[speaker001:] I've lost my name plate. Usually there's a name plate there that says Coral Coopland, on it and you took it down.
[speaker002:] My name is Ricky Elliot, I am delighted to be here. Erm, I will start with the two most important pieces of information that I'm going to give you this afternoon. The first is er, erm, well let me put it this way, not the last one of the sessions I did here, but the one before that, there was a huge guy sitting about where Colin is sitting. And before I even started, he called me over and he was the sort of person who, when he signalled you over, you tended to go over there, and he said here, it says here on this programme that we're finishing at four thirty. Now you look pal, I've got two hundred miles to drive, and I don't believe this is going to take that long. I said no.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] I don't, we can finish right now.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Alright, so the, the important piece of information here is, I have a train to catch so we're not finishing at four thirty. We, we'll almost certainly finish about quarter to four. Now if anybody seriously objects to, to this, erm, I actually do give everybody my home telephone number and I'll be happy to carry on er, a remedial session er, later tonight. But I actually have to get home, you know, yes, probably you don't have those pressures on you. Erm, the, the other important thing I'm going to give you, the information as, as Mike said, a lot of people, I'm not sure of the percentages, do carry on using this particular barrier system, and the other important piece of information is that when you need to reorder something there's an extraordinarily nice gentleman in your stationary stores called Mr. Cartwright, and he is the person that does all the ordering. Okay, and be nice to him, because he's very nice to me. Er, but please make a note of that name, because it, you know, it could be the salvation of your future, etcetera, etcetera. Before acting out as a late Father Christmas, I want to erm, come up with some general, how shall I put it, general considerations, this is why you have slides, you realise that slides are not actually for your benefit, they're for my benefit, that I can remember where I am and what I'm supposed to do. General considerations about this sort of thing. Now what you're going to receive this afternoon, is what is pretentiously called a time management system. Right, in other words, it's a diary of all the bits and pieces attached to it. And when you, some people regard these things as panaceas. Right, it's the solution to all their ills. If only I had a decent time management system, you know, I could be really effective, and all the rest of it. Now of course, people who think that way, erm, really are kidding themselves. And when you for example, see ads in the Times, you know, these pathetic people who say, I've lost my filofax, five thousand pounds reward to anybody who gives it back to me, because my life is in ruins. Such people are to be pitied. I mean, by all means take their money if you can, but basically,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] You know, they should be pitied, because, there is no way that my life is inside a ring binder. And I would feel genuinely sorry for anybody who's like it. I mean, either they have an incredibly narrow life, or an amazingly large ring binder. Er, but in either event, you know, I, I'm not sure I, I particularly regard them as members of the human race. So, the first general point is, these things are an aid to you. They're a tool. They are not a substitute, they cannot in any sense make decisions for you, nor can they guarantee your performance. What they actually do is they, they're a funnel for information. Er, one of the paradoxes of the modern era as er, pointed out by Tom Peters, not by me, one of the few things I do not claim original thought on, erm, is, is that it's not that we, people think that we don't have enough information at our fingertips and are constantly striving to gather more and more, the opposite is actually true. Many people are literally made impotent by the amount of data surrounding them. This sort of system is a, is a funnel so that you can channel your information in, in a positive way. The second general point I want to make is that there is no single right way to use this thing. I wish there were because then my life would be a lot easier. Erm, but in fact, the way that I use it er, would not be the way that Andy uses it, the way that Andy uses it would not be the way that Martin uses it, it does not necessarily mean that any of us are wrong. Er, it really is different for different. And it's terribly important to realise that. It's ev, actually a little bit more complex than that, which is that the things that I used this year, I may not use next year, and I probably, almost certainly won't use two years ago. Because as my needs change, so this happens to be a flexible system, and you can adapt it to your own particular needs over time. Right, and er, the third point I want to is that, you, what you're actually getting consist of two elements. The first is, is a very good planning diary, it's just automatic erm, A B and the third part of it, the last part is what we call the work organiser. Some things that you do are best tracked by date, that's what the diary does, some things you do are best tra, tracked by subject, that's what the work organiser does. I'm going to, as will become evident, mainly focus on the diary, because that's where at least eighty percent of the data resides, and it's the bit that's most easy to get to grips with. Er, but we will in the latter half of what I'm doing, er, come on to the work organiser. Now another general point which I daren't put on the slide is that during this, the next sort of hour or so, or two hours, erm, some of you will almost certainly become insulted with the way that I talk to you. Er, and I did have er, somebody who came up about a year ago, and, and said do you talk to all your clients like this, and I said no, no it's only at Tarmac.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Erm, and he said, you know, I really resent the fact that you treat me like a village idiot, and I said, well you know, I'm sorry that you feel that way, but my experience is of a group of fourteen people, erm, is that somebody always gets it wrong. Er, at least one person. Erm, and we can, we can have a sweepstake now to decide who that's going to be.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] But it, it's, it, bear with me, if, if you feel that I'm taking this very slowly, just look around the room, and you'll see confused faces somewhere else. Erm, because th, I've never had a group anywhere, not just at Tarmac, where people get it completely right first time. Erm, so er,an, and the other thing I really want to tell you is of course, this tape recording is a blind. This session is actually been suitably video taped, to see how well you can follow fairly simple verbal instructions.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] There will be a test afterwards. Now what I'm going to hand out to you in various packages er, on the diary, is you're getting a two page per day diary, erm, and I will go through all of these things in detail, it just helps if I can give you an overview. Well, it helps me anyway. Erm, twelve monthly calendar cards, which give you a month at a glance, an address and telephone section, some personal information sheets which are very exciting, information tables which are irrelevant to daily, erm, life. Er, a storage binder which is that big grey box over there, and what we call the active binder. And the active binder is this, I can't say this with a straight face, this deluxe vinyl cover, erm, purchased at enormous expense on your behalf
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] And, as a special bonus, embossed with the Tarmac logo. Er, so then you'll always know, and, you know, regret where you got it. However, at my insistence, and this is something you can genuinely be grateful for, the togo, the erm, Tarmac logo is in the inside cover. Erm, please take on and pass along please.... Now this is a seven ring, one inch mechanism, please always open the binder by pulling the two triggers at either end. Not by pulling the rings apart. Have a practice click, get it out of your system please.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] I never really.
[speaker001:] I'm always interested You see we aren't idiots, do you want to take that sweepstake back now? [LAUGHTER] Er, mine's just a bit stiff as well. [LAUGHTER] There you go. That was good.
[speaker002:] Okay, everybody happy?
[speaker001:] We're going to happy until five at this rate.
[speaker002:] Now, erm, this is the active binder, this is the one that goes with you wherever you go. The reason that I said please always open by the triggers, is that if you open by pulling the rings apart, the rings will eventually distort, your papers will fall out, you'll send it back to me, claiming that the binder was defective. I will be able to prove to my own satisfaction that you are lying, [clears throat] and we will have an unhappy business relationship. If you need to satisfy you annalistic impulses to close the bin, you know to, to fondle the rings, er, you can close it by pushing the rings together, that's actually a more efficient way of doing it than the triggers, but please always open with the triggers. The same is true with the storage binder, which I'm now going to, to hand out, erm, or I'm going to pass it round anyway. this time. Take one and pass it on. This is a true service.... Okay,... Now this is, now here you have, yes take the storage binder out of the slip case please, erm, we'll deal with the strange yellow things in a minute. Can I just concentrate on the binder. This is a three ring, as you can see, two inch mechanism. It is amazingly powerful, er, please again always open it by the triggers. Again, you know, do that now so, [all open and shut the binder] it's good isn't it?... Er, yes it is a, it's a strong mechanism. What I'm about to say constitutes a legal warning. If you are foolish enough to close this binder whilst holding it upside down on your lap, I am in no way responsible for any damage that it causes.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Now you think I'm joking, but in fact in the States, people in the States sue at the drop of a hat. And while I, I was there last year, erm, there was er, a case that came to court, about a man who'd installed a ceiling fan in his kitchen. It's actually a very sad story. Erm, had, he was very happy with it, and he was so happy that he tossed up, obviously it turned to be inexpendible small child, erm, who was promptly decapitated by this fan, which is, I mean, it's a terrible story. The incredible part is he sued the fan manufacturer on the basis that there was no warning through, saying you know, if you toss a small child up towards this, it's going to lose its, you know, its head. And he won. So these days you know, in the States everything you buy is covered with legal warnings. You know, you buy co, a bottle of Coke, it says, you know, if you hit somebody over the head, it can hurt them, so please don't, kids don't do this at home type stuff. So that's why I'm, you know, I'm, I'm almost serious about the binder. It is a very vicious mechanism, so please be very careful with it. This is the storage binder, this stays at your base wherever that base is. And this houses the stationary you're not currently using. Erm, right, the, what I'd like you to if you can, is to open the yellow things up please.... Er, if anybody has, didn't have spinach for lunch, I have a purloined thing of scissors.... Okay there are some strategically placed boxes around the floor, because there is quite a lot of packaging and, you going to, you know, pretend to be Michael Jordan with these.... Now these aren't, oh right, the strange black things that some of you are holding in your hands are called riders, and these are end leaves for the storage binder, and the idea is that they will have protective pages that are in the storage binder that will make them easier to turn. I personally found them absolutely useless, and I always through mine away, er, right away, but you know, that's, that's one of these areas where you have personal choice. Erm, the yellow things are expense envelopes. This is the bit that some people find extremely exciting. Erm, the idea, what I'd like you to do, is to put the jangling one into your active binder, and put the rest of them into your storage binder please..... And the idea with these is that when you get reimbursed for expenses, you put the receipt into the expense envelopes then at the end of the month, erm, you would staple the envelope and attach it to your company expense claim or you know, throw it at the person who's going to give your money back or whatever. This is of course, assuming that you get your expenses reimbursed. If you are in the unfortunate position where you do not get your expenses reimbursed, my best advice is go get a job where they are, er, because this is one of the few good things going, er, in terms of tax efficiency and all the rest of it. Erm, now some of you, you know, er, this is a big company, you probably have very intricate expense forms type things that you have to do, but if you want to, kindly note that you can analyse your expenses on the front of the envelopes
[speaker001:] Can you?
