Time Management, or the Great Art of Pilfering Minutes

Time management is as central to writing well as flour is to baking bread. Without it, you have words virtually sprinkled across the page, each project an exercise in speed and frustration. But you’re far too busy to practice time management. That’s the point. Because you are so busy, you must manage time.Some businesspeople are experts in the great science of procrastination. Others simply operate on a deadline basis: if the piece is due in five minutes, or if it was due the day before, they start writing it. Imposing time management is relatively simple: just add writing time to your daily calendar. Naturally, you’ll need to be flexible. No appointments from 10:00 to 11:00? Plan to write then, knowing the phone will ring and associates will stop by your desk to talk. If your days are particularly splintered with interruptions, throw in an extra hour or so of writing time.When creating your schedule, be sure to determine the following:
• Which document you should start sooner and which can wait until later in the day. For example, if your employee evaluation should be on the VP’s desk by 2:00, better start sometime in the morning. This means saving your less important E-mail message until later that afternoon. Or perhaps you want to jot off that E-mail message as a warm-up and write the more difficult report next.
• A realistic deadline. If that letter should be soaring down the narrow artery of the mail slot by 4:00, start writing it shortly after lunch. Then you can edit your letter later. Have to get information to a client immediately? Plan to write your message, make a quick phone call or take care of some other quick but necessary task, review the message, and fax it.
• Whether you’ll need input from others in your organization. If so, leave extra flex time — sometimes hours or even days. This time is especially important when the person providing information or feedback procrastinates or insists you make sweeping changes.
Businesspeople typically fall into their biggest time-management glitches when writing longer documents. Most set aside a few days or, worse, a single day to write that lengthy report or proposal. This means they arrive at the office two hours early when the only one around is the security guard, cancel all appointments, refuse all but the most urgent calls, and type furiously until finally they ship the unedited document via overnight delivery. Then they leave the office, exhausted and arrive home long after everyone else in the Western world has finished dinner. Those who have a home office barricade themselves from family and friends, emerging only for essentials — the bathroom, a sandwich they carry back to their desk, and maybe some fresh air.