When Terry Zavitz decided to become more active in Advocis two years ago — joining both her local and then the national board of directors — she knew something had to give. The advisor and president of London, Ont.-based Terry Zavitz Insurance Inc. already had a jam-packed schedule.

A typical day would find Zavitz at the gym by 6:30 a.m., behind her desk at 8:15 a.m. and at the office until 7 p.m. Her days didn’t end there. She had weekly choir rehearsals, sat on several community boards and was about to start training for a mountain-climbing expedition. (She climbed the Uhuru Peak of Mount Kilimanjaro in December 2005, and plans to scale Peru’s Machu Picchu this October.)

“More than once, I felt that I just didn’t know how I was going to pull everything together,” says Zavitz, the mother of three grown children. She decided to scale back her involvement in the community in order to take on her new roles with Advocis. “The industry needed representation, and I wanted to have a voice,” Zavitz says. “It was a difficult decision, and I still miss my community work.”

In committing to Advocis, Zavitz put the single most important element of time management into play: prioritization. “If we’re not clear on what is really important, we can overload our lives,” says Peggy Grall, a business coach in Milton, Ont., and author of Just Change It!She notes that advisors are prone to biting off more than they can chew.

“Advisors are entrepreneurs, and that personality type loves to generate new ideas and take on multiple projects,” Grall says. “They may find themselves with too many balls in the air and not enough time to follow through with each one.”

Sound familiar? Like anything in life, there’s no silver bullet solution for an unmanageable schedule. However, prioritizing your values, your work flow and how you spend your spare time can buy back some much needed breathing room.

THE BIG PICTURE

When time-starved clients first visit Grall, she asks them to rank what they value most in their lives aside from work — be it family and friends, spiritual activities or even going to the gym. Those priorities remain top of mind as the client creates a monthly schedule. “You need to schedule your big values first,” says Grall.

While a nine-to-five workweek may be non-negotiable, she maintains that it’s just as important to block out time for family commitments, a night out with friends or your favourite spin class.

“Advisors often tell clients to pay themselves first. The same principle applies when it comes to time management,” says Eileen Chadnick, certified coach and founder of Toronto-based Big Cheese Coaching. “If you don’t carve out your priorities, you’ll get interrupted.”

Aside from your top priorities, Chadnick also advises scheduling some “white space” into every day. Zavitz, who keeps her daily planner on her BlackBerry, agrees. “I schedule personal time right into my planner. I don’t deny myself that,” she says. “If I have a hair appointment in the middle of the afternoon, it becomes part of my day.”

Of course, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. “Every schedule needs to be course-corrected,” says Grall, who recommends reviewing it at the end of every week to identify what scheduling tactics worked and what didn’t — such as allowing yourself five minutes to drive across town between appointments.

“Overscheduling ourselves is a common mistake,” says Chadnick, noting that being in a constant rush is a huge energy drain. “We need to allot every activity a realistic amount of time.”

THE DAY-TO-DAY

Once you’ve penned your big-picture priorities into your planner, it’s time to take a long, hard look at how you spend your time in the office.

If you haven’t already segregated your book, do so, advises Grall. “If you can categorize and prioritize