How to Master Time Management

Looking for time management strategies as an executive assistant or administrative professional? Learn from Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans to more effectively find, fund, and reframe your time.

Recorded at EA Ignite Spring 2024 and produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals - ASAP. Learn more and submit a listener question at asaporg.com/podcast.

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Leah Warwick: Hi, everyone. I am Leah Warwick, and you're listening to "The Admin Edge." This episode was recorded at the American Society of Administrative Professionals (ASAP) event called EA Ignite, and features guest Ashley Whillans. Ashley is a professor at Harvard Business School, with expertise in time management for better work/life balance. Please enjoy this conversation with Ashley and interviewer Katie Hendrickson.

Katie Hendrickson: Hi, I'm Katie Hendrickson, ASAP Advisory Board Member, and my guest today is Ashley Whillans, one of our keynote speakers at EA Ignite, who will be sharing time-management strategies for personal and professional success. Ashley is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University. Welcome to the podcast, Ashley.

00:00:54                     

Ashley Whillans: Thank you so much for having me, Katie.

Katie Hendrickson: Oh, it's my pleasure. Before we get started, I just wanted to know, do you have any top strategies for effective time management that we can be applying in our daily routines as administrative professionals?

Ashley Whillans: Yeah, so for anyone, regardless of their position, I like to think about time management strategies as falling into the following three categories: finding time, funding time, and reframing time. I spent time in my presentation today talking about how time management is about being reflective about how we spend time on an everyday basis. So, when we become more effective at time management by reflecting on where time goes missing, we're better able to prioritize what is important and not just what is urgent, like our inboxes. Second, we can fund time. So in the workplace this might look like asking for resources that you need that would help you manage multiple, competing demands at the same time, like a colleague taking on a task, or (we're going to talk about this later) using AI.

00:01:57

In our personal lives, funding time can look like outsourcing tasks to others. So, spending as little as $40 on services that save ourselves time, can reduce stress, and promote happiness. And the third strategy is on reframing time. There's going to be activities in our jobs and in our personal lives that we don't love but we have to do anyway. For me, that's my commute. 

Katie Hendrickson: That makes sense.

Ashley Whillans: And so there are reframing strategies that we can use to feel better about those moments of time. When it comes to commuting, we can think about that as strategic planning time with ourselves. When it comes to tasks in the workplace, we can also think a little bit more about how our tasks, even the most mundane ones, help the executive or the colleagues that we're working with do their job more efficiently.

00:02:45                     

Katie Hendrickson: So when we're talking about redeeming the time, one of the things that comes to mind for me is prioritization because, as an executive assistant myself, it's just all of a sudden everything is top priority. So, what recommendations would you have on prioritizing tasks when everything seems urgent? What tools and methods do you recommend for setting those priorities?

Ashley Whillans: I think clear communication is really key when it comes to time management. Everything can feel urgent and important, even if it's neither. So, if you get an email at 7:00 p.m. from your executive, it's about stopping, pausing, and asking yourself: Is this really more important than my kid's soccer practice? Do I really need to get back to it right now? And setting up with the management team that you work with clear communication, such that if it is after hours, they'll call you, not email you, if it's urgent. Or asking them or requesting clarification about whether something needs to be done today, next week, or next quarter.

00:03:50

Any time you're not sure, and you find yourself working on something that's not the highest and best use of your time, stop, pause, and ask yourself: Should I be working on this right now? And if you don't know the answer, go ask someone who does. 

Katie Hendrickson: That's so good. I just find for myself that I get so bogged down and feel like I have to answer everything now, and so it's really encouraging to me to hear your words of empowerment, of like: No, you can stop, and you can reframe this and ensure that you're only prioritizing the things that need to be prioritized. So, in your experience, what would you say are the most common time management pitfalls, especially for administrative professionals, and how do you feel they could be avoided?

Ashley Whillans: So professionals everywhere, but particularly those in interconnected roles, like administrative assistants, worry that if they don't respond right away they're going to seem uncommitted. This is the idea of the mere urgency effect. But research suggests that, actually, those who are the most productive and add the most value to their organizations are the ones that aren't the most responsive, and they're also the ones that take the most breaks and vacations, where they truly disconnect.

00:05:01

When we're constantly always responding to the sea of email, the flurry of communication, we're letting other people's tasks get in the way of things that might be our important priorities that are going to add strategic value in the long run. So, I think that's the thing I see most often is this mere urgency effect. It shows up especially when we're feeling busy and overwhelmed, when we're feeling like we have 1,000 things to do. That's when we're especially likely to focus on getting to the bottom of our inbox instead of working on that report or deliverable, or looking at an executive's calendar next week. And so, in those moments, that's when it's especially important to again pause and really watch yourself doing that and try to refocus. 

