Consulting Restaurant Owner Time Management Advice

2
Oct

Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload.
Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people.

Restautant Owner

• Time Management
• Beating Procrastination
• Effective Scheduling
• Resources and Books to read
The heart of time management is an important shift in focus to:
Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, (I call this putting out Fires) because they’re not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most. Basically if you have to put the same “fire” out more then 3 times you have a hole in your internal business structure / systems
Great Book on understanding and important verses urgent is
“First Things First” By Steven Covey and Roger Merrill.
The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the ‘80:20 Rule’. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations. This brings up the Book the “Four Hour Work Week” By Tim Ferriss. The basic premise is to focus on the 3 most critical tasks that need to be accomplished for the day Do them first and everything else is gravy (my Words)
Beating Procrastination
Manage Your Time. Get the Important Done.
The key to controlling and combating this destructive behavior is to recognize when you start procrastinating, I use the term selective procrastination and actually apply it to my stop doing list, but lets understand why it happens (even to the best of us), by understanding the basis for procrastination we can take active steps to better manage our time and outcomes.
Why do we Procrastinate?
In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable (pain vs pleasure) or that you’re more comfortable doing. (Learning new things that we have ever done before sends our brain into a fight of flight mode thus creating a feeling of discomfort towards pressing forward with our projects)
Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don’t understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren’t actually important.
They may feel that they’re doing the right thing by reacting fast. To the urgent
1. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest.
2. Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin.
3. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you’re capable of completing.
Other causes of procrastination might include:
• Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand
• A fear of failure or success (yup that tricky brain)
• Poor organizational skills (planning)
• Perfectionism (“I don’t have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won’t do it at all.”)
(All of these reasons come down to not planning)
Overcoming Procrastination:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it is important to know what your brain is doing, recognized and create a strategy to deal with and overcome it before your project is derailed.
Step 1: Recognize that you’re Procrastinating
You know when you’re procrastinating!
Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:
• Filling your day with unimportant non urgent (employ selective procrastination) from your To Do List; (delegate)
• Reading an e-mail or request that you’ve noted in your notebook or on your To Do List more than once. Schedule email time 2-3 times a day with a very strict timeline to address these. This will force you to only work on the important.
• Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or check your e-mails; (been there done that)
• Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, (wrong use of selective procrastination) even though you know it’s important;
• Saying “Yes” to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.
Step 2: WHY Do You Procrastinate
Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:
• You find the task unpleasant; or
• You find the task overwhelming
(Redundant but important)
Step 3: Just Do It
If you are putting something off because you just don’t want to do it, and you really can’t delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. Get over it!!!
• Make up your own rewards.
• Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works (the 12 step program)
• Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
• Shame yourself into getting going? (It is what you are getting paid for)
• Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks.
• Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren’t the logical first actions.
(This creates a momentum that will carry over to the rest of the project. Before you know it you will be totally engrossed in its completion)
Action Planning!!
Plan Your Work. Work Your Plan.
An Action Plan is a simple list of all of the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve an objective. It differs from a To Do List, in that it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. Employ the SCHEMES method to identify all of your needs to reach your objective
• Space
• Cash
• Helpers / People
• Equipment
• Materials
• Expertise
• Systems
Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:
• Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time;
• Plan to make the best use of the time available;
• Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do; (Big Rocks)
• Preserve contingency time to handle ‘the unexpected’; and
• Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others.
To draw up an action plan, simply list the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve your goal, in the order that you need to complete them. Then work backwards to create a action plan schedule. Sounds simple?
I start at the end and work backwards by month, break down by week, then by day and then by hour.
A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your project/work, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you.
How to Use this as a Tool:
Scheduling your plan is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:
1. Identify the time you want have to work on your project
2. Block in the actions That absolutely must happen ( cannot build my site until I create an organized layout and design)
3. Review your To Do List, and schedule in only high-priority, urgent activities, based upon you action plan
4. Next, block in appropriate contingency time
5. leave space in your schedule gives your the flexibility to rearrange and react effectively to urgent issues.
6. What you now have left is your “discretionary time”: the time available to deliver your priorities and achieve your goals.
By the time you reach step 6, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first five steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way..
Plan Your Work: Work Your Plan
Key points:
The heart of time management is an important shift in focus to:Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it is important to know what your brain is doing, recognized and create a strategy to deal with and overcome it before your project is derailed.
Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness.
Action Planning is a list of steps to reach an objective or goal
Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.