Small Book by Poole Alumnus is Packed with Tips for Better Managing Time

Do you get to the end of the day and wonder where all your time went? That can become a real problem if it also means you have missed deadlines and appointments, or simply feel you have nothing to show for the day’s activities.

James Barrow, one of NC State Poole College of Management’s newest alumni, provides a new approach for those who want to do better with this common problem.

Barrow, who graduated with his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Poole College of Management in May 2017, made time during his senior year to research and find a new approach to keeping time from just slipping away. He summarized his findings in a pocket-sized, 66-page book, No Time to Lose! A Guide to Accounting for Time, which he self-published via Lulu.com in April.

Barrow makes it clear from the beginning that this is not another book on time management. His goal in writing No Time to Lose! was to expound on the idea of accounting for time, of knowing where our time is going and how it is being spent. Only once we know this, he writes, can we really begin managing our time effectively.

Barrow draws a parallel between spending time and spending money. Businesses, he states, have two ways of spending money: expenses and investments. He suggests applying the same vocabulary to spending time.

“Time invested is an exchange of time for real results with future benefits. Time expensed is time that has no real future value,” Barrow states. So, at the end of the day, instead of asking, “Where did the time go?”, he suggests asking, “What parts of this day will contribute to my future?”

Time invested, he says, is characterized by results, such as a writer’s first draft or a waiter’s tips. No results? Then you may have expensed your time. But Barrow is very careful to explain that what counts as a result for you depends on your values: what someone else might see as a waste of time, you may count as an investment due to a different set of values.

Barrow cites his own writing as an example. “Even if I delete everything I write and don’t use any of my ideas [for this book], I value this time because it brings me one step closer to a finished product,” he states. And the writing process itself yields future benefits. “Writing this book has obvious future benefits because I’m passionate about creating a finished product to share with others.”

His suggestions for accounting for time include making good use (yielding future benefits) of what can be considered downtime. Watching a Seinfeld episode for the first time, for example, may be seen as an investment because it means the viewer has found a new favorite comedy show. Similarly, making time for a lunch break with colleagues or running errands may be seen as an investment because it supports relationship-building with colleagues, provides a useful mental break from work, and gets some tasks out of the way, resulting in more time later in the day. Again, what actions you count as an investment depend on your values, but the key is that you are intentional about what you do.

The following are a few key points that he shares in his book.

• About meetings: If you honestly don’t think you need to attend, say so, or speak up to help focus the discussion in a way that will turn it into an investment, such as by building culture within the team or helping to focus the discussion.
• Plan ahead: Designate one day a week as your planning day, creating and categorizing tasks in a checklist for the next six days, including the time required for completion.
• Do your prep work: Organize what you need ahead of time to complete your tasks efficiently.
• Organize your time: Know how much time you have available and how much time you must spend to get your work done (accounting for time).
• Use a calendar.
• Focus: How switching costs (the time we lose when we jump from one task to another) can seriously increase our expenses.
• Get enough sleep.