Taylor: Hello, My name is Taylor.

I am one of the literary contributors to our Think Quest team.

In an effort to examine and understand the value and effectiveness of time management, we have enlisted the assistance of someone who possesses a wealth of knowledge in this area.

Kim Liegel is a resident of Oregon, USA.

She is an internationally certified project management professional.

She works as an independent consultant, trainer, and writer.

She authored the book Make It Happen: Step By Step Project Success.

In this interview, we will be discussing a variety of time management based concepts.

Hello, Kim.

Thank-you for agreeing to share your knowledge and observations with us.

In your opinion, why is the study of time use and project management in our society important?

Kim: Well that is a great question Taylor, and one that project managers struggle with on just about every project they’re assigned.

Time use and project management are, of course, inextricable from one another.

Time is one of the three core elements of a project that project management is all about: being able to utilize the time that you have effectively and efficiently while achieving the results of the project that are expected.

So, time being a limited factor; being the one thing that once it’s done, you can’t get it back, it’s of the utmost importance to the project manager, knowing that that’s a constraint; that managing the time that is available and the resources that you have with that time to get the best use and productivity from those involved.

How you look at the time available and how you manage that time as a limited resource is very critical.

Often times people have this assumption that: do more with less, right?

Work smarter not harder, do more with your time, achieve more with your time by doing these efficiency-productivity stuff.

That’s what it’s getting at, is people have this idea that, if I do more activity, so if I increase that activity factor, that I’ll achieve greater results, or more results.

Well, that may be true, but if you don’t also increase the time available, or lower your quality factor to say, “well I’m going to have to do more, but with the same amount of time, which means I won’t be able to do the same level of effort per activity that I would have,” it really starts skewing the results; and how do we resolve that problem?

We now consume time we can’t get back.

Do we add more people?

Do we reduce the scope of the project to have less work to do?

Do we lower our quality expectations, and still deliver the same stuff, but maybe not at the same level of quality?

So we see how time, actually, it’s an under appreciated resource until it’s gone.

Taylor: That’s definitely true.

So, let’s move on to our second question, which is: technology has been blamed for everything from childhood obesity to breakdown of basic interpersonal skills.

How do you believe the introduction of technology in recent years has effected leisure time and how people manage their time?

Kim: Oooh ...that is a great question.

I was thinking back when I was a kid before we had cable television and microwaves and cell phones.

The internet was just in its infancy.

A lot of the technology solutions that are around now, that my own kids, who, I have twin girls that are seniors in high school, and watching them grow up with all this technology available to them and seeing how they spend their social time differently than how I used to when I was their age.

I don’t think that it’s really changed how we’re spending our time; I think it’s changed where we’re spending our leisure time.

The internet has just erased the limitation of proximity, and has opened the world up: people can mingle and meet anywhere, I mean virtually anywhere, people from anywhere in the world.

And while I think the inference that this has somehow contributed to childhood obesity, I don’t look to technology as the blame of that, I think there are definitely other factors that are playing more heavily into that than what technology has done, but I think technology is an easy scapegoat, with video games, and ipods, and cell phones; and the ability for kids to operate kind of within their own communication layer.

I think it’s only opened the world up and made it a more hopeful place for young people, rather than isolating, and keeping kids stuck at their keyboard all day long.

I only see it as expanding the opportunity for people to leverage the time they have on this earth and spend it in ways that are more meaningful and provide more avenues of opportunity to explore.

Taylor: Ok, our third question is: regarding America’s time use habits in comparison to other cultures around the world, do you feel that we would benefit from studying the habits of any other societies in particular?

Kim: That is an interesting question, because I’m actually currently working at Symantec as a senior IT project manager, and I work with teams from around the world.

And we meet virtually over the phone, we’ve never met face to face, and we’ve worked together for a couple of years, and I’ve got folks in Dublin, Ireland, and I’ve got folks in Trini, India, and all over the world.

So time is a really interesting dynamic in that kind of a working, collaborative environment where you’ve got time zones, you’ve got culture, you’ve got all kinds of different factors that play into how people collaborate on a global nature.

What I’ve seen is that American companies ...

the corporate America sort of culture if you will, I don’t think is unique to America, culture is kind of its own dynamic that doesn’t have any borders, if you will.

Corporations like Semantic embrace global diversity, so nationality is something that’s not even hardly discussed, we’re all on the same team under the same corporate banner, if you will, and nationality is not a factor.

America definitely has a stereotype of being tireless, you know, can do attitude, innovative, willing to push the envelope and find new ways to get things done, or innovate things that have never been achieved before.

And that’s something that other cultures and other countries definitely look to learn from and often times try to embody and replicate within their own cultures.

I’m witnessing this in other cultures that we operate in, such as India, very fast growing economy.

Of course, one of the largest industrial nations in the world, and very high intellectual capital in that country.

And they’re very quickly looking to leverage project management methodology and practice from the top down.

In fact the President of India is the first ever certified project management professional to be the president of a country.