[speaker002:] Er, there are, I think it's ten columns and thirty one rows, erm, so that you can plot where your money is going if you need to. Some amazingly well organised people, and this does, category does not include me, erm, also use these for their personal expenses. So I know a guy for example who, when he gets his Visa bill say the last third of the month, he puts it into the envelope, and makes a note in the diary on say the twenty first, to pay the Visa bill, and when he gets to the twenty first, lo and behold, he knows where the Visa bill is and he has to pay it. Nah, you know, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, people who like that sort of thing will find it's the sort of thing they like. Erm, personally, you know, I think it takes all the fun out of all those red notices that I get all the time. You know l, calls from the bank saying, you know, we're sending the boys around. Erm, but you know, erm, that's obviously a different way of using them. And that's true of most of the forms you're going to get, that there's certainly more than way of using them. So those are the expense envelopes. The other thing you've got in that packet are some erm, er, dates er, if, if, what you'll see is there's a space on the spine of the storage binder for putting the year date for the r, er, okay, the basic precept here is of course, you never throw away an old diary, in case you get sued. Erm, the storage binder, we, we, er, anticipate that you of course, will wind up with shelves full of storage binders housing various diaries, and you'll want to know in ten years' time, which storage binder has your nineteen ninety-four diary, erm, that's what that label is for. And essentially you can get two years' worth of records in, in a storage binder. So that's that. Now I'm going to start with the diary. The diary comes in two packets. Erm, January to June and July to December. I'm going to give you the July to December pack first. Erm, you don't even need to open this, just put them straight away into the storage binders please. That's it....
[speaker001:] In front of, or behind the expense envelopes?
[speaker002:] In, in, er, in front of the envelopes.
[speaker001:] make it easy to
[speaker002:] The expense envelopes always go at the back, because they're bigger than anything else that you're going to get, to, to put in the binder. No, no you don't need to open it, just, you have to, you can't possibly.
[speaker001:] Did that just arrive?
[speaker002:] ...
[speaker001:] [whispering] [] [LAUGHTER]... They're all there you know like, [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Okay this is where it starts to get a little bit complicated. I'd like you to open this pack please, which has January to June. Put January to March pages in the active binder and April to June in the storage binder.... Steve, I'm going to give it to you first this time... That's right, yes, that's good,... So you can actually throw away the cover sheet, you, you really don't need that. You get something else that says, if, if lost return to,... and you might also want to discard the piece of cardboard at the back, because the storage binder does get very full.... Okay are we there?... This packet takes a certain amount of restraint, because it, it holds a lot of different things in it. What I would like you to do, before you get, take the poly-wrap off please, and just extract the twelve yellow cards which are in the very back of this, the monthly calendar cards. You know, just... let's take it one step at a time please.... Okay everybody's done that? What I'd like you to do is to put the January card in front of the January pages, the February card in front of the February card, pages, the March card in front of the March pages, and then the April to December cards after the thirty first of March....
[speaker001:] Turn the page
[speaker002:] No, No I know. It's usually at this stage, it goes horribly wrong.
[speaker001:] But do you put the rest of the cards, sorry where do you place them?
[speaker002:] After the last page in March, right at the end, you know,, that's the best bits... Very good, yes, and er,... No, no, no, right, oh, yes, yes, I'm sorry. [whistling] I think we may all Some people will smell of it.... Well, Okay, now if we can go through the rest of that package, please. Throw away the cover sheet,... right, you really don't need that. The first sheet we come to is something called personal information. This is the kind of thing, if lost send back to, particularly poor at this. Erm, that should go at the very front of your binder, if you really want to keep that information in your binder. And you might want to think it, if you're using this thing properly, the blackmail value of what's in this binder, may be worth more than, you know, getting it back. So, I'm not, I'm, I'm you know, fully in favour of putting that kind of information in, but that's up to you. Erm, the next bit of, that I want you to find which is the address and telephone section, that also, I'd like you to put at the front of the active binder....
[speaker001:] go there.
[speaker002:] yes, it tends to finish right there so.... You should then find twelve monthly expense summaries and then some annual expense summaries. These are probably useless to you. Er, so stick them in the storage binder please. And you'll also find some sheets that say expense details, the same thing applies to them.... so, so keep going until you get to something that looks slightly different. It's after er yearly calendars and such like. Er, simple interest rates, stop when you get to simple interest rates please.... yes, that's this thing. The simple interest table is in, in fact terribly uninteresting, it's what's on the reverse that's important. Er, a truly depressing document, called, no it isn't.
[speaker001:] Yes
[speaker002:] Oh, how much is the worth?
[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] Now I don't want you to extract this, I, but I want you to know it's there, because it has a, a specific purpose, which you will come on to later. Okay, so just remember that, that form is on the back of the simple interest rate form. Now most of the forms in this pack you can put in the storage binder because they're going to be absolutely useless for you. I don't want you to throw them away today, er, because you might actually in a few days' time think of some use for them. Er, by all means, go, go through all this stuff in a weeks' time and throw out th, those things you don't need. Okay. What I'd like you to find now, are there, there are planning calendars. So when you get to the planning calendars, put everything before the planning calendars in the storage binder please, and then you should find some planning calendars for the next five years. That's the bit I'd like you gentlemen to find.... yes, you, you'll find some world holiday dates, and so on, those can go in the storage binder and, unless you're likely to, to want to know when the Emperor's birthday is, and plan things like that. Although it does have English holiday dates it's true. Erm
[speaker001:] It's actually got them.
[speaker002:] Which we don't have.
[speaker001:] There's a small pack, in fact.
[speaker002:] Right, by all means keep that if you like that. No, I mean I, I always keep them. I, I, I never look at it, so I understand.
[speaker001:] You start getting on with it.
[speaker002:] yes, it's like everything else. I... I can remember one time in the last year when I actually thought... it's the sort of thing we always put in a diary,
[speaker001:] It's a kind of I mean it
[speaker002:] Put that in your if you've got all the, if you've got all these calendars. So, I don't know how useful it, it may be very useful to you to have that on one page, I don't know. Well I thought the English one was so they'll come as a massive shock because they're not on the calendar cards, but no, I don't. I mean I don't find the rest of them interesting. And I have to warn you, coming back to the Emperor's birthday, that I suspect, because these come from Allentown, Pennsylvania, otherwise known as that erm, they, they haven't actually twigged to the fact, that erm, Hirohito died erm, so it, it, if you are concerned with Japan, you might want to check when Akohito's birthday actually is, erm, because it may not be the same one as in our, our diaries. Now a planning calendar's, you've got these planning calendars for this year and the next five years I think, or five years altogether, erm, and then you've got some sheets called appointment details. I'd like you to put all of that stuff behind the December calendar card, please. Okay stop when you get to the map of the United States, please.... No Okay and the rest I think from that packet, are particularly gripping I think. Erm, there's the, the time zone map and phone map of the United States, there's the international time zone map, there are key telephone numbers if you're, happen to be travelling in America. There are peel-off labels for the long holiday dates, something with which you can amuse yourself on the next bank holiday. Erm, plus some other sticky labels. Stick all of that stuff in the storage binder please, and as I said go through it, at in you leisure or [mimicking American accent] pleesure [] depending on where you come from, and you know, use what you want to use, and toss out what you don't want to use. You should now be left with two acetate page markers, and everything else should be away in one of the binders, apart possibly from the dates. Is that, is that true for everybody?
