Elliott, Patricia C.

Kirschbaum, Barbara P.

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

Woman C.P.A. Volume 40 Issue 4 Article 7 10-1978 Personal Management: Time Management And Your Heart Patricia C. Elliott Barbara P. Kirschbaum Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/wcpa  Part of the Accounting Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Elliott, Patricia C. and Kirschbaum, Barbara P. (1978) "Personal Management: Time Management And Your Heart," Woman C.P.A.: Vol. 40 : Iss. 4 , Article 7. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/wcpa/vol40/iss4/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Archival Digital Accounting Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Woman C.P.A. by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu. The following article appears with the per­mission of Front Line Associates.Hello there Superwoman! Working on corporate mergers? Managing a finance department? Advising clients on tax shelters? Running your own business? Managing a household? Pur­suing your CPA? Raising a child or two? Planning for your untimely death?As women pursue fulltime careers, they are subjecting themselves to the same or worse emotional and physical stresses experienced by men. Not only must they work exceedingly hard at their jobs in order to succeed, but quite often they are responsible for an equally demanding alternate role — that of homemaker and mother. A woman can easily feel that she is on a hamster tread­mill — running faster and faster but ac­complishing little more than when her pace was slower. A hidden price women pay for this deserved thrust onto and up the business ladder is beginning to appear in their medical statistics. The in­cidence of coronary heart disease among women has increased dramatically in the past ten years.In their excellent book, Type A Behavior and Your Heart, Drs. Fried­man and Rosenman discuss coronary heart disease and a key factor they call Type A Behavior. They define Type A Behavior Pattern as “an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time...”1 They put forth the thesis that Type A Behavior Pattern is the determining factor in whether one suffers coronary heart disease. The primary trait ex­hibited by a Type A individual “is the habitual sense of time urgency or ‘hurry sickness’.”2 This individual tries “to ac­complish too much or to participate in too many events in the amount of time he allots for these purposes.”3 This per­son sets unrealistic deadlines and thus subjects himself to continuous time pressure. Drs. Friedman and Rosenman offer a detailed outline to the reader so they may determine if they are a Type A individual. Some of the distinguishing behavior patterns include:1) “If you always move, walk and eat rapidly.2) If you feel an impatience with the rate at which most events take place.3) If you indulge in polyphasicthought or performance (thinking or doing two or more thingsPersonal ManagementTime Management And Your HeartEditor:Patricia C. Elliot,CPA, Ph.D.University of New MexicoAlbuquerque, New MexicoGuest Author:Barbara P. Kirschbaumsimultaneously).4) If you almost always feel vaguely guilty when you relax and do ab­solutely nothing for several hours to several days.5) If you no longer observe the more important or interesting or lovely objects that you encounter in your milieu.6) If you attempt to schedule more and more in less and less time, and in doing so make fewer and fewer allowances for the unforeseen contingencies.”4The person who is free of the traits listed above exhibits Type B Behavior and faces a greatly reduced risk of incurring coronary heart disease even with poor eating, drinking, smoking and exer­cising habits.Now, what does all of this have to do with time management? Time manage­ment is that well-known but little- practiced art of mastering yourself so you can master your time. Wise time management practices can help an in­dividual acquire Type B Behavior Patterns: The woman who controls the demands on her, who seldom allows the harried pace of her colleagues and her work environment to cause her agita­tion, who maintains a healthy balance between work and leisure, and who can thoroughly relax without feeling guilty. The end result is greater productivity and creativity in your work, much more enjoyment of life’s pleasures and healthier living.Wise time management practices have one basic, overriding purpose: to enable you to maximize the hours you do have alloted to you in this life to ac­complish those goals which are impor­tant to you and to become the person you want to be. As a time manager, you constantly weed out the secondary con­cerns and the trivia as much as possible. Those activities which do merit your energies receive your full attention and you bestow your best efforts upon them. Keep asking yourself this question: What did I exchange today for? Do I like what I’m doing well enough to ex­change my time for it? It is the quality of your activities, not the quantity, that counts.Time management is not doing two things at once such as making notes toOctober 1978/27SAN JOSESTATE UNIVERSITYis seeking candidates for faculty positions leading to tenure, or for tem­porary positions as Visiting Professors or full-time lecturers. Preferably, can­didates for appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor should