LAMP scalability and high availability

Today was a very busy day at the office, I felt like problems were coming at me from all directions. It’s often hard to keep focused on things that really matter with people and situations coming at you from all directions. When all the hubbub dies down and all the fires are put out you are still left with projects, planning, and relationship building that has to be done, but there is just not enough hours in the day. I am sure many of you can relate to my day at the office, but there is a better way, a more effective way, to manage your time that will bring you success in all areas of your life. Ask yourself these two questions and write down the answers:

1. What is one thing you could do on a regular basis (you are not doing now) that would make a huge positive difference in your personal life?
2. What in your professional life would bring similar results?

I have found that the key to effective time management is to organize and execute around priorities. Some priorities can vary from day to day, but others stem from the person’s character and are long term commitments to yourself and people around you. Some examples of these are relationship building, mentoring, problem prevention, recognizing new opportunities, P/PC (production and production capability) balance, delegation, or any activity that brings long term results in business or personal life. Stephen Covey talks about this in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and provides an illustration called the “The Time Management Matrix” that can help you manage yourself more effectively. I would like to give credit to Stephen Covey for creating this diagram.

This diagram contains 4 quadrants with different types of activities. Using this diagram you can identify where you are spending most of your time and make corrections based on the suggestions below.

II. Not Urgent Important

Quadrant two contains issues that often don’t require our immediate attention and can be put off for later and unfortunately that’s often what happens. Important tasks such as relationship building, documentation, business development, employee mentoring, and training get left behind, because they don’t produce immediate results or recognition. The other enemies of tasks in quadrant two are interruptions, crises, and busy work. Effective people spend as much time as possible in quadrant two working on not urgent, but important issues. It’s rare to see senior managers running around with their heads cut off putting out fires and that’s mostly because they spend their time on low urgency high importance activities. Exercising prevention and anticipating problems can reduce interruptions and let you spend more time in this quadrant building your future success. Writing a blog like this is also a 2^nd quadrant activity?!

I. Urgent Important

Quadrant one holds tasks we can’t say no to. These include such matters as deadlines, system outages, very angry customers, and things of that sort. Some of these issues are unavoidable and it’s normal to spend some portion of your time in this quadrant; however, focusing your efforts on quadrant two will shrink the amount of time you spend in quadrant one and make you more effective.

III. Urgent Not Important

Quadrant three includes issues that other people think are important, but are really not. Some of which are meetings about meetings, spam by coworkers, phone calls, or any problems that if ignored will not bring the company to a screeching halt and will be forgotten about in 2 hours. Don’t be acted upon, stay on track and out of this quadrant.

IV. Not Important Not Urgent

I know that none of us spend any time here, but for the sake of completeness…! News, YouTube, and other time wasters should be avoided at all costs and don’t contribute to your effectiveness. One of the reasons that people go to this quadrant is burnout from spending too much time in quadrant one.

The philosophy behind concentrating on not urgent important issues in quadrant two is to be opportunity minded by starving problems and feeding opportunities. Once you identify the shortcomings in your current self management style you will need to find a planning tool that will take you and keep you in quadrant two where you can be most effective. I recommend making a plan for the whole week by scheduling quiet time to write it. The weekly plan of course can be adapted to each day during the week as needed.

This weekly planning tool needs to have six qualities

• Coherence

Helps you keep focus on your long term goals, priorities and plans and makes sure that all these synergize with values and principles important to you.

• Balance

Lets you balance different areas of your life such as work, family, health and personal development

• Quadrant II

Keeps you focused on quadrant two activities and away from crises.

• People

Nothing is set in stone. Allow for spending time with people even if it throws you off schedule. Don’t forget the human element.

• Flexible

The tool needs to be customizable and made to serve your needs.

• Portable

The tool needs to be portable so you can take it anywhere and review it easily.

A planning tool with these qualities forces you to look at your week not in terms of crises and action items that need to be addressed, but more in terms of principle centered long term goals. This is an effective way to manage yourself, because it’s easier to commit and carry out tasks that are principle driven and that have personal value and meaning to you. You will be effective and feel good about what you do!

Let’s backup a little, and as an experiment look at the answers you have given to the questions in the beginning of this blog. What quadrant do you think they fall into?

I bet its quadrant two! So what are you waiting for? Stop procrastinating and get to it.

by Pavel Pragin / pavel@clearscale.net

ppragin Management stephen covey time management