Time Management Questions

The speaker discusses the importance of foundational principles in time management. They suggest asking questions about specific time management practices, prioritization, and controlling interruptions. They share a story about a technology company that improved productivity by implementing a system using colored beanbags to indicate availability for conversation. This helped control interruptions and maintain prioritization. As stated in the overview, I would go back to the simplicity of foundational principles as it relates to time management, such as what do you specifically do to manage your time? What would you describe or how would you go about describing your time management system and really listen? Number three, what do you do to go about prioritizing your work? If you had to itemize things that disrupt your time management, what are the first three things that come to your mind? Essentially, what I just demonstrated were questions around time management, time management system, prioritization, and then really controlling interruptions to time management. Let me share with you a very quick story. There was a technology company we worked with and they were all in open cubicles. It was amazing how many people weren't on the phone, even though most of the work was done on the phone, and the interruptions were constant. We did something very interesting. Now, I only share this as a foundational principle. We actually gave every cubicle beanbags, green, yellow, and red. Green means I'm open for a conversation. Yellow means if you're going to interrupt me, it needs to be really important because I'm in the middle of something. Red means no, please don't interrupt me unless it's an absolute emergency. Their productivity went up over 30% because what they found is younger people, they just didn't know how to say no. They enjoyed the conversation. They wanted a socializing atmosphere so people felt welcomed, et cetera, and it was such a cool thing because what we did is we put in some controls and parameters to help time management, to help control the interruptions, to help people maintain their prioritization.