possess a doctorate and CPA, but applicants who are in the advanced dissertation stage will be considered. Candidates for Associate Professor must possess a doc­torate, a demonstrated record of teaching excellence and a record of publications and/or professional in­volvement. We are an equal oppor­tunity/affirmative action employer and encourage applications from women and members of minority groups. Applications should include a curriculum vitae, names and addresses of three references, transcript of grades from universities attended and copies of any research papers and/or publications.Applications should be addressed to Dr. Joseph Mori, Professor and Area Coordinator, Area of Accounting and Finance, School of Business, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 95192. Deadline for applications is December 1, 1978.yourself on a pocket tape recorder as you are driving to work. It is not review­ing mail and giving instructions to a co­worker while waiting on “hold” on the telephone to talk to a client. Time management is not trying to do every task in a shorter period of time so you can squeeze an extra hour out of your day to include even more tasks. These examples betray Type A Behavior.With that in mind, here are the best twenty tips I have come across on time management. They work well — if you keep practicing! And remember — fifteen minutes saved every day for a year will give you an extra eleven full 8-hour days to do with as you wish.1) You must have a plan to work and play by — a master list of the values, goals, experiences which you want to be and do in your lifetime. That plan establishes your priorities and acts as a recalibration tool when your days become too cluttered with activi­ty. Sit down and think about what you want in ten years, in two years, in the next six months. Does what you do today serve any of these goals?28/ The Woman CPAIf not, then why are you involved in these activities? Make this list the guiding spirit for your ac­tivities.2) Remember the 80/20 Rule. Eighty percent of your effec­tiveness comes from twenty per­cent of the things you spend your time working on. Unfortunately, most of us spend eighty percent of our time working on items that will generate only twenty percent of our business. For example, of ten clients, two will yield eighty percent of your income. For effective time management, the key is to find these two, label them top priority and go after them. The remaining eight clients can probably be post­poned without real harm.3) If your office is in your home, you are prey to many time wasters. It is so much easier to water the plants than to evaluate a client’s tax position. Set aside one room in the house for business. Set a standard time when you will enter that room each day to begin work. Close the door and do not leave that office for a specific time period (3 to 4 hours). Stick to your schedule!4) Paperwork requires the “handle once only” rule. Every time you pick up a piece of paper, act on it. Dispose of it, write a memo on it and send it on, make a phone call about it, file it. Don’t spin your wheels idling in indecision.5) How well do you use the telephone? Prior to the call, out­line the basic points you want to make during the conversation. Eliminate the unnecessary pleasantries and the weather reports. Say “I’m fine. I need three things from you...” Move on and move out!6) If all you do is make lists of tasks and don’t follow through on the tasks, then the listing is useless. Unfinished business stays alive. It will always be incubating in your mind. Do it now. It is out of sight and out of mind.7) Salespeople (or whoever) take two hours of your time and pay for your $5.00 lunch. Isn’t your time worth more than $2.50 an hour? Re-evaluate the reasons why you attend business luncheons, civic committee meetings, etc. Many could probably be eliminated.8) Take time at the end of the day to sort your paperwork into three stacks: urgent, important, low priority. When morning comes, you can begin fresh on the “urgent” items. Discipline yourself to finish the job in one sitting. If crises or interruptions come up, you’ve got the tough tasks done or well on their way toward completion. On the items labeled “important,” you can get to them when time permits. Often you will find they have taken care of themselves. “Low priority” items can be thrown away after three months — they did not need to be done anyway! Remember: the first hour sets the pace for the rest of the day.9) There is a difference between ef­ficiency and effectiveness. Ef­ficiency is doing something ex­ceedingly well. Effectiveness is doing the right thing exceedingly well. Which are you?10) Eliminate clutter. Desks stacked with piles of papers are distrac­ting, inefficient and add to the feelings of the immensity of your work load. Allow only one “urgent” project to remain on your desk. Concentrate on it un­til it is completed.11) Do not read the mail until after you have accomplished the most urgent job of the day. Mail dis­tracts attention and often demands time-consuming responses.12) Use your time metabolism to schedule your work. Analyze your prime energy times during the day and schedule the tough jobs and decision-making tasks during those periods.13) Check our your biorhythms. There are prime times during the month for doing particular types of tasks too. See