The Military and Time Control
If anybody in the military says the military does great at time management, it’s not true. The military wastes a lot of time doing ridiculous tasks that they have no reason to complete. This is especially true for those who are deploying or preparing to deploy. A lot of time is spent sitting around doing nothing or waiting to do a five-minute task that ends up lasting 3 hours to complete because of the wait. Mostly this time is spent sleeping because in the military you learn to sleep anywhere! If high-level leaders really want to contribute to training, mentoring, and teaching lower-level leaders to be better leaders, then they must quit sending their entire unit to do a task all at once. Especially when it takes 5 minutes to complete and only 3 work at a time. You all know what I am talking about. A prime example is the egress trainer that takes up an entire day for a whole company, and the soldiers sit around texting, playing spades on their phones or clash of clans while valuable training time is wasted. This time even could be spent bettering the soldiers at PT.
Managing Time Control
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the military or working as a civilian. It seems most people find it difficult to manage time. Then there is time control, so try this. The first thing I suggest is to be a person with a “do it now” motto. Most people begin their day with a to-do list that has no prioritization. They just try to get as much of it completed throughout the day. One way to actually get some of it completed is to quit procrastinating and do it now. You know who you are: you read an email and don’t answer it when it would take you two minutes to answer. Then think about what needs to get done and what you want to get done. To have great time control, you must decide what is most important and complete that first. Then complete the lower priorities afterwards. Don’t just sit around until the last minute or the last day to complete something that you have known about for days or weeks. Get it done now and move on. Then teach your subordinates to do the same thing because you have to make sure whatever they have to do gets done or else you’ll be doing it yourself.
Learn to Delegate
One sign of a good leader is that they know how to delegate responsibilities and to whom and when. You cannot always choose the same people to go pick up the nasty cig butts outside the barracks. (Of course, the smokers should take care of that nasty habit themselves.) This is just an example a good leader. He or she must let each lower-level leader take on tasks of different levels of responsibility, and you have to be willing to allow them to make mistakes. Why? There is a difference between a mistake and an experience. If you keep failing because you’re doing the same task over and over the same way, well, that is a mistake. However, if you do it once and fail and then change the way you do it, then you learned from your failure. That’s an experience. In other words, experiences you learn from mistakes you keep doing with hopes that nobody will notice. A great example is if a soldier gets a DUI this coming weekend, he or she is out drinking and driving. Obviously they either don’t care or haven’t learned from the incident. It’s a mistake and a stupid one. As leaders, it is our responsibility to teach, train, and pass on our experiences and mistakes to our subordinates so they will learn the same as we did. However, you must let them make their own decisions and trust them. Eventually, you will develop trust and know that that soldier will complete a task within standards and regulations whenever asked.
No Matter Who or What
Time control refers to everybody. If you want to be more successful in any business, no matter what it is, then you must have better time control because time management just doesn’t work as well. The main reason is that you can’t control how long it may take a client to get you certain docs or a soldier to get through a dental appointment. You can, however, control who, what, when, where, how, and why! This means that you must know who will complete a task and how long it will take. Then don’t procrastinate. Get it down now, even if you find out today that you have a week to get something completed, do it now and move on.