00:05:48

So I would say the mere urgency effect that we've already been talking about is one of the key challenges that I see in time management. Another time management pitfall is overcoming our future calendars. Anything we say "yes" to now is a form of time debt and restricts the amount of time that we're going to have in the future for obligations that we don't even know exist yet because they don't exist yet. So do your best to ask yourself whether you could take on a task right now, when it comes across your desk. And if the answer is no, you're probably not going to feel any different next week or in a month from now. 

So if you have something that comes across your desk for next quarter and it seems fine now, ask yourself if it would make you feel overwhelmed if you had to do it today, and ask yourself then, if I had to do it today, what resources would I need to succeed at it. 

Katie Hendrickson: That's wonderful. So, as we're talking about kind of setting these priorities and figure out how to manage the time, how can administrative professionals set realistic time management goals? And what exact practices do you feel they should adopt to maintain that healthy work/life balance?

00:07:04                     

Ashley Whillans: So I think something that I talk a lot about when it comes to time affluence and happiness is not getting pulled too much by digital distractions. So I would say, to echo some of our conversation, having really clear guardrails – turning off your phone, or at least the alerts on it, when you're trying to enjoy family time or trying to engage in a hobby that you're really passionate about will go a long way to not necessarily changing how much you work, but changing how positive you feel about the leisure that you do have available. I would also say that focused blocks of time can go a long way in helping you work on things that are important but not urgent today, and we all need that when it comes to adding value, setting ourselves up for promotions. We need to be driving strategic value in addition to keeping up with the sea of demands that come our way.

00:07:58

So even 15 minutes, half an hour of time blocking, where you hold that time as if it's your most important meeting, with the most important manager you work with, and having that for yourself to do strategic work can be really key for unlocking productivity and reducing burnout. We can also apply this to our personal lives, too. A strategy that I like that I talked about today and I try – and sometimes fail to do, but at least try – is this idea of keeping a time affluence to-do list. All the things I'm saying sound great: Spend more time with your family. Spend time connected to your phones. These are things I already know, and yet I still struggle to do them. 

Something we can do is try to take our time off the clock a little bit, or at least lower our expectation of how much time we need to do these activities for to gain happiness from them. I like to suggest keeping a notecard by your desk with activities that you can do in 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, if you find yourself with a bit of time in between meetings or in between tasks in a day that aren't getting to the bottom of your inbox, like reaching out to a friend, reaching out to a parent, doing some jumping jacks in your living room, taking your dog for a walk – things that you want to do that are consistent with things outside of work, but you, at the end of the day, are too tired for or feel like you just simply don't have enough time to do all of them. 

00:09:14

So that can be another way to block our personal time, even in the middle of a busy workday, so that we're not filling all of our free moments of time with work and email. 

Katie Hendrickson: I love that.

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Leah Warwick: Okay, now I jump in to ask Ashley a few questions related to her keynote presentation at EA Ignite, and ASAP's latest "State of the Profession Report."

In your keynote, you talked about how time affluence predicts employee engagement. In our "State of the Profession Report" that we put out this year, we see that administrative professionals who feel valued in their organizations are much more likely to agree that professional development time is supported by their organizations, and that means time away from doing their job to get the professional development that they deserve. 

00:10:05

How should administrative professionals advocate for themselves to show that my time away will give you, my executive, time back, because I'll do my job better and I'll be a more engaged employee? How do they start that conversation with someone who is an executive.

Ashley Whillans: I really love the data that your report suggests. I am a researcher, so I always start these conversations in a data-driven way, and I also frame them as a conversation. "I would like to speak with you about something that I think could benefit both of us. Would you like to have a short chat?" Research suggests that asking in person, as opposed to over email, is more likely to garner a positive response.

Leah Warwick: Yes, that ties into something from your keynote where you talked about, in negotiation, it's really important to approach a subject as "we" and "How are we going to solve this challenge together and work together on this?" So, coming from a place of having data to back up your ask and also approaching it in that manner seems like it might be more successful.

00:11:10

What's also interesting is that inside the report we found that the second-most cited barrier to external training (after cost) is getting that time away. On top of that, we found a top skill, especially for executives supporting administrative professionals, is managing their executive's time. It's email management. It's calendar management. How do you recommend that an administrative professional supporting an executive can do a sort of time audit for their exec, so they have time for their own professional development, while also making sure that their executive's time is being taken care of? 