if negotiations and selling prospective clients are much more productive when your emotional, intellectual and physical rhythms are at their peak during the month. See if writing proposals and analyzing contracts are easier and less time­consuming when your intellec­tual rhythm is at its peak. If you have a fair amount of flexibility in the scheduling of your work priorities, then scheduling the types of tasks according to your biorhythm state can multiply your productivity.14) Pick a cut-off time when you leave work every day and leave\ You need the time to recharge your energies for maximum effectiveness.15) Stop being immobolized by the immensity of the work before you. Concentrate on your achievements! Do you leave work each day feeling pressure and guilt by all the tasks you did not get done? That kind of think­ing rapidly erodes your energy needed for the work and leisure ahead in the evening hours. Make a practice of leaving work thinking about the number of tasks you did complete today.16) Learn to say NO! Turning down requests (legitimate or not) for your time to attend meetings, serve on community boards, entertain friends, bake cookies for your child’s school party, engage in small talk with a colleague in the hall, etc., can be one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself. Think of the guilt and stress eliminated by uttering the two letter word, “NO“! If you have difficulty us­ing that word, enroll in an asser­tiveness training workshop. The time and money invested will double the discretionary time available to you.17) Speaking of time and money: you have to spend one or theBARBARA P. KIRSCHBAUM is Vice- President of Front Line Associates, Ltd., a management consulting firm based in Phoenix, Arizona, which offers its services primarily to women. Drawing upon her twelve years experience in the personnel and employment development fields, she designs and conducts seminars for women who want to succeed in the business world. other in order to have the alter­nate. Make a decision about which resource is more valuable to you. Keep in mind that money can always be found — often not in the amount you would like but it is always available somehow. Time lost, on the other hand, can never be regained. And of what use is money without the time to enjoy it? Any service for which you pay that saves you time (gift, clothing, food shopping; housecleaning; drycleaning) should be given very serious consideration.18) Eliminate non-working equip­ment or things you get no pleasure out of from your home or office: bulky file drawers, broken keys on an adding machine, a vacuum cleaner which has little suction, a frypan whose nonstick finished is ruin­ed. The cost of repairing or replacing these items is minimal compared to the stress and ten­sion they add to your life.19) During those periods when you do not seem to have the initiative to do even a simple “low priori­ty” task, try the following. Select a task and tell yourself when you have completed this one item, you will take a break. Do it and do it well. When it’s finished, tell yourself you will do just one more task and then relax. Com­plete that job. Repeat the guise over again and again. Even though it is a deceptive game, you can work straight through for four to six hours using the ploy when NOTHING else would work. The sense of ac­complishment at the end of the day can be as great as when you land a lucrative account.20) Stop reading articles on how to better manage your time and start practicing time management! Pick out three ideas from this list which would be the most productive for you and practice them every day until they are ingrained habits. Think of what you could do with those eleven extra days a year.Time management and your heart. Of all the expertise career women are ac­quiring, time management should be high on the list of skills to master. If women PRACTICED the wise manage- The Woman CPAChristmasIs SoonFor a favorite young relative working toward, or thinking about, a career in accounting...For someone nice who did you a business favor...For the library at your alma mater...For a VIP (besides yourself) at your office...$6.00 will remind a giftee of your thoughtfulness in January, April, July, and October. It will say something good about your taste, tooTHE WOMAN CPA Circulation Department 35 East Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois 60601ment of their most valuable resource, time, think of the contribution to their business milieus, the quality of attention to their personal universes, and above all...the impact on total health with which to pull it all off! ■NOTES1Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman, Type A Behavior and Your Heart, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1974, pg. 842Ibid, pg. 863Ibid, pg. 874Ibid., pg. 100-101SUGGESTED READINGSFriedman, Meyer and Ray H. Rosenman, Type A Behavior and Your Heart, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1974.Lakein, Alan, How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, Peter H. Wyden, Inc., 1973.Mackenzie, R. Alec, The Time Trap, AMACOM, New York, 1972.October 1978/29

Personal Management: Time Management And Your Heart

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Personal Management: Time Management And Your Heart

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