The Wineers Code

GEORGE CHINGARANDE | Monday May 12, 2008 00:00

The ability to convert an idea into an achievement is what we will call the Achievement Quotient (AQ). When it comes to success and achievement, it is not intelligence (IQ) that matters most. This is not to despise or minimise the importance of intelligence. Talent and intelligence should always be acknowledged and honoured. Yet, there is a truth that needs to be underscored -Talent and intelligence alone are never enough.

At the end of the journey of life what will matter most is not how prodigious one was in churning out ideas, but how effective one was in executing those ideas. Some people never seem to get things done, and yet they are always busy. The volume of work never seems to diminish, and the time is never sufficient. If they do not change their approach, even if they are reincarnated fifty times these people will never achieve much. Why is this so? The answer lies in Parkinson's Law of time management.

British author Northcote C Parkinson posited that work would always expand to fill the time available for its completion. According to this principle, if you allocate a day to do your shopping, you are likely to spend the whole day shopping. If on the other hand you allocate half a day to the same task, it is also likely that you will complete it. What has happened? You have bought exactly the same goods in the same shops, yet in one case you spend the whole day and in the other half a day. Most likely in the first scenario your shopping involved a lot of other activities related to the shopping but not adding value to it. You probably did more window-shopping, argued about price or walked more lackadaisically than was necessary. Simply put, although the goal was to shop you multiplied the tasks and activities involved in the shopping.

Increasing activities and tasks does not always increase productivity. In the workplace this phenomenon appears in a mutated form. Whenever organisations are faced with huge backlogs and miss deadlines, the tendency is to conclude that they are understaffed. The proposed solution is always to employ a few more employees. Yet, even with these additional employees backlogs never disappear completely. The situation tends to improve, but the improvement is just transient as backlogs reappear quietly. The fact is that employee multiplication breeds a lot more administrative activities that are not value adding.

Work will always multiply to fill up the time allocated for its accomplishment. The solution to improving the achievement quotient is to deliberately disobey Parkinson's Law. This can be done by firstly reducing the amount of time allocated to the task to be completed. Set tight but reasonable deadlines and hold yourself accountable to meet them. Secondly, ruthlessly sift the value adding tasks from the non-value adding tasks. The time management grid is a valuable instrument to help you towards this end.

The first step in using the grid is to write down all the things that you need to accomplish in a given period of time as they come to your mind without attempting to rank them in terms of priority. The second step is to draw a cross (+) to represent the horizontal and vertical axis of the grid. This will divide the blank page into four quadrants. The left end of the horizontal axis is labelled low urgency, the right end High Urgency. The bottom end of the vertical axis is labelled Low Importance while the top end is labelled High Importance. The four quadrants are thus labeled Low Importance, Low Urgency; High Importance, Low Urgency; Low Importance, High Urgency and High Importance, High Urgency.

All the tasks to be accomplished are then transferred to this grid in their respective quadrants in terms of their level of importance and urgency. On any given day the good executors start with three or four tasks in the high urgency and low importance quadrant. These tasks do not make or break your day because of their low importance however, starting with them gets you into the groove. Getting a few not so important tasks under your belt helps to build your momentum, this is because from the time we wake up our levels of productivity tend to increase to a peak and then fall of towards the end of the day.

The second quadrant to be attended to is the High Importance and High Urgency issues. These are the issues that make or break your day. They are the source of short-term success, and they can undermine chances of future progress. By their very nature these issues tend to have pending deadlines. The tendency is always towards pushing the deadline further and asking for extension. However, this is counterproductive because Parkinson's Law teaches that if you extend deadlines work will also expand to fill the time provided by the new deadline. Achievers do not extend deadlines unless there is a clear and present gain to be derived from the extension. The third quadrant to be addressed is the High Urgency and High Importance. These are issues with far reaching consequences but without deadlines. More often than not they are discretional.

No one will subpoena you for not accomplishing them, but they have the potential to grievously affect your future. Classic examples are enrolling on a personal development programme, networking with professional colleagues, writing down your vision and goals and embarking on personal fitness efforts. Since no one will ever impose a deadline on you, the best way to manage these tasks is to impose a deadline on yourself and compel yourself to respect it. This is the essence of self-discipline. The last quadrant is the low importance and low urgency tasks. In principle you can do without these. They are the time wasters. If you really have to do them, then delegate these tasks to others.
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