A few weeks ago, as Lauren and I sat in our regular coaching session, I brought up the (for me) astonishing revelation I was experiencing in my own time management at work. For the previous two weeks, I had been trying out a new approach (which I thought was of my own clever devising) to my to-do list that had with the exception of only one day, proven to make my days much smoother, less stressful and more productive. My approach was this: start my day by doing the biggest thing on my list, then move onto my other to-do list items and if possible schedule only one “big thing” a day. Lauren turned to me and said “Oh, you mean the Pickle Jar Theory?” To which I responded: “Ah, ya. I guess so.”
While I’ll admit that my ego felt momentarily bruised by the realization that this awesome new approach was nothing new to the world at large and in fact had been out there waiting for me all these many years of my working life, it didn’t take the shine of the results this new approach was giving me. Do a web search on the Pickle Jar Theory and you’ll come up with all kinds of articles, though I find that one at A List Apart to be the most relevant to my experience (and the least heavy on “management speak”). And as I’ve thought about this more and more, I’ve realized that many sage entrepreneurs I’ve known over the years have been hinting at this approach as a sanity saver for years and I foolishly ignored them. It is my own folly that drives me here to share my experience with you all lovely internet readers. You see, as a partner in a small firm and the lead client manager to boot, I’ve always felt like my job was the little things, which is why I’ve always prioritized them. And while that is in many ways very true, I do need to be available for phonecalls, my email does need to be replied to with some expediency etc. but there are also a whole bunch of big things that are also a part of my job — for me this is mostly things like proposal writing, project documentation etc. — and the less breathing space I have for those tasks the less effect I am in getting them done. While that seems like a no brainer, giving myself the “a-ok” to change my priorities took longer than it should have. I had read or heard of many folks who advocated not even checking email first thing in the morning as a way to increase productivity, which was one of those suggestions that I just couldn’t see as possible in my client manager job description. But a subtle spin on that so that I do check email first thing, but then only respond immediately if it is actually time sensitive, while leaving the rest to be dealt with once my “big thing” is checked off my list, has made a huge difference.
So, enough about me and my pickle jar. What tricks for time management do you boss ladies who are doing it all use?
