Things will never happen on time…time management skills

Although in a pervious article I have talked about the importance of keeping things on schedule, I must admit the difficulties managers face trying to meet deadlines. As a manager, meeting deadlines seem to me like trying to aim at a moving target, either you hit it or miss it.

While gathering my thoughts for this article, I remembered the phrase “time can kill you”; I heard it in a western movie. Most of us are aware of the importance of time management, it doesn’t only touches our professional lives but also have a significant impact on our personal lives.

Working hard to keep things on schedule, I found out that “things will never happen on time”, the harder I try the more disappointed I get. So what we do, how do we keep things on time? What time management skills to use in order to save time and meet deadlines?

People will disappoint you most of the time:
1- You have purchased your flight ticket and planned to be at the airport on time.
2- You have placed the new parts order and called your supplier to ensure on time delivery.
3- You have instructed your secretary to e-mail you the tracking number for the express mail you left at the office to be sent out.
4- You have scheduled an important meeting thinking all parties involved will attend on time.
5- You have planned well in advance for your two days trip making sure each minute of your time will be well spent.
6- You have filed all the necessary paper work for your new permit in order to start your new project.

What percentage of the above tasks will happen on time? I am sure some people can claim that they can get all the above tasks accomplished on time, but can you be sure each task will be done on time each time? In my experience, on the average, 30% of the time things fail to happen on time, either for human negligence or otherwise.

I have developed the 30% rule for myself, if a task is accepted to be completed in 10 hours, I will add 30% to that to make it 13hours, if a project is accepted to be finished in thirty days, I would give the client delivery date after 39 days and so on.

A client once told me “deliver more than your promise”; someone may say “how I am going to be on time if I add 30% to my accepted completion time?” My answer is, make the 30% extra time your time management rule, if you were able to deliver without using the 30% extra time than you have “delivered more than your promised”, and your customer or yourself will feel the satisfaction of not missing a deadline.