Activity: Activity-Time Budget

Introduction

This technique helps you use your precious, finite resource of time wisely in activities that are the most valuable for your work. It is a systematic method of maintaining important mindsets and behaviours in your professional practice by helping:

• • Address work-life balance by setting realistic expectations and reasonable conditions, allowing you to do good work, then truly and deeply rest your knowledge engines after switching off from work.
  • Stop overlooking and under-doing important but ‘boring’ or ‘passive’ knowledge activities like recordkeeping, organising, planning, reporting, and reflecting; to treat these items as necessary, not discretionary work.

• Reign in the tendency to over-do some work (achieving a quality not valued), or to drain resources for little return; to invoke the principle of ‘good enough’, given the available resources and time constraints.
• Make better decisions about work priorities and energy expenditure with definitive yet flexible guidelines that would continue to be useful in evolving your professional practice.

The time allowance and budget concept

The normal number of hours you work per week is the activity-time ‘allowance’. You assign or ‘budget’, a percentage of that time to categories of activity ‘expenditure’. You monitor expenditure against allowance closely and if there is significant variance then make adjustments.

A key reason for setting the allowance and the budget is to ensure that an activity-time debt doesn’t mount up, for then you risk the quality of yourself, and the quality of your work.

Defining and using your Activity-Time Budget

1. Decide how many hours a week you allow for ‘work’. [1] This becomes your 100% of work allowance.
2. Define a list of activity categories against which work allowance will be assigned (recommend no more than five-six categories). Define examples for each category. Check that your examples don’t overlap into other categories.
3. Define how much work allowance (%) you want to assign to each activity category.
4. Schedule time in your calendar for each allotment of work activity (either individual or group of activities). Break into multiple allotments as is most useful.
5. Monitor your expenditure against allowance, and adjust as necessary. [2] Adjustments may be needed because your budget breakdown isn’t right, or you have insufficient skill or resources to be effective, or there is simply too great a volume of work expected for the time allowed.

[1] You could also apply the time budget technique to your life, with 100% being the total number of hours in a week (n=168), then allotting how you want to apportion where you spend your time.

[2] Consider allocating and monitoring your activity-time expenditure using an electronic calendar. For future time, make entries of how you intend to expend the time. Ensure your forecast is within budget constraints. For past time, make entries of how you actually expended the time. Compare the actual time against the budget, to determine the amount of variance.

Examples

Below are examples of the categories and assigned percentages for two workplace scenarios where I have applied the method.

Scenario 1: Team of fixed-term employees assigned to internal development project

Budget
10% Administration
10% Project planning and reporting
5% Professional development
10% Internal/team participation
65% Project and client work

Categories
Administration
Opening and processing correspondence (including email)
Maintaining business records, including filing
Keeping desk and work space in order
Meeting weekly or fortnightly with team leader

Project planning and reporting
(Note: Not for a Project Manager but for personnel on project team)
Reviewing and updating plan of work for coming week and coming 1-2 months
Reviewing progress and composing reporting content (for verbal or written delivery)
Contributing to project documentation, e.g. Risk and Issues log, Project Plan

Professional development
Attending courses and professional association meetings
Reflecting after attending courses (including note taking or journaling)
Reading books, blogs, tweets
Networking with professional contacts outside organisation (including using social media)
Participating in mentoring or coaching activities
Preparing and maintaining personal Performance Management documentation

Internal/team participation
Attending and contributing to team meetings
Organising and leading team meetings when it’s your turn
Contributing to team well-being (organising ad hoc social events, checking in with people)
Maintaining relationships with team colleagues
Contributing to team collective knowledge, participating in briefs and debriefs

Project and client work
Engaging stakeholders (including discretionary coffee meetings)
Designing, organising, and executing activities listed in project plan

 

Scenario 2: Self-employed individual

Budget
10% Administration
10% Professional enrichment
20% Business development
60% Project/client work

Categories
Administration
Filing, invoicing, completing expense claims
Having internal business meetings and discussions
Managing computing tools, including backups and configurations

Professional enrichment
Performing activities that replenish mojo
Reading professional books, blogs
Attending seminars, courses and conferences
Networking with professional contacts

Business Development
Networking with strategic contacts
Developing products and services for business
Developing and managing proposals for work
Developing and maintaining prospective client relationships

Project and client work (typically income-generating)
Maintaining customer relationships
Managing client projects
Providing services to clients

 

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