Getting Results with Time Management

Citation

McDermott, E. (1998), "Getting Results with Time Management", Library Management, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 341-342. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1998.19.5.341.2

This is a very practical book which could be extremely useful for an LIS professional with less time than tasks to do. Ailsa Masterton has clearly got to grips with most of the major time management principles and has organised them in a clear and comprehensible way. Her advice is easily applicable to LIS environments, large and small. Similarly, people at all levels in an organisation will be able to benefit. One of the best things about the book is the fact that the reader can put things into action straightaway.

I found the way of breaking down tasks and time as an organising method very useful. I can honestly say that reading this book has improved my planning and time management and I enjoyed doing the exercises. The clarity of the time planning process is this books greatest strength. Anybody who feels that they need the steps to good time management explaining clearly will find this book extremely useful.

Personally, I would have liked to see the barriers to efficient time management explored a little deeper. The man who invented the Filofax and the guru of time management, John Adair, among others, has identified some of the emotional and psychological barriers to good time management. Andrew Berner, in his many journal articles on the subject, manages to combine an instructional approach to time management techniques and behavioural issues. Time management is not merely about organising your work, otherwise we would all be well organised ‐ and we are not. It is largely about recognising areas of difficulty and procrastination, and changing behaviour. This means developing a certain amount of self‐awareness, looking beyond the common excuses for postponing necessary projects at the real, possible subconscious reasons for not getting things done in a timely manner.

Perhaps in order to present a very practical text, and this has certainly been achieved, research on patterns of procrastination behaviour has not been addressed. It would certainly have made a much larger book which would not have fitted in with The Successful LIS Profession Series. A compromise might have been made with the provision of a list of resources and further reading so that people who wished to do so could have explored some of the behavioural issues further.

Similarly, the conflict between the ethos of a service profession and the need to use time efficiently is not addressed. Saying “no” to some of the demands made on your time is a fundamental of time management, but saying “no” to users of your service can be difficult for those of us committed to a service ethos. The solution, of course, is to prioritise demands from other people ensuring that the quality of service is not adversely affected by the pressure of working under the pressure of imminent deadlines. A thorough discussion of this would have been beneficial for those professionals trying to deal with this knotty problem.

Despite these criticisms I would still recommend this book to busy professionals because it provides a first step to changing work‐based behavioural patterns with easy‐to‐apply techniques for organising the daily, weekly and long‐term workload. It is the uncomplicated approach that makes it ideal for those who are jut beginning to realise the importance of identifying and categorising tasks to be done and establishing precedence for them.