I guess the first question is, why should I care? If you are interested in getting results and improving your quality of life, you should care a great deal. Let’s look at a few crucial differences.
Timing
There are two distinct times when you will be performing Time Management (TM) functions and then specific times when you will be performing Maximizing Production (MP) functions. Doing them in reverse order will be counter productive. Time Management activities are without doubt the absolute foundation on which everything is laid. If you start off with a faulty foundation, everything else that lies on top will be, in varying degrees, either out and out wrong or just less effective than if the foundation was correct. I use another analogy that I like; it seems to clear up the difference between these two very important functions. You are thinking about going on a vacation. The original thought came from where? You have time off from work, you take a yearly vacation, you are tired, need a rest; the idea for a vacation came from some thought process. That thought process is the start of you organizing your time.
You have started the ball rolling on your vacation, you get out the brochures, you call your travel agent, you look at locations, and you compare prices. Those are all Time Management functions. You are deciding how, when, where, why you will be spending your time over a block of future time. You are setting up the framework in which your future time will be allocated. In this case, you are predeterming where and how a week of your future time will be spent. Unless you woke up one day and jumped on a plane, it would be pretty hard not to do some pre-planning, some Time Management functions to plan for your vacation. In this scenario, you are almost forced to do some planning to get the details worked out so you can leave at a specific time and arrive at a location where they are expecting you and everything is in order. That’s TM in action.
Now, you have just arrived at your vacation destination, you have a whole week ahead of you, what next? The Maximizing Production functions now kicks in. What you do within that week, what you do within that block of time is the function of Maximizing Production. On a vacation you are not really looking to Maximize your time the same way you look at your production at work or in your business but you still want to cram as many things that you want to do as you can. You won’t want to spend all day on the beach because you want to spend some time playing tennis. You want to go on some tours so you have to pay attention to how long you sleep in the morning. These are all Maximizing Production functions. The decision has been made to be on vacation, Time Management function, now that you are on vacation, MP functions take over and you know are deciding how to get the most out of the vacation.
Two Hats
You want there to be a seamless flow between your TM activities and you PM activities. At the same time, to be most effective, you want to be aware that at times you are wearing one hat and at other times, you have to wear the other. It’s best summed up this way; there are times for thinking, and then there are times for action. The thinking time is TM, the action time is PM. I’m not for a second saying that you do not think in the PM phase, far from it, what I’m putting forth here is just separating the two functions into categories for easier assimilation. Let’s go at it another way, a clearer way to define the two, for this discussion only. When you are working on TM activities, and you clearly have to work on them, you would be usually sitting down at your computer, your desk, in your car, you would be sitting down somewhere.
Where would you normally be when you are dealing with Maximizing your Production issues? Most times, you would up and about, on the floor of your facility, in your shop or store, in front of a customer; most times you would not be sitting down. I hope the point here is becoming clear. You want to work on joining TM and PM functions so they work together, for your maximum benefit. For that to happen, it’s best for you to spend the appropriate time on TM activities first, and then work on your PM activities. TM and PM activities form a very powerful one-two punch, you definitely want them working for you.