[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] Okay, the acetate page markers, erm, I was once asked erm, by a gentleman on the programme, where I thought, no where he, he said to me, where d'you think I should put the today marker? And unfortunately, I told him in graphic detail, and thereby of course, lost a contract, because he turned out to be the most senior person in the room, and he did not enjoy being humiliated in that way. Erm, so, I, I will forebear from saying where I think you should put the today marker, and use your imagination. Erm, the, I, I, I wish to explain the theory behind the reschedule [american pronunciation] marker, or reschedule marker depending on where you come from, but I warn you now, the theory leaves quite a lot to be desired. The theory is as follows. I was last in my office yesterday, as it happens. The next time I'm going to be in my office will be a week next Tuesday, as I, you know, I'm due to arrive in on the twenty eighth. Obviously it's the human condition that you never actually ever finish all the things that are on your to do list, so you always have to reschedule things. The theory is that my reschedule marker would be on next Tuesday's, not a week Tuesday's, diary page, because that's the next time I'm going to be able to do anything in my office. Now of course, what's wrong with the theory is very office, which is a week Tuesday's already choc-a-bloc with various meetings that I've got, the chance of doing anything important in between those meetings is you know. So what one would actually need using that theory is a whole theory, er, series of reschedule markers to highlight different days when one has time available. So what can you actually do this thing. Well, there are a number of different options. You can do what I always do, which is I just sort of casually throw mine away, erm, because I just find it clutters the binder up otherwise. You can er, use it to highlight a key piece of information, whether that's in the diary or in the work organiser. You could use it er, in the reverse of the way that the theory suggests, which you can actually leave it on the last diary page where you have something on your to do list that you haven't completed. And then as you complete those things you move it forward, in series. Erm, I do not personally like that because I like the discipline of writing things out again for reasons which I will explain in boring detail in a while. Or your last option is to do what the good folk at the training agency have done, which is they claim that the today marker is not erm, sturdy enough, so they superglue the er, the two markers together, to make it thicker. And I think I'll stop right there with even more comments, erm, in case I lose that contract too. Erm, so those are the options with the, the, the reschedule marker. Please note that you do not have to open the rings to put these markers over, though you should after you've done it the first time, erm, it should become easier with practice, let me put it that way, okay. Right I will now start to go through the pages. Erm, let me start with the monthly calendar card please. So if you could turn to any of the monthly calendar cards, it matters not which one. Er, preferably the front of it, erm, they look something like this. Okay can everybody see that reasonably well? I'll just stand in front of it most of the time. Erm, and obviously what you use these things for is to schedule your activities. Now let me say with the monthly card and with the daily page, I'm going to be showing you a very structured approach to planning. I am not anticipating that anybody in this room will do it the way I say I do it. Erm, I certainly don't do it, the way that I say that I do it. Erm, what I'm aiming to do is to show you as many different techniques as I know, er, and if you pick up two or three of them that's absolutely terrific. Erm, but bear in mind you know, this works best if you work it the way that you want to work it. Erm, so you can see, I mean there's a, er, a totally untypical month for me. There's no such thing as a typical month. Erm, but those, that has all my appointments on, and I use a very simple system of crossed hatching when I am away from my base for, for the bulk of the day. So on, for example, the fifteenth of that particular month, er, I'm in Manchester for the day, I have one meeting at ten o'clock and I have another meeting at three thirty. But I am out of, out, away from my office, away from my base. And the, the importance of that for me, that shows me the shape of the month, so there's nowhere I'm going to be on the tenth other than my office, because I'm going to be out for the rest of the week. Now I, I do tend to do everything in pencil, particularly appointments. I find that the minute I write down, erm, you know, somebody phones me and says I want another meeting with you, let's make it for next Friday at three o'clock in the afternoon, and I find within half an hour of me writing that down on the calendar card in ink, er, the people who's parentage I then start to question, phone back and say well whoops, you know we, we forgot we actually had another meeting then, and so on and so forth. And of course, due to the good folks of the Health and Safety Executive, er, snowpake is no longer addictive, so there is absolutely no fun in using the stuff any more. So I do tend to write everything in pencil. However, there is very strong reasons for thinking about colour coding. Particularly if you're involved in different activities, different project work, colour coding because it appeals to the right side of your brain, erm, whereas a lot of what you're going to be doing, I assume, is going to be fairly brained activity, erm, could, could work very well for you. And it's something I'm experimenting with myself but I haven't quite got it right. Certainly, I mean, something you should be aware of, however, if you're using colour coding, if you're using symbols and abbreviations, is the minute that you need a key to understand your own abbreviations and your, or what the colours mean, you're wasting time. And these things have to be instantly recognisable. And again, I mean the training agency are, are sort of masters and mistresses they say, of this, because they, they had this stuff and then they actually you know, certain departments will have a pre-printed page with all the abbreviations that you should use. Erm, you know and that's just insane. It's supposed to save you time, erm, not make your life more difficult. So whatever you use has to be instantly recognisable. Now what else can you do with these pages. Well, Okay, you'll see that of course, that's a five by seven grid, no it's not, yes it is, a five by seven grid, so there's always going to be some blank spaces. Oh wait a minute, I'll wait while those of you who are anally challenged will check that. Erm,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] It is a five by seven grid isn't it? yes, thank you. Erm, there's always some blank spaces there, so I use those for writing up key goals for the month. Now for example, these three, I've got three on this one, you can see the bottom right-hand corner, I have three specific business goals that I'm us, that I want constant reminding of during the month. The first is that it's the end of a V A T quarter. So I write that down because that's going to involve me in extra work at the end of the month. I want to be aware of that when I'm planning my month. The second says mailing list. Now as part of an annual goal which is to run some public courses later on in the year, erm, I've broken that down in a way that I may go through later, to things that I have to do on, on a month by month basis, and this month I need to create the mailing list. I mean, is that reasonably,. And the third thing says panels. Erm, I'm doing an exhibition next month, I need new panels for my exhibition stand. The people who make these panels are closely related to estate agents, in other words they are a lower life-form. Erm, they write down nothing, they remember nothing, and I have to phone these clowns every other day, to make sure that they're doing what we agreed they're going to, otherwise I have no panels next month for my stand, and I would be up the creek. So that's why, you know, three different sorts of reminders that I've put on the front of the calendar card. Now if you look at the nineteenth, which is a Sunday, it says mailing cut, now this again, you know, every month I send out renewal mailing, erm, for people who need diaries. And at the beginning of the year, I would sort of work out which weeks I want those mailings to go out. Now at the beginning of the year, I have no idea how this particular week in November is going to pan out, so I can't put it in for a specific day, but I put it in on the Sunday, because it's specific to that week. Okay. Next, going back to that erm,... you know, I said that the key business goal there was to create a mailing list. Now I know from past experience, that creating that mailing list is going to take approximately sixteen hours of my time. Er, I don't physically have to type out the labels, but I have physically have to be in the office, to initiate the computer sorts, because under something called personal job insurance scheme, I've layered the sort of routine under a lot of security codes and I'm only, the only person who knows where they are. Er, which means I can't be fired without a great deal of hassle, er, but, I er, er, the kind of the down-side is I have to go to the office occasionally. Now, erm, the, even dedicated person though I am, ex-workaholic, erm, there is no way that I can find sixteen uninterrupted hours in one month. You know it just isn't that simple. Even on a Sunday people come in and they phone and so on. Well what I can find are eight days, where for two hours, my primary focus can be these labels, producing the labels. So I make appointments with myself, where I've got, you'll see there, eight days where for two hours that's what I'm going to be doing. Mailing. And although you know, to all intents and purposes, those appointments are inviolate, I know that they're in pink on the slide, but they are inviolate in terms of I'm not going to cede that time to anyone else. Those appointments with myself have equal importance, perhaps more importance than my appointments with other people. And I think that's a, that's a key message which I, I don't know what spends time on this, how in fact we always accord other people more consideration than we do ourselves usually. And, and one of the key time management techniques is making appointments with yourself and keeping them. Not ceding that time to other people. Erm, so that's one thing. You also see at the bottom of the slide, I've put two asterisks, on the twenty ninth and the thirtieth. Erm, this is something that I started to use last year. A new technique for me, and