How time-strapped managers can beat their 'present bias' and get more work done

‘TIME IS ON my side, yes it is…’ That may have been true for Mick Jagger when the Rolling Stones released that song in 1964.

You’d be hard pressed to find a manager in a busy SME who would agree with those words today. Ask anyone working early and late, running from internal meetings to client meetings, stressed by deadlines and wondering when the actual work will get done.

Add to that mix the ever-present phone and a constant stream of calls, texts, mails, all crying out for a response, and it’s easy to see why so many managers feel stretched to their limits.

The single biggest decision any manager will make is where to invest their precious time. Should they spend more time client-facing? Less time at internal meetings? More time planning, or coaching other team members? More time looking for new business?

Even those managers who seem able to carve out some time for priorities can still fall victim to a fundamental time error – a misunderstanding of what is known in behavioural economics as ‘present bias’.

The marshmallow test

Essentially, we’re suckers for the temptation of the ‘here and now’. This present bias was the subject of what’s famously known as the ‘marshmallow test’.

This was a test carried out on a bunch of kids who didn’t know they were being observed and the subjects of a long-range study.

In the study, the teacher put two marshmallows in front of each child and said, “I have to pop out for five minutes. You can eat your two marshmallows now. Or you can save them until I come back – and if you do, I’ll give you two more.”

The teacher left. Some kids lost the battle straight away. Some held out a bit longer. They tried looking away, humming, covering their eyes with their hands.

Some even climbed under their desks so they couldn’t see the marshmallows. But long before the five minutes were up, a great number had succumbed.

The study followed the kids over time, and those who didn’t give in to the immediate temptation – those who were able to defer the immediate pleasure – were shown to make better long-term decisions and have better life outcomes.

Busy managers in SMEs face the marshmallow test every single day. They say yes to meetings they possibly don’t need to attend; yes to requests like, “I only need five minutes of your time,” yes to, “Client X is on the phone, will you talk to her now, she says it’s urgent?” There is a never-ending stream of these here-and-now demands.

It gets even trickier. Some managers do carve out time for the priorities issues – planning, coaching, growing the business. They come in early in the morning so they can have that quiet half hour before other people arrive.

Or they know that a client meeting has cancelled so they have a precious free hour later in the day. They’ve taken the first step – created the time.

But then the plan falls apart because they haven’t taken step two and worked out, precisely, what will happen with that time. And if they haven’t, then here’s what’s most likely to happen.

They’ll open their emails – and before they know it, half an hour has passed. Responding to emails and hitting ‘inbox zero’ is very satisfying and feels like real work and real progress, but is it absolutely priority? Most likely not.

And then, as a reward for responding to dozens of email, perhaps a quick check to see what’s happening on Twitter and one or two other social media sites, and before they know it, an hour has gone and the real priorities are no further along.

Dan Ariely, a leading figure in behavioural economics, describes email as both a blessing and a curse.

“Responding to emails is not the stuff that makes for long-term happiness, but because it’s present and immediate and beeps and someone’s waiting, it takes precedence over the things that are important to us,” he says.

Prioritising

So, what steps should busy managers take to ensure they are doing the real priority stuff?

1. Know what the priority stuff actually is. What must you do to deliver the biggest impact for the business? Everything else you must delegate. Encourage others to step up, they may surprise you.

2. Learn to say no – it’s that simple. “I can’t help you right now – I have a plan to prepare. Talk to x – she should be able to help.”

3. Set aside, at a minimum, two or three sessions a week where you are dealing only with priority issues, the big things that move the business forward.

4. Plan in advance how you will spend this time. Two psychologists, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, have researched a concept called ‘implementation intentions’, more simply known as ‘if-then’ plans, and found it highly effective in achieving goals.

If-then planning means looking ahead to the future situation, and understanding where, in the moment, your good intentions may be overcome by temptation.

For example, you decide you want to eat healthily today, which requires this plan: “If I want to eat a healthy lunch, then I’ll need to buy something on the way to the office. If I don’t, then when lunchtime comes I’m more likely to take the easy, tempting, unhealthy option.”

In a business context, if-then planning could be: “If I set aside those two hours tomorrow morning, then I will complete a first draft of that client proposal. But this evening I will do a very simple outline on an A4 page so that when I sit down tomorrow, I can start straight away and I won’t be blocked by a blank page.”

If you implement these steps, then you may find, in Jagger’s words, that time is, in fact, on your side.

Donal Cronin is a director at Carr Communications, which recently launched a behavioural economics and sciences unit.

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