00:11:52                     

Ashley Whillans: Something you could do that came up in conversation after my presentation is to look at when your executive is going to be away. Maybe they're at an off-site, maybe they're on PTO, and try to bucket your personal development days against those, or suggest that they take leave when you're away, or that you have partially overlapping schedules. That removes some of the time burden of needing to be in two places at once.

Leah Warwick: Yes, I like that answer. And something else that's coming up for a lot of administrative professionals here at EA Ignite, and also in our community of administrative professionals in ASAP, is the rise of AI. At first, there was a fear that "AI is going to take my job because I spend so much time freeing up time for my exec, and AI can do it in so much less steps." However, there's an opportunity there. If you can master AI tools, then you are freeing up more time for yourself to have that personal time management that's so important to have, not just in your professional but in your personal life.

00:12:56

And then, speaking of work, it frees up more time for you to be strategic and do more strategic work. So maybe your top skill that you use every day isn't inbox and calendar management. Maybe it's more project management. Maybe it's more strategic partnership work with your exec. So, I'm curious about what your thoughts are on AI to free up time, especially for an audience who spend a lot of their time managing time, and that is probably going to change as AI continues to advance. 

Ashley Whillans: So this goes back to a strategy I talked about earlier related to funding time. I see it as any tool or technology that we can purchase in the market or use in the market that frees up time as something that we should definitely consider taking on board. So, I am a huge advocate and fan and use in my own work AI as a tool (not as a replacement) because I think, exactly as you're alluding to, it can free up some of those urgent but not important tasks and give us more time to spend on strategic priorities.

00:13:56

Something that came up in the session today was: How do I get more time to be proactive, to be working on things that the executive might not even know that they need? That's what's going to get you promoted, moving up in your organization, and really adding value. And the only way you're going to get there is if your head is not in an inbox all day. I personally have used AI to edit emails to sound even more professional so that I don't have to spend 20 minutes editing an email. I might only spend 7. And then I can use that "found time" on more strategic priorities. 

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Leah Warwick: And now, back to Katie and Ashley. If a time audit with your exec sounds intriguing, you're in luck, because they get more into that here.

00:14:45                     

Katie Hendrickson: So we had an anonymous listener question submitted from an administrative professional, and they asked about monitoring their executive's time management rather than their own. This listener asks: "I'm supporting a new executive that is struggling to honor the time he has for his project and deliverables. I've been working with him for the last 11 weeks, and have asked questions to help me understand his work style. I'd love to hear suggestions or methodologies that could help me hold my executive accountable and keep them on track."

Ashley Whillans: So don't we all relate to this comment? It's so hard to keep up with multiple, competing demands, and I can only imagine how much this new executive has on their plate right now, so I love that this administrative professional is focused on trying to help the person that they work with the most.

Going back to a strategy that I talk about related to finding time/funding time/reframing time, the first thing that I would ask this listener to do is to help their executive do a time audit so they can find where their time is going missing. A really good place to start is to look for meetings. Where are their reoccurring meetings that might not be high-value for this executive that you could begin to develop a conversation around? 

00:16:00

And you can do it from a very inquisitive and curious place. "Oh, I need some more white space in your calendar to schedule some important meetings. I noticed that this reoccurring meeting comes up. Are you usually in that meeting? Do you like to be in this meeting? Is this meeting an important meeting for you to be in?" And trying to open up dialogue around reoccurring meetings, long meetings, or even doing a little bit of a time audit together would probably be very eye-opening to this individual. Bringing a little bit of data and curiosity to a conversation could go a long way as a place to start. 

Katie Hendrickson: That's wonderful. I know, for myself, I had an executive that had their accountabilities, and there was actually percentages associated with what their responsibilities were. And doing that calendar audit, we were able to determine: "It says you're supposed to spend 20%. You're spending 6%. We need to reframe." So that's a really important thing for us to understand. Thank you so much. Thanks again for joining us on "The Admin Edge," Ashley. Where can our listeners find you online?

00:17:01                     

Ashley Whillans: You can find me on my HBS Faculty website, hbs.edu/awhillans. I look forward to hearing from you. Please reach out.

Katie Hendrickson: Wonderful. Thank you.

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Leah Warwick: Thank you for listening to "The Admin Edge," produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals. Original music and audio editing by Warwick Productions, with audio and video production at EA Ignite by 5Tool Productions. If you liked this podcast, please leave us a nice review and five stars wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe. If you'd like to submit a listener question, you can do so on our website at asaporg.com/podcast.