it works very well for me. Erm, these are catch up days. Now what I mean by that, is that every, you know, twenty working day month, I know from analysing my time, that I lose two days, two full days to major interruptions. You know, the computer goes down for a hour, it's three-quarters of the day to get everything back and validated, and that's a major interruption. Erm, in Kentish Town, a particularly salubrious part of London where my office is based, we have a monthly burglary. Erm, and it's by appointment, because it's just a lot easier,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Than having you know, break all the alarms and everything else. The embarrassing thing is that we're all very right people so the place is a mess, er, and it takes us a quarter of a day before we realise that we've been burgled, because things are actually slightly neater than when we left the previous day. Erm, those are you know, major interruptions. Now, what I do then, is, because I know this is going to happen, when I'm planning my month, if I've got some days towards the end of the month where I have no claimants whatsoever, I put the asterisks in there and that's a catch up day. And that's saying to me, unless something really important comes up, don't give this time away, because this is your safety net. Er, now if you're going to use that, you know, so if somebody phones me and says er, you know, Ricky I like to meet with you at er, on, on the thirtieth, I would just say I'm sorry, I can't meet you that day. I'm not lying, I'm not saying I'm, I'm addressing you know, a national convention, or I'm going to see the Queen, or whatever, I'm just saying I can't see you that day. Er, how are you fixed for the beginning of next month? or the week after that? I, I grant you I mean, it's my judgement as to how critical that meeting is, and I may lose business that way. But I think overall I gained. However, I do use this with a certain amount of common sense. So if the president of my company calls from Allentown and says Ricky I'd like to see you in my office on the thirtieth, I don't say I'm sorry Steve, it's catch up day, I say what time would be convenient for you Sir, because you know, otherwise I, I'd be looking for a job. And the same thing, that if a major client like the Health and Safety Executive said to me, Ricky we're running a regional training week in the last week of November, and we want you for three days, you know, I, I don't say to them well look you know, well two of those days are catch up days, I can't possibly do it, why don't you move your whole regional training week to next week? Because that's just not going to happen. You know, they would say well we'll just find somebody else. So if I want the business, you know, I daren't. Er, but in the ordinary course of events er, this afternoon is, is I'm dedicated to using as many cliches as I possibly can, erm, is, is, you know, that works very well as a way of protecting time for myself. Next, feel free to ask questions at any time if you're confused by anything. I won't necessarily answer them, but you know, I want to feel, you know, in these days of product communication that you, you have the er, the liberty to ask them. Okay now looking at all the other stuff on there, and I look at that and I think well this is all very boring because it's all about business, and business as we know is incredibly unimportant. Erm, and we, and I trust that would be true for everybody in this room. The really important things are, are outside of business totally. So what I really want to do this month, well what I really want to do this month, is to lose some weight. So I write that on the calendar card in big letters. Now why do I write that there, well this is my planning system. Nobody actually looks at it apart from me, so I'm not embarrassed about writing that there. You know a few thousand people see my slides over the years, but you know, nobody would ever guess I need to lose weight anyway. You know, maybe I'm not giving that much away, erm, it's constant reinforcement for something that is important to me. Er, if I don't lose any weight this month I feel amazingly guilty and that's going to help me lose weight next month, and so on and so forth. What you should bear in mind of course, is that in the space of a month I probably look at this a couple of thousand times. And every time I look at this card I take in everything on it and er, at a subliminal level. So it, it is constant repetition of something that's actually important. Erm, again if you're not comfortable doing this kind of thing then you shouldn't do it obviously, and the last thing on the monthly calendar card is as you'll see er, er on the twenty fourth, twenty fifth, twenty sixth and twenty seventh, it has another personal message there. What happened is at the beginning of last year, Yvonne said to me er, we have lived in this house for three years, we must decorate it. I have just been on an inter-personal skills workshop so I knew what to do. I paused before replying to her, because if you pause before replying to people it gives them the foolish idea that you've actually listened to what they've said, and I said of course darling. Er, at the beginning of February we had a very similar conversation, and March and April. May she said, I, I'm not going to let you get away with this. Give me your day time. And I handed over my day timing, now bear in mind this is all in pencil, and she looked at the schedule for May and said you're not real busy this month, you know, you can take some time off. No more excuses. And in indelible ink, she crossed out those four days, and wrote decorating across them. She said we're going to decorate on those days. Now of course she had a very odd spelling of decorating [spelling] D I V O R C E []
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Erm, but, you know, which lent a certain point to the whole argument. But that's, you know, because she did that, because the time was blocked out in that way, I actually did it, and we wound up with, I now live in a, in a big, one roomed decorated house. We have a few other rooms to go, er, with my family as opposed to living on my own. And so we are decorating the house together. If I'd not blocked or she'd not blocked out that time in that way, what would have happened is on the thirteenth, er, of the month, erm, Red would have called me from the Health and Safety Executive would have called me and said, Ricky we've got er, a remedial leadership weekend on the top of Snowden, and er, on that, on the last weekend of the month, and we've got a one hour slot for you, that's just a golden opportunity. Now you know when someone says golden opportunities they're not paying you. It's, it's code. Er, er, and Red would go on to say, er, unfortunately we're in an overspend situation so I can't afford to pay you, but I personally would give you fifty P towards your expenses as you pitch over there. And I would have said, Ray, please I was brought up with this, and it's vulgar to discuss money over the telephone, erm, you know don't dream of paying me anything, I'm just ever so grateful for the opportunity. Erm, and I would have gone home and said I'm sorry darling, a major client can't afford to pay these people, and so on and so forth. So th, the, this, you know, this main thing of really, a picture's worth a thousand words, and the more you can block out time in this way, and protect yourself, er, the better your overall time management will be. Any questions or anything else anybody has ever done we want to use the calendar for? Any? Okay, if you could turn to back of the calendar card please, you'll find that is a,, that's just plain lined paper which is divided into two columns, that says at the top to be done in January. Now the ones for January, February and March are perhaps not terribly useful for you, because you have the current diary pages. Where they come into their own, is let's say that you wanted to phone me in July because my wedding anniversary is in July, you could turn to the back of the July calendar card, write down call Ricky Elliot on the seventh, because it's his wedding anniversary, erm, and write down my, my telephone number and then distressing though I find this idea, you could forget the whole thing, confident in the knowledge that the system will remind you at the appropriate time as to what action you should take. For any sort of forward prospecting, or monitoring that you do, the backs of the calendar cards are absolutely invaluable. Let's say that you give one of your people a six month project to work on, you've agreed with them as part of the parameters that you're going to check with them every two months on it, where do you put those reminders to yourself? You put them on the backs of the calendar card. It's the same thing. In terms of prospecting, I usually do the training exhibition at the N E C every July, er, in eighty six, a man came onto my stand and we chatted for half an hour, he then said to tell you the truth I'm not interested now, but I will be interested next May. So on the back of the May calendar card I wrote down his name and telephone number and put N E C in brackets. The following May I called him, got through his secretary by saying Mr. Jones asked me to call at this office, which was more or less true, erm, so I got through to him, and said, my name is Ricky Elliot, we met at the N E C, you asked me to give you a call this month about time management training. And he said, oh yes, yes, yes, I remember you, erm, of course he didn't. Er, he did after a while because there just aren't that many people who run round the N E C who look me in July, but erm, there were conventions earlier in the year, but it, it, you know, I got, actually a very reasonable size of contract out of this man, from that thirty second note I made on the calendar. And that's why I say they are invaluable for prospecting and monitoring purposes. You should be working on a, I would recommend a three month rolling basis, in terms of your current for the daily diary pages. In your binder you should have this month, last month and next month. Obviously you haven't got that at the moment, you've got this lot like that. Erm, that's on the basis that eighty percent of your diary, forward scheduling will be in the next thirty days, eighty percent of your backtracking for information is going to be in the last thirty days. Practically what that means, is when you get to March the first, you would archive January and insert April.
[speaker001:] Is there any merit in actually archiving day by day? Rather than month by month?
[speaker002:] Not that I've ever come across. I could, I, but nobody's ever suggested that before. Erm, try it, and let me know in six months. I'll put a note in my day time, to check with you in six months.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] It seems to me that would be a real pain.
