Time Bandits

On March 10th clocks roll forward an hour for Daylight Savings.  We lose an hour.  (Damn, where did I put that hour?!?!  Daylight Savings stole an hour from me!  Well, didn’t your mother tell you not to leave an hour lying around in plain sight where anyone can grab it?!?!).

Now, Daylight Savings didn’t really steal anything from us.  When you wake up Sunday, you didn’t lose anything; there are still 24 hours in each day.  But there are real time bandits in our day.  According to Edward Brown in his book The Time Bandit Solution, he states that interruptions waste 40% to 60% of employee’s work time.  And they result in restarts, momentum loss, do-overs and what he calls “distress manifestations” such as irritability, mental fatigue and stress. 

Today’s workplace often has an “interruption” culture.  Everyone thinks it’s acceptable to interrupt your work without thought.  And, interruptions are so common and acceptable that some of us contract “interruption addiction” welcoming interruptions, needing them to get through the day, making us our own worst time bandit.  We often put others interests above our own deadlines and workloads.  We answer emails and text messages instantaneously.  We think our time belongs to everyone else at work.  Even though for some positions this actually might be true, there is still things we all can do to guard our time from time bandits!

1.      “Time-Lock” an hour a day.  Block one hour a day marked as “busy” on your calendar.  Pick a time that is your most productive time of the day (e.g., if you are a morning person, do it in the morning).  Discuss the time with the people you work most closely with – supervisor, peers, direct reports, etc – to make sure it works well for them as well and to ask them to respect your time lock, only interrupting you in an emergency.  Remove anything that you know will distract you (and make you your own time bandit) like cell phones, music, email, etc.  Then, use your time lock wisely – plan the work ahead of time, then work the plan. 

2.      Set up “Batch Processing.”  Batch-processing is an old computer term where you group similar repetitive task.  By doing this we can save time, develop work momentum, and get things done.  Look at what you have to get done today.  Group similar tasks together.  Then, get all those tasks done before moving on to the next group.  This is also called “single-tasking”.  By keep our brain focused on the same or similar tasks instead of jumping around, we become our own assembly line.

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." ― Michael Altshuler

 “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." ― William Penn

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My Mistake

Mistakes happen.  It does not matter how knowledgeable or skilled you are.  You will still make mistakes.  Being an expert can’t even save you.  Once you’ve master something, that task does not require the same thought or focus to complete as it did in the beginning.  When you’re mind wanders, you are apt to stumble.

Here’s a good example.  In 1964, All-Pro football player Jim Marshall picked up a fumble and ran down the field for what he thought was a touchdown.  Unfortunately, he ran the wrong way and scored a two-point safety for the opposing team.  Marshall was one of the best football players of all time, but he still messed up.

The biggest mistake you can make is to not accept the fact that you can make mistakes (say that 10 times real fast).  Don’t excuse or deny them.  Accept and own that you can (and when you do, that you did) make a mistake.  If you can do that, you be light years ahead other people.  You will be able to treat mistakes as the learning experiences they should be as well as proactively plan in order to reduce them.

And when you do make one, make sure you learn something from it.  Debrief the mistake – what when wrong and how could it have been prevented are the basic questions to ask.

“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” – Bruce Lee

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

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Decide Like a Fighter Pilot

In the uncertainty and volatility of combat, decisions and actions must be made quickly and accurately or people die.  The OODA loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act – is a strategy developed by U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd to help fighter pilots during dogfights.  It is a learning system, a method for dealing with uncertainty, and a strategy for winning head-to-head contests and competitions.  Uncertainty is part of the world we live in.  But, it is not uncertainty that is the problem.  It is our inability to shift perspectives when change happens to see the world as it is, instead of how it we think it “should” be.

Observe – Build a broad, comprehensive picture.  This is pure, unadulterated information gathering with as little judgement or filtering as possible.  Inputs should also include observations about yourself as well as past trends in your decision making in similar situations.  Note that comprehensive does not mean “take a ton of time to agonize over researching something until you know everything.”  No paralysis by analysis. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Orient – If you do not have a good sense of the reality around a situation, your decision is not a fully rational one… you’re just shooting from the hip.  Call out your biases and what is not fact and remove them from your decision.  Separate out information that is True But Useless (T.B.U.) – not all data is relevant.  And, uncertainty is irrelevant.  We must accept uncertainty as part of life and make decisions even in the face of it.

Decide – Steps one and two should present a few different solutions.  Pick one.  One thing to guard against is first-conclusion bias.  Sometimes, the first thing you want to do is not the best, especially if that is what you always go for.

Act – Once the decision is made it is time to act on it.  So go for it!  During this stage it is important to be watching how good our decision was in order to learn for the future.  Did we observe the right info?  Did we get swayed by biases or other barriers?  Were our models correct? Then repeat the whole loop again.

For a more detailed analysis of the OODA loop, read this article by Brett & Kate McKay.

“What is strategy?  A mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests.” – John Boyd

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