“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” ~ David Allen

A few weeks ago I was meeting with a client.  He shared a long list of things he had on his to do list for years, his list of things he wanted to do but never seemed to get to, and of course his frustration about everything else that was sucking down his time.

He had already culled through his calendar and cut out meetings he determined were not critical.  And while he spent time going through everything he had to do, he couldn’t find anything to eliminate or delegate.  The question he brought to the conversation was ‘how do I get more productive’? He was convinced that he had yet to learn the secrets of time management.

There are hundreds of books and articles on time management.  Ask any successful person about their time management/productivity tips and your pen will run out of ink before you can write them all down.  Our culture rewards highly productive people and look critically at those who aren’t. There’s this unspoken belief that if you could just plan your schedule better you could reach productivity heaven.

That belief is in itself the problem.  We cannot, nor should we strive for improved productivity.  If we spend our time focusing on what takes us attention you will realize that what’s taking your attention is often what interferes with your productivity.

Going back to the client I mentioned in the earlier.  He wanted to improve his productivity and get more done.  And we spent a few hours discussing his challenges as a leader (that in his mind had nothing to do with productivity).  He mentioned several of his directors with whom he was having performance problems. A big project that was having problems, and apparently had for some time yet the manager had not made him aware and now he had a big mess.  To compound this situation he had to travel out of the country to fix and would be out of the office several weeks.

Recruiting was a challenge as he felt the recruiting team was focused on skills rather than who the person was and the fit, and he continued to spend time interviewing qualified but poor cultural fit candidates.  Adding to this he had ten positions to fill, all within a few months.

Several of his key leaders weren’t performing to his expectations, and weren’t holding those who worked for them accountable. It wasn’t to the point of performance improvement plans, yet my client shared that once again he has to have the conversations he felt like he shouldn’t have to have.

How many hours a week do you suspect he spent dealing with staffing, performance or other problems?  When I asked him he said 15 – 20, maybe more. No surprise he was feeling unproductive and looking for time management techniques.

Guess what I suggested?  We spend time improving his communication skills so that he clearly defined his expectations to others.  Yes he thought he had, and as we talked he realized that he likely hadn’t been specific enough about his expectations.  Nor had he confirmed their understanding of his expectations and gained their commitment to them.

He struggled with how to communicate to the recruiting team his needs so he didn’t waste time interviewing people he wouldn’t hire.  In fact he had hired someone he felt was not a good fit and yet was bullied by the recruiting team to hire and several months into their employment he had them on a PIP (performance improvement plan).

How much time would he have available to him if he didn’t need to have repeated conversations about expectations, performance and challenges?  If interviewing is only one hour per candidate, and you are interviewing 20 and hiring two, how much time was wasted?

We shifted his focus from improving his time management skills to where he was putting his attention, and that was the people part of his job.  What if instead of having repeated conversations about expectations or performance he could reduce it to one or two. What if he could interview 20 candidates and hire 10?  Instead of the 15 – 20 hours a week he was spending he could reduce this by even half. Within a month he has gained an entire week, and this doesn’t account for the time he spends angsting over the problems, talking to others about the problems and his focus away from other things he needs to do.

Before you spend time learning time management techniques, or how to improve your productivity take time to assess where you time goes.  For many leaders I work with it’s having repeated conversations about performance, lack of communication, misaligned expectations, staffing and recruiting challenges…all related to communication.  If you could reduce the time spent dealing with these challenges you’d have more time available. Where is your time spent? And where is your attention? I suspect it’s on problem resolution and fixing what’s not working, which often takes more time than making sure, to the best of your ability, you are clear about your communication so you have fewer problems to handle.

So often we are just busy and don’t take time to consider what is keeping us busy.  

Download The Cost of Being a Workaholic.  You’ll learn how busyness costs you at so many levels.