[speaker001:] Okay
[speaker002:] I, you would probably remember to do it, I wouldn't.
[speaker001:] Alright, I'll try it.
[speaker002:] I mean it's
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] yes, well, and that's good, that's good. Report back. Erm, erm, what was I saying. At the beginning of each month, you'll find the first page of each month is a replica of the back of the calendar card. Yep. Except it has a year date on it, instead. Now this is the page where I recommend you do your monthly planning on. The, the back of the calendar card, the notes that make on the back of the calendar card, will be in sequential order, presumably. You know, you'll write them as they, as they occur to you. What you do on that first page of the month, is you put those that, that page that says to be done in January ninety four, or whatever, erm, you put the notes on the back of the calendar card in priority order and add any other formal targets you've got. So that you wind up with a prioritised monthly to do list. Erm, I know that over the last few days you've gone through the process of writing prioritised notes, so I'm not going to go through that process with you. Er, in any detail. It is not enough just to have that prioritised list. Er, you must then go through the month and work out, either on the monthly calendar card, or on the daily pages when you're actually going to do this stuff on this list. That is essential, it's not enough to write the monthly to do list. And I would suggest that you need to be looking at investing about two hours er, up front in each month, writing the prioritised to to list, and then working out when you're actually going to do this stuff. Er, and not making the mistake of underestimating how long things are going to take. You know, always give yourself more time than you actually need.
[speaker001:] To do that operation, you are expected to wait until the first of the month to start planning the month. You're probably looking two weeks before or something.
[speaker002:] Whate, again whatever is comfortable for you. Erm, I always, yes, I mean, I tend to I tend to do it the weekend before the month starts. But that may just be the pattern of my work. That's not to say they are things that are happening this month that, that I haven't planned for three months ago.
[speaker001:] Yes
[speaker002:] It's the rest of the stuff that I want to do this month. Yes? But it, it would depend on what you actually do every month. Anything else? because I'm a, I'm about to quit on the monthly calendar cards and monthly planning. Richard.
[speaker001:] If you have say, some people who want something calendared for May, would you bother to actually go into your storage binder and actually mark it in there as well? When do you actually put it in?
[speaker002:] Yes, yes. And I might do it, it depends what it is. If it's a meeting, I might not even put that in at all. Erm, because I'm, because I don't like dupl, I duplicate as little as I can, you know. Depending on the sort of day it is. Anything else? I mean that doesn't mean you shouldn't do that if you're, if you're happy doing that.
[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] Mike certainly would do it, I can tell, but I mean, I personally wouldn't.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Okay, I'm going to go to the day, the daily page now. If you can turn to any, I'll talk generally about it, and then I'll go into detail. Any daily spread, you've been given here a two page per day dairy. Now this particular size, because do quite a lot of sizes as well, er, we do five different diary formats. Er, we do two varieties of two page per day, we do a one page per day, and we do two varieties of two page per week. I've given you the two, er, the one that gives you the most space for the day, on the basis that if you have too much space for daily planning, it's maybe irritating. If you have too little space it's actually crippling. So I've followed your commitments through this course, I'd like you to stay with this particular diary format for three months. If at the end of three months you decide that this is too elaborate for you or you'd like to, if you need to see a week at a glance, er, you just call my office, send back the pages you haven't used, and we would exchange those er, for the equivalent in a different format. That is, that's not a problem. Er, but I want you to start with this one, because it gives you the most flexibility. Erm, I am not aware, as I say, I'm not aware that anybody in Tarmac has ever switched to a one, but I, I'm, which I find quite remarkable, erm, but you can do it if you, if you feel the need to.
[speaker001:] Have you got a anywhere?
[speaker002:] I think there are details in the, er, laughingly referred to, handbook, with your instructions. I'll, I'll, I'll check that out in the break. Erm, okay, the daytime principle is very simple one, which is you have the left-hand page and the right-hand page. The left-hand page is where you plan, the right-hand page is where you record, the end of the day you are supposed to record one with t'other, and carry forward unfinished business to the next day. It is of course, not that simple er, in, in real life. I mean it may have been that simple for Mr. Daytimer, who was a lawyer, erm, but I don't think it's, it's, it certainly isn't that simple for me, and I, not for anybody else I know. Erm, I am going to go through the left-hand side in some detail. Again I'm going to show you a very structured approach to planning. Don't, don't be put off by that, erm, just, you know, grab whatever you can out of it. I'm not sure whether we need, it's better with the lights off or on? Oh, that's something else I shouldn't have said I guess. Erm, okay some of the, is that visible or shall I turn the lights out?
[speaker001:] Yes, mm, oh that's okay.
[speaker002:] Is that okay? Alright, now here's,... okay, he's a day I've got, this is the beginning of the day. Yes, I've not started to plan the day yet. And inevitably when you turn up a diary page you have between say one and twelve things already entered into the to do list. I have to go back a stage, I haven't actually explained what these four to you, on this page you've got four boxes. Okay, you have a to do section, you have an appointments schedule, you have a box at the left-hand bottom, that says phone calls, and you have a box at the right-hand corner that says expenses and reimbursement record. This of course is an American system, as you will have gathered already. They get away with a lot more in terms of expenses than we do over here, er, which is why there's such a heavy emphasis on expenses. I know very few people in this country who need to record their expenses in that much detail on a daily basis. Particularly if you think about the expense envelopes and the other sheets you've got. I use that box for my personal to do list. As you'll see. And I'm mentioning that now, because I'm always amazed at how intimidated by the printed word, most people are. As I go round the country, and I, I, I you know, I explain to people how I use my daytimer, and er, people say well can I do that too. You know, is it okay. And I say, yes, you have my permission now?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Erm, because, I used to laugh at people, but I found, you know, they got insulted, so it is much easier if I play God, and say yes, you know. They, you can do it now. So in case any of you are worried about, you know, inappropriate headings, ignore them, it's you system, you do with it what you want. Alright. I'd much rather y, you know, you did anything you want, than ignore a bit that you could otherwise find useful. Now going back, at this particular day, I have forward reminders er, they represent different sorts of forward reminders, so I'll go through those in detail. Before I do that, you know, let me point out, I've got three commitments on this particular day. I have a meeting with a software house at ten thirty, Mike is coming in at three thirty to talk about the new book, and tonight's one of the nights when Yvonne is teaching, so I have to be home by a reasonable hour, so that we can exchange car keys and padlock keys and that sort thing. Now on the to do list, the first item says check B J L and there's a D in brackets. B J L are the initials of my marketing manager. The D in brackets refers to a wo, a work organiser section of my daytimer which is my marketing section. Now what that's saying is, today is the due date for a job that I gave Barbara. All the information about that job is in the D section, look in the D section. There's no point me writing any other detail out on the to do list, because I'm going to automatically go to that section to find out all the, all of the details. So I, I'm just using very simple code to cross-reference the diary section with the work organiser section. The second item says phone Collins with the thirtieth of the erm, September after it. On the thirtieth of September er, a good friend of mine called me and said these people are interested in what you do, give them a call. And dictated to me their name, address you know, telephone number, fax number, contact name and all the rest of it. Which I wrote down on the diary records side. I phoned and the man that I needed to speak to was not there, he'd been seconded to the Himalayas or something, he was only coming back erm, in the middle of January, I was in, erm, November or whatever it was, I was giving a few days' grace, and then I was going to call. At this stage I have no idea how important this man is to my future. The likelihood is I'm going to send him a catalogue and some, you know, a, a, a letter. Erm, there is a very small chance that he's going to say, all the time that I was on, on top of Everest, er, I was thinking about you, because I've heard you're the best thing since sliced wholemeal bread, I have three thousand people that I want to put through a programme in the next six weeks. You know, do you think you can help me. At that point he becomes marginally important to my future, and I might just make out a client sheet for him. Even I can stir myself to do that on that kind of basis. But at this stage I have no idea so there's no point writing out information which is already in place, as it were, and then I can reference him. It's because, I, I just, I abhor unnecessary duplication. The third item, says check, check B S T, that's just an order for a particular customer that I put through yesterday, and I want to make sure it's going to happen today. Erm, in other words it's the kind of thing that you would automatically remember in situ. Now the last thing says labels code four, you'll remember from the monthly card, I have these eight days where I was going to do the labels. This is one of these