What I Learnt This Week - ManagingTime to be Effective and Productive

What I Learnt This Week – Managing your time to be more effective and productive

“A week in the life of…” can be vastly different across the financial industry: Trader vs. IB; Buy-Side vs. Sell-Side. One common thread however is that the workload is high and your time is limited. To be a high achiever it is important to be effective and productive. Although I’ve tried to keep it general, some of the following suggestions might be more useful than others.

1. Be organised and embrace routine – You don’t need to waste time making menial decisions. In an interview with Michael Lewis (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack…), Barack Obama commented that this is the reason he wears a plain charcoal or navy suit with a white shirt every day. Don’t be the person standing in the line at Starbucks umming and ahhing over whether you want caramel in your frappe.

2. Set short-term goals – As an engineer I learnt the importance of breaking down a project into a series of shorter tasks. Doing this makes it much easier to manage time and assess performance. In my current role, I’ve broken down the process of doing investment research so that I can just punch out smaller tasks without being overwhelmed by the scope of the project. Financials; industry analysis; valuation etc. Break it down. Keep it simple.

3. Avoid distractions – social connectivity is now so entrenched in our culture that there are distractions everywhere you look. I recently read a comment that “checking your phone is the yawn of our generation”. You probably don’t need to message people as much as you do and it’s probably costing you more, in terms of productivity, than you think. Try calling people rather than texting – it’ll cut a lot of the rubbish – and stick to logging into facebook a couple of times a week, if at all.

4. Learn to say no – The highest achievers are ruthless with their time. Treat your highest priorities like flights you have to catch: give them a set time in advance and say no to anything that would stop you from making your flight.

5. Make the most of downtime – While this varies person-to-person, there is a pretty clear trend amongst my peers to make the most of their down time. Whether it’s hit the gym, reading, sleeping, whatever – if you’re going to take time away from work, make sure it’s doing something that’s going to increase your productivity when you get back to it.