by Jonathon Bright

Created on: July 21, 2010   Last Updated: April 15, 2011

Saving time for office workers involves processing work n the most efficient manner. Imagine every time a task comes across your desk it plants a telegraph pole in front of you – sometimes they are some way off, sometimes they are quite close. As an effective time manager you need to make sure you navigate these telegraph poles safely rather than running headlong into them, bouncing from one to another.

The simplest way to navigate the telegraph poles is to deal with every request that comes your way once rather than leaving them in your in tray to re-read repeatedly and worry about them as the deadline for action comes closer. Use the four D’s to save time and take control:

Deal

If it’s quick and easy, do it straight away. Lots of internal requests can be dealt with like this and it’s a good idea to handle internal requests immediately – people can generally find your desk and because e-mail is instant people often expect instant responses. Frustrating but true.

Diarise

If you can’t deal with it straight away, think how long it will take to complete the task. Maybe you need to get input from a third party, maybe you’re waiting for the end of the month to get up to date sales figures. Tell the person who is asking for a response when you will get back to them. It stops them chasing you up and it highlights any time pressures immediately.

Delegate

Is someone else better placed to do it? A subordinate or another person in the organisation? If you are getting a subordinate to do it clarify deadlines with them and whoever is requesting input. If someone else in the organisation is doing it make sure the person requesting the information knows who is doing it (and who to chase up!).

Delete

Sometimes you get asked stuff and you know it’s not really important or the person requesting it is likely to forget about it or their priorities are likely to change. This comes from experience but learn to recognise the time wasting requests and put these straight in File 13 (the waste paper bin!).

One of the advantages of using the four D’s is that it will naturally create a task list via Diarised items. This allows even the busiest office worker to leave the list at work, where it belongs, ensuring down time is not spent trying to remember what needs doing tomorrow.

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