days. Kindly note that I have been specific on the daily to do list. I haven't just put labels, I've put labels code four, which means London. Do the London labels today. The reason that I put code four, is if I just put labels on the list, I know that I cannot complete that task today. And because I know I can't finish it, there's a good chance I won't start it. By breaking it down into something I can do today, there's a much better chance I will actually do it. And I really can't say this enough times. That the more you can break stuff down into achievable daily goals the better off you are. You know, because time and time again, you know, we're made impotent by the size of the task that face us. We need to break stuff down as much as you can. Okay. So then, that's er, that's when I turn the page, now I add a variety of other lists. Erm, I have, you know, I have added things to my business list, I won't go through those at the moment. Underneath expense and reimbursement record, I've got two personal items there. Erm, I mean I separate them out, incidently because they have equal validity. Er, I used not to do that, I used to put everything in one list, and then my home telephone was cut off one time, er, because I just never regarded the personal things as being terribly important until, you know, I don't have to pay well over a hundred quid to get the thing fixed again. But now I separate them out because I realised although they don't, you know, things like pick up cleaning, don't seem that significant, erm, tomorrow morning when I Okay, erm, this bit we're going through is the work organiser. This consists of some different bits and pieces, so again let me go those first. You have here twenty six tabbed alpha dividers, er, unless it's going to create a problem they usually go A to Z. Erm, some people use this an alphabetical filing system. I'm actually going to recommend that you regard these things as codes, and that you only put twelve of these actually into your active binder and put the other fourteen in a storage binder as spares. Er, and this is, as I said, er right at the beginning, the work organiser is a way of tracking information which is best tracked by subject or topic rather than by date. In other time management systems this sort of thing would be called a key results area, erm, you know, it, it's that kind of thing. It's, it's for setting goals and working them out and so on. Then you get six pads of different sorts of daytime oc, extra forms such the agendas, communication records and so on, five samples of fifteen different forms and some clear vinyl holders. Those are the exciting things I'll explain later. Wow! You get a lot of stationary. Er, about twenty different forms in all. I anticipate that you will use about three of them. You know, you might like sort of six, and you may use the sample pages that you get, in about six different things. Erm, but I think you'll actually use one, two maybe three of them. Er, I have people who get this set and then instantly reorder everything, plus everything else that's available. There are about another forty things that you can get, you know, for this particular er, binder. These people obviously are in the wallpaper business. They cannot be doing any honest work if they're spending their life filling pieces of paper to go into these ring binders. Erm, so what I'm saying you know, as we go through this stuff, you, you, if you, if you discover that you don't like some of it, you know, you're not supposed to. I mean some of our forms, I, I, I haven't worked out what they're for yet,an,an, and I'm trying to some run some competitions for the best er, use of, of one particular one, it may well be in this pack. So you know, don't worry about that. Don't, don't lose the basic utility of the system, they're because you're irritated by a form that has no, no relevance to you. Just make a paper aeroplane out of it. Or, or use it as scrape. Okay, so let me start handing these out, and what I'd like you to do is to extract the er, alpha dividers that are at the back, and then separate those out into two piles, A to L and M to Z, please.... Erm, now put the M to Z into the storage binder please, those are the ones that you're going to use for spares.... Now even more than the rest of the stuff that I've said... I wouldn't mention that to anybody else no. Erm, then anything else I've said today, this is really not holy writ, erm, I'm just going to make or suggested arrangement of these dividers and if you want to keep them this way that's fine, and if you want to do something else with them that's also fine. But for today, we're going to pretend that there is a right way of using these and you're going to follow what I say. Put the A divider in front of the address and telephone section please.... That's at the front of your active binder.... Put the, just the A divider,...
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Just the A divider, put the okay, right, it's usually the bits before this that c, erm,th, the B to... F I think it is [whispering] B, C, D, E, F, [] after the address and telephone please, before the January calendar card,... Good... Okay put the G divider after the December calendar card in front of the planning calendars,.... Sorry, one thing I didn't explain, I... it's, it's probably quite obvious, but I'll explain it anyway, which is the reason for putting the planning calendars in at that place is your diary expires in the December of next, of this year, you will probably order your refill in October, November er, of next year, and, and based on our outstanding customer services this year, you'll probably receive it next February. Erm, you will want, you'll already have commitments for next year, where do you put those commitments. You put them on those planning calendar pages. You know that's they're there for. Put the remaining dividers that you have, it should be H to L after that section in front of the expense envelopes.... Now at the back of the re, rest of that packet, erm, in front of the vinyl cardboard but you may already have extracted this, you'll find two sets of pre-printed labels.... These are for attaching to the erm, tabs. Right, but please don't do it for at least three months. I, I, I would suggest that it takes about three months to work out what your best arrangement of categories is going to be. Now I had the first set of these dividers over in this country. Erm, I erm, employ people, so I decided to have an employment section, six months later when I was reviewing the daytimer, I discovered that I had one sheet in my employment section, er, about a lady I had interviewed and not employed, whereas I had a prospect section that was overflowing, and needed drastic sub-division. I was able, because I'm a director of the company, to tear up my dividers and steel another set. If you make the same mistake, er, you have to buy another set, and I double the price for people who have heard me say don't do this, er, and lie low, you know in the first three months, because I believe in penalising stupidity. So, and disobedience. So what I'm suggesting you do is, decide roughly what your categories are going to be, and write at the top of the in pencil, or on the tabs themselves in pencil, as to what you, you want them to be. I'm going to write up a suggested arrangement on the board now. And I'll explain, you know, what these different things mean, as and when we come to them. So what I'm suggesting is that A is in fact your address and telephone section, B should be for your goals, and strategic plans, C, D, E, and F, er, would be for your specific functional areas.... very carefully chosen erm, G is your forward schedule,... for next year onwards, H would be for God, otherwise known as the boss, I is for erm, otherwise known as colleagues, and J is for plebs, people who report to you, and K is the personal section, and L is new ideas... schedule.... basically
[speaker001:] What is the is, what's C, D, E, and F?
[speaker002:] Er, specific functional areas, not what you actually do in other words. So in mine for example, C er, is er, public courses, D is marketing, E are in-house courses, and F are computers. Because those are the areas that I look after for the business. Okay is that reasonably clear to everyone?...
[speaker001:] What's
[speaker002:] Loss could be, I'm sorry. Erm, now what you do with this, these sections is of course you build up information over time. So the information in these sections will tend to be static. What will tend to happen is for example, erm, in my section to deal with public courses, I would have information about the venues that I'm going to use this year, I would have information about the mailing lists I'm going to use, and information about the mailing lists of my office I'm going to use, I would have prospects that I'm going to call, you know, it's all stuff that I would tend to plan out on a pad of paper and then insert into the particular data section, and refer to as I need to. Which is why I've asked you to actually split this work organiser between the front and the back of the binder. Er, open your binder, any ring binder system has the basic functional disadvantage that pages close to the bottom of the rings, are very difficult to write on. I have very, very small hands, but even for me, I can't write comfortably more than half way across that page. What makes sense therefore, is to put the work organiser at either end of the binder, to build those up, so that pages where you really will be writing on in the binder, which are the diary pages will become elevated towards the middle of the rings, and make that much easier to write on. Is that, yes, reasonably Erm, that's the reason for having the sections split at the back and the front of the binder. Okay, what I'd like to do now is to go through the pads that you've been given. It should be on top of the, erm, discard the erm, instruction sheet. Erm,
[speaker001:] Excuse me,
[speaker002:] yes
[speaker001:] Just one thing, we're actually writing this information of ours, for individual job areas, on this?
[speaker002:] I would yes,
[speaker001:] Right,,, they're not, they're not tabs for other,
[speaker002:] Whatever, whatever they are, no, you've got tabs there, but I'm saying don't use those up yet, they're not tabs for stuff that's going to be behind, they're actually for pages and so on. Right so, What are you saying?
[speaker001:] Well you're, you're saying that you build up information about so you're actually writing that information on these
[speaker002:] Right, no, no, no, that's just a divider responsible,
[speaker001:] Ah, so it is a divider, yes.
[speaker002:] So the information that goes on, yes
[speaker001:] So you've got extra pages, right, which is
[speaker002:] Don't interrupt. What we're going through now.