And with that background and knowledge, the president of India has actually set a goal for 2020 to fully industrialize their nation from education and implementing project management methodology concepts and theories and by 2020 and that is really a phenomenal thing to be seen in a national culture at that level.

Now if we were to look to other cultures for how to differently view time I’d look to Latin America where they practice siestas during the mid day.

Their workday if very different than American type of work days, often times starting later in the morning in the first part of the morning is very social and then taking the siesta midday and actually leaving the office for several hours, spending time with family, resting, taking care of family business, and then returning to work later in the afternoon and working into the evening and then leaving around 7 - 8 o’clock at night to then go home and have dinner.

Taylor: It would be interesting to see whether or not a siesta would work for a society like America.

Kim: That is interesting thing because at Symantec they’ve just implemented a nap lab, a 15-minute power nap in the afternoon that folks can go down and go lay down for 15 minutes.

Taylor: Our next question is actually related to the health issues we were discussing such as stress.

How do the ways in which people choose to spend there time affect their lives at home as far as family dynamics are concerned, as far as health is concerned?

Kim: Well, of course, again time being a limited commodity, you only have 24 hours in a day and people often times have conflicting priorities of how they need to divvy that time up, and added to that are things like these pieces of technology that we can’t get away from like cell phones and laptops all other types of devices that keep us connected, if you will, and that can eat away at our time very quickly.

I know it’s really up to the individual to have the self-discipline to make the right time for themselves and for their families because the project work will always be demanding and will always be more if you let it.

So that can really affect the family negatively over time.

(Of) course short spurts of time that you need to dedicate to the project that takes you away from your family or from your leisure time that can be expected but if you allow your schedule to be piled up so much that that is no longer a spike but a constant rate, or that’s a recipe for burn out.

Taylor: Alright, number six: What is your opinion of the recent popularity of time management and other such informational or self-improvement seminars?

Kim: I don’t think that this really is a recent phenomena.

I think that really what this is getting to be is not so much time management as priority management and that’s the first element of time management, is understanding what your priorities are and then figuring out how you are going to dole out the time that you have.

Taylor: Ok, number seven: What, in your opinion, would be the most significant detrimental result of a down time deficit or a general lack of leisure?

Kim: Definitely health, sickness, stress related disease, just emotional burnout from the stress of project work and not having enough down time.

It’s just everybody needs different kinds of fuel and it’s important to recognize that and monitor the people and help them understand when their fuels getting low they need to refuel and that usually means taking a break and getting some down time.

Taylor: Yeah, number eight is directly related to this.

Question eight is: In addition to losing leisure time, many people also lose a significant amount of sleep.

Why is it important for people to take sleep seriously when managing their time?

Kim: Well, you know recent studies have come out to show the effect of sleep deprivations on health and well being of people and when we don’t sleep well we don’t perform well and our work quality suffers which leads to rework.

It’s a self-feeding, downwards cycle.

And I’ve seen this, actually this is a bigger issue with global companies where for example I have a gentlemen on one of my teams that is responsible for supporting people in the Dublin, Ireland office.

Well when their system goes down, that’s the middle of our morning and he’s constantly getting woken up to deal with these issues and it’s taken a toll on his house, and just recently had to take some time off from work as a result of that.

So sleep deprivation is a serious problem and it really affects people especially over time.

Taylor: Number nine: How would you define quality leisure time?

Kim: Wow, quality leisure time, is time that you have uninterrupted, undisturbed from work activity.

That’s the “I’m not taking my laptop or my cell phone on my vacation”.

The physician.

Taylor: So, number eleven is: Why is procrastination such a difficult habit to break?

Kim: Procrastination I think, comes from a place of uncertainty, maybe fear, not knowing how to start something different I’ve never done before, gosh I don’t want to mess it up, you know ...

I don’t ...you know it’s something so overwhelming I don’t quite know how to break it down to the place that I know where the beginning part is and the ending part is I think are big factors in procrastination.

So what I try to teach people is, if you can understand the goal and break it down into the deliverables of the things that need to be actually created and then start breaking those down into what are the requirements for those, you can start at it you can, you can actually start breaking it into smaller pieces so that you can digest it, if you will, and figure out where you are going to start, what the priorities are, how to get a schedule built around that and, and get going.

Taylor: Number twelve is what would be your top three productivity tools, tricks, and/or tips?

Kim: Well, keeping a pencil and pad handy at all times, number one.

Listing, that is another thing that I do a lot of, listing out the things, the priorities I have for that day or that week.

The third productivity tip I would say is back to self-care.

I think in order to remain productive, a steady speed of productivity, we are going to have to keep ourselves tuned and fueled and being self-aware of when my productivity is starting to slip usually means I need to get up and take a break, go for a walk, look at something other than at my computer screen for the next three hours.

Taylor: Well, that does wrap up our interview.

Once again Kim, we would like to thank you for your participation.

Your insights on the topic of time management inspire all of us to examine and perhaps question the ways in which we choose to use our time.

You have been very helpful.

Kim: Well thank-you.

I have enjoyed this tremendously and good luck.