search these folders to find out if anyone has worked on a particular topic or matter before. Again it’s of the utmost importance to maintain an organised and tidy inbox, and email system in general – and I am glad that Susie reiterated this.

With regard to the old chestnut of ‘time management’, Susie interestingly said that it’s not really about managing time, simply because we can’t really do so because we only have a set amount of hours in a day and that is never going to change! It is more about getting the most out of the time you have. I found this a very interesting way of looking at the matter of ‘time management’, because it is very true – we only have 24 hours in a day to deal with and so there isn’t much we can do about that – we can’t give ourselves more time! What we can do, however, is ensure that we plan our time well – and one method she suggested was using a paper or online calendar, and a big A4 day planning book. What you would do on a daily basis is have a double spread page each day, and on the left hand side you divide the page into boxes in which you make general notes throughout the day. So if you get a phonecall you can jot notes down in one of those boxes, or any other general notes you need to make throughout the day. You then use the other page to create columns where you will detail specific deadlines, tasks, priority level and so on. Then you can supplement this with the definitive deadlines in your electronic or paper diary.

I have to admit, I am a little dubious of this method, simply because it’s just not one I have ever considered before – I am not sure if I would be able to discipline myself enough to set up the double page every day and make sure that I only write in this book, AND remember to transfer deadlines to my diary as well! I am going to try and give it a go for a week and see how I feel about it. I think it’s partly just fear of the unknown making me a bit doubtful of the merits of this method.

One thing that we did discuss which I definitely do not think is so easy to do in my particular role, is learning to say ‘no’! Susie gave the example of when you are interrupted by someone who wants to ask you something, you can sometimes just politely ask if they would mind giving you just 30 minutes and then you will be with them. Similarly, she suggested shutting your office door from time to time, making it a policy of an open door most of the time, but when it’s shut, you are not to be disturbed. While both of those methods make sense in theory, I do not think they really work quite so well in our law library. Firstly, in terms of asking someone to come back in half an hour – it’s just never going to be feasible to say this to a fee-earner who needs help now! I understand that perhaps it could apply to a team member who wants your help with something, but not with our customers! The ‘closed door’ policy again doesn’t work in our library, as obviously we don’t all have offices, and if we shut the door of the library, we feel it’s quite off-putting to people who might just want to pop in and browse. This kind of saying ‘no’ doesn’t really fit with our image or the service we provide to the firm. However, at the same time, saying ‘no’ is something that we all need to learn to do, but is very difficult for me I must admit. It’s my instinct to accept everything and I sometimes find it hard to ask for help even when I feel overloaded. This is undoubtedly something that I need to work on – I am aware of it and the discussion with Susie brought the importance of that home to me.

Overall this was a very interesting session and one that is definitely relevant to me. It showed me that it doesn’t matter how long we have been in the workplace, we should always be open to new methods of organising our time, and moreover, we should always bear in mind the importance of being organised in the workplace, and the consequences for our colleagues if we aren’t. 

We followed this session with some drinks and tasty nibbles, and a chance to do some networking...which tied in nicely with putting to good use some of the skills mentioned in my recent post on networking skills!

Image courtesy of: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1758