[speaker001:] Because
[speaker002:] Yes, yes, okay. I'm sorry about that the room, erm, okay the six pads that you've got. Now each of these, alright we'll go through the pads and I'll discuss what you can do with them. The first pad, if you hold it up against any of the other pads, you'll see that it's actually slightly shorter. Yes? It therefore has th, the swinging title of cut-down memo form. Erm, which just trips off the tongue. Erm, the advantage of this one is that you can, it's obviously just plain memo sheet, you can insert a page from this pad into any diary spread, and it wouldn't mask the date information at the top. And this is the pad I would recommend you use, if your diary is overflowing. On those days when you need more information, use this pad, er, for that purpose. I mean, er, again bear in mind this is not holy writ. Use it for whatever you want to use it for, but er, this is a suggestion. Okay, the next pad is Okay, this is a drop-dead sheet. Erm, you know, we all deal with people, who either on a personal or a business level who we genuinely feel the world would be a better place without. You know, people you know you're going to wind up in court with, and you need to, you want to keep an a, you know, an accurate log of every communication you, you get from these people. Particularly now of course, when it's so much more difficult to back, er back-date stuff, maybe because of the success that people have had on pay cuts. And it used to be, it killed off a good part of our business this year, we used to do a roaring trade in back-dated diaries with accountancy lawyers, and it's all gone. You know, it's a tragedy. Erm, what they could possibly be doing with these things I, I couldn't imagine. Erm, so this is what, this is, this form is for. It's for, it's a, it's a client form, obviously, but it's a very detailed one, for all the sorts of communications you get with brief notes about you know, actually. Okay, next, okay a rather odd looking form, erm, multi-purpose memo form, that erm, well that's what it used to be. These days it's perhaps best as a telephone answering machine tool. When you're away from your base and somebody is fielding your calls for you, give them this pad, and ask them to record the calls in this pad, then you can just tick that box on the right-hand side that says calls to answer, erm, and insert the pages as you need to into the daytimer. Next one, meeting agenda. Okay meeting agenda is a splendid form. Erm, it, it's really one of the more useful ones. I think it's a bit too busy myself, but I'll explain w, the things about it that I really like. Erm, I think that the things that are important about this form in that it asks you to define the purpose of a meeting as opposed to or as distinct from the agenda. You know,pe, people confuse the two. Personally I do not go to meetings which do not have a purpose. Or if I am called to a meeting that does not have a purpose written on the agenda, I demand to know what the purpose of the meeting is, before we start. If somebody can't tell me what it is, I get up and go. Er, because it's just, you know, my time is very valuable. I feel that about everybody's time. I don't see why I should spend time some way away if people haven't actually articulated what they're trying to achieve. Erm, other things that are good about this, you've got the people attending, and then the value per hour. You remember there was that form saying how much is your time worth? From time to time it is a good idea to cost meetings. Very few people realise how expensive they are, and if you can remind people subtly of how much time, you know, how much money is actually going, erm, it, it tends to focus people's minds. Erm, what of course you do on that form is it's not just how much people are paid, it's how much they're paid, plus benefits times two. You know, it's charge out time, it's the cost of them not doing something else. I so, don't do this for every meeting, erm, but from, you know occasionally it's a good idea. You've got items to be discussed, and then you've got an ability on the right-hand side them to resequence them. Because people who write very good prioritised to do lists, don't necessarily prioritise meeting agendas. Erm, and yet it's exactly the same thing. If the most important thing on your agenda is number seven, you know, you're probably not even going to get to it, because you'll be too tired. You should make the important thing the most important item on your agenda, number two. You have an ice-breaker, and then, and then on to the important stuff. And lastly you've got material needed and people responsible for bringing it. Erm, how often do you go to a meeting or have you been to a meeting, which has to stop for twenty minutes because some clown has left the files in his office, and he has to go back and retrieve them. You know, this way erm, if it's on the agenda as to who's bringing what, you can kneecap people erm, if they decide not to bring it, or if they, if they don't bring it. Erm, you'll find if you turn to the back of the form, again this is another mis, mis-designed thing. You're supposed to write the minutes for this meeting on the back of the agenda, now, I know very few people who ever actually do that, er, I always want to look at the agenda when I'm taking my notes. Er, and I always reckon others will do the same, so I always take my notes on a, on a plain piece of paper, and put them together if I need to. Some amazingly well organised not to mention tight people, take their notes for this meeting on the back of the last meeting's agenda. Erm, which I just find amazing that they can do that. But again, you know, it, it, it is an optional erm. Okay next. Er, graph sheets yes. Er, the one after that is plain lined paper. Which I'd,
[speaker001:] Where are we putting these in?
[speaker002:] No you're not putting them anywhere at the moment. Okay, that's the life of the pads. Right, what I'd like you to do, is oh, Andrew perhaps I could show it with your's. You will also find you have got two clear vinyl holders like this. These are actually to use, for use with the pads. Obviously you can use these if you can figure out how they open, erm, to protect documents. You can use them as my brother does, to put pictures of your loved ones in, to remind yourself what you're working for, personally I find that rather tacky. Erm, but at least you know. What they're actually designed for, is you'll notice that each pad has a stiff card backing, why? Why do c, I'm sorry I've just remembered something I haven't covered, okay. What you can do is to insert the cardboard backing into the envelope like that and then you put that bit through the rings, and then it becomes a tear pad. So if you're wandering around and you want to write somebody a quick note, you don't have to open the rings and take out a piece of paper, you just write on here and tear it off. Okay. Erm, if of course you're heavily into recycling, er, what you can do is put the whole pad inside er, the envelope and use a. Erm, but that takes a certain amount of dexterity. Now what I'd like you to do is to select two, I told you I'd be serious in the last part, the whole is here, is select the two pads you like best, please, and put one at the front of the binder and one at the back. Kindly note these things are ambidextrous, they don't care which way round they go, but I'd recommend you organise it so the pad is actually resting on the cover, not on the rest of the paper in the binder, because it will make it a bit sturdier to use. Yes. Okay. If of course you don't like any of the pads then ignore everything....
[speaker001:] What at the front and the back.
[speaker002:] I would, I would do that yes.
[speaker001:] So I can actually write in it?
[speaker002:] No put it in here, take all that out
[speaker001:] [whispering] []
[speaker002:] yes Put that like that I'm going to change the way I say
[speaker001:] Like this one here, the shorter one.
[speaker002:] Right. Everything, and all menus are available from, I mean I, I don't where they take out a listing of, well I don't where they. Alright, okay, no, no they're extras. Put the rest of them, I mean,i,i,i, in the storage binder or you know, or you can obviously put them in the active binder if you want to do. So the rest of the pads, we need to go through the colour forms and everything.... Okay, everybody put the pads away please. Er, we'll go through... erm, okay we'll go through the rest of the stationary with a certain amount of swiftitude. Erm, now they changed the order that they put these things in, so I need you to tell me as we go along which ones are which. The first one is expenses. This form is actually quite good for analysing how you pay for things, not necessarily what you pay, paid for, erm, I, again, er, almost certainly useless to you. Some people I know have used them for departmental budgets, but quite how they do that I don't know. You know, but again, you know, I would throw mine away. Next,
[speaker001:] Important people to remember
[speaker002:] Ah, important people to remember is quite an interesting sheet because everybody hates it so much. Erm, it's a rep. sheet. And er, it's very good if you need to record that kind of information about people, but most of us don't. Next?
[speaker001:] Dictation log.
[speaker002:] Sorry which one?
[speaker001:] Dictation log.
[speaker002:] Dictation log, absolutely useless, completely. Next?
[speaker001:] Delegation assignment
[speaker002:] Delegation of assignment. Okay a key form. Delegation assignment. Erm, Okay, I er, you can use this in one of two ways. Either to, you know, write down delegation that you're giving somebody, and then photocopy it and give it to them. Now one of the reasons a lot of delegations go wrong, is because we think we have agreed ground rules with people. Er, it's because we don't write down the stuff, we're not as pr, precise as we could be. You know, that, that's a very common reason. So you can write down the delegation and photocopy it and give it to somebody. Alternatively, er, what you could do is what I do, which is I use these for rolling basis appraisals. So I have people who report to me like Kevin my despatch manager. So I have a sheet like this in my daytimer, that says Kevin. Every job that I give Kevin I write down a, a brief summary of what that task was, and I leave a gap of three lines. When the job is over, I then write a brief summary appraisal, as it were on his performance. So that when we have the thing that he calls an annual review and I call a pain in the neck, I don't actually have to put in very much work to come up with the fact that no, I'm not going to give him a salary increase, erm, because I have his, his performance, you know, already researched throughout the year. So it takes all the pain out of coming up with annual appraisals because you've been doing it on an incremental basis. That's what those sheets are good for. Okay, next?
[speaker001:] Plain lined paper.
[speaker002:] Which one?
[speaker001:] Plain lined paper.
[speaker002:] Plain lined paper, yes, that's a very complicated form. And you'll find the same thing but with a co, in two columns. Yes. Erm, absolutely wonderful for shopping lists. Erm, otherwise perhaps a little bit too small for anything useful. It's erm, sometimes you could use that as a, as a structured brainstorming sheet. What's called a Norwegian list,w, quite why the Norwegians are blamed for this I don't know, er, and the idea with a Norwegian list, is that you have, you put the problem on the left-hand side if you're right-handed, and then you would brain-storm the solutions for that on the right-hand side. If you are left-handed of course, you do it the other way round. Next?
[speaker001:] The Iron Ridgeworth diary.
[speaker002:] The Iron Ridgeworth record. This used to be called services performance day, but we realised most of our customers were. It's a, an overflow sheet for erm, people who charge out their time, by the minute, or what you can use it for, is if you want to keep a precise time-lock for five working days, and I would recommend that you do do this at some point in your future, use these sheets to do it. Erm, each faint er, horizontal line represents fifteen minutes, so it, it's a fairly easy way to, to, to do a time-lock. Okay, next?
[speaker001:] Meeting agendas abroad.
[speaker002:] Meeting agendas abroad we've seen.
[speaker001:] unscheduled
[speaker002:] Unscheduled Okay, this is er, it's, it's a diagnostic sheet if you find that you're interrupted quite a lot over time, for you know, at a particular time, and you want to find out why you're becoming less effective, you use this to log interruptions. It's particularly powerful if the interruptions are coming from the boss. Erm, because if, if interruptions are coming from the people who work for you, you can, you know, nicely tell them to go away and get on with it, but if they're coming from the boss, and bosses are sensitive soles, so it's difficult to actually say to the boss, boss you're wasting a lot of my time, go away. Erm, depending on your relationship you have, if however, you keep a log of your interruptions erm, well this is the way I recommend you do it. The first time the boss interrupts you, you write down, er boss, on the appropriate column and then what it was about, and the elapsed time, and all the rest of it. Then er, you don't do it whilst the boss is in the room, obviously. The next time the boss interrupts you, you do the same thing, but you leave a gap of three lines, there you see, just three, two three lines, and write boss and what it's about, the next time the boss interrupts you, you know, leave another unequal gap, er, and log the interruption. When you've got enough boss imposed interruptions on the sheet, you know, twelve to fifteen, take the rest of the week off. You know, there's no point in wasting your time you know, logging everybody else, and you go to the boss, and you say, boss you know that personal management skills course that I, you said I should go on, so you proving what, you know, what a good person you are, because you've remembered a month later what the course was called, erm, I, I was told on that course to keep an interruptions log, so you're proving, you know, that you are a good person when you've done this, and i see from this that a great deal of your valuable time is being eroded by my humble concerns, you know, something like that. You will be right, he fished. Erm, I was wondering if, you know, and then you have to come up with a solution, because bosses don't like problems, they like solutions. And maybe the solution would be regular one-to-one meeting for ten minutes in the morning, and you could get rid of all this garbage, in one go, rather than having him wander in, or her wander in, at any particular time, you know, and just disrupt your flow. So that's what this sheet is for, it's an interruptions log, particularly good er, when you're with the boss. Er, let me say also, of course, some bosses, you know, are, are, are sad souls, they need a little bit more of a jolt, at which point you have to put it in monetary terms. You know, and you, you then have that sheet, and how much is my time worth, and how much is his time worth, or her time worth, and you can say, you know, these interruptions are actually costing us quite a lot of month. Next? Oh, that's, you see that one over there, that's the one for phone calls. Yes, then you've got some graph paper, and you'll probably find that you've got some with columns in, you've got yes, vertical and then horizontal margins and then you've got some with columns in. The columns are always one square out, from what you want them to be. Erm, there's a genuine, we, we, we never, we, they're relatively recent. We produced because so many customers said, you know, why don't you have columns on your graph paper. So we produced three different sorts, and they're never in the right place. Then we've got the most sophisticated of our forms, the patently, absolutely blank ones. The ones, most people can't do anything with those, they're just paralysed by them in the States, and then we have project management forms. These are project fact sheets. They're quite nice for self-imposed goals. Erm, for something you want to do, and initiate yourself, it's again in here, it's a brain-storming sheet.... And then you've got some more communication records, and then you've got, ah, the annual summary forms. Now these clearly were designed for financial tabulation, er, for people who have very, very small handwriting. Erm, and you can certainly use them for that. I use them for breaking down annual goals, to monthly goals. You know, so I, I mean, I talked about this before, this is a mailing that I want to do in October, which means for example, that I've got to print the catalogue in July, which means I've got to proof it in June, which means I have to actually design it in April and May. And by breaking things down, you know, that's actually what I use these sheets for myself. And I would keep those in my B section, you know, I have my long-term goals and I have goals for the year, and then I have my planning sheets, on how I'm going to implement those goals. So, I, I think those sheets are fabulous, but you only need a few of them. Okay, is that it? The telephone call batch, are fairly obvious sheets. Okay, so that's it. So those are all the different forms you've got. Erm, put all of that in the storage binder, please for the moment, erm, if you, you've got so much stationary now, you'll probably find it quite difficult to close it, but, if you jiggle it around enough you'll be able to do it.... And I just have a couple of other things I want to say to you and then we can all go home. Oh, I've got something else in here... Erm, okay there are two other things I want to do. Firstly I, I, my office telephone number you'll find in various places throughout the system. Erm, but I'll give you my home number to see what else we do in the other things, phone my office, please. If however, you're confused about anything this afternoon, or you want more information about, you know, managing time and so on, give me a call please, er, my number is... and er, I may not be there, but I do have an answerphone, and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Erm, that's the er, that's the first thing. Erm, I'd much rather you put this in your daytimer of course, and then you can't send it back to me. Erm,... but more important, er, I wanted to explain something to you which, again to my, to the best of my knowledge nobody else does this, erm, so pay close attention please. This is a, you know, how you should approach change, er, I learnt my lesson a few years ago, because I went on a course, I came back to my office, and thought the world had changed. I called Bernadette in, and said Bernadette this is the way we're going to do things from now on, and Bernadette knew which side of the bread her butter was on, so she said, of course Ricky no problem. Over lunch I overheard Bernadette say to Sarah who'd just started with us then, Ricky's a bit strange at the moment because he's just been on a course, but he'll be better next week.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] And I was. And what I thought was happening, you see, was that, if you can imagine this kind of psychological or metaphysical equilibrium point that we all start from, then I, I sort of perceptually changed. I moved up to there, and I want to bring everybody up to my new level, so I sort of drag everybody up, but I always thought it was just the, the inertia effect, you know, that I couldn't have a mental and physical and moral energy to last everybody out wh, while they would change effectively. But I talked to psychologist about it, and she said it's a lot more interesting than that, what you're forgetting is, that change is usually perceived as criticism, what's wrong with the way we've been doing things. I didn't get where I am today by... kind of mentality. And it's one of the more interesting applications of Newton's third law, to every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. It's not that when you're trying to change that people stay in equilibrium point at all, they actually go down to there. It's not that they passively resist you, it's that they actively sabotage you, because the change is so graphic. So you know it, it, it's just, they will actually, the interesting bit is that they'll only move back to that equilibrium point as you fall down towards them. So in order to sort of effect effective change, you really need to do it very slowly and incrementally. So with the particular diary system, I mean this, what I've just said is about the whole course, but the particular diary, I would say get to grips with the diary first, and then you know, once you're, you're on, on, on tap with that, then get involved with the erm, project sheets and the project management forms. Erm, but start with the diary, because that's where most of the benefit is coming from. Any questions at all? Good, excellent, I like it when there are no questions. Erm, well thank you very much for your time.
[speaker001:] Thank you.
[speaker002:] I have enjoyed it.
[speaker001:] Do you want a lift.
[speaker002:] Erm, no, no, no I'm fine. Yes. Walking is good for the soul, it's.
[speaker001:] You've finished it.
[speaker002:] As I say you've er, you've got a long way to go, okay, fine thank you.
[speaker001:] We'll see you in whenever, in a months' time, is it February? February is month one, okay then? Yes. Right, can I ask those of you who haven't, to start to fill in your assessment sheets please. Some people have already done it by the looks of things,... only they haven't changed it.... Hopefully. yes, yes. Is there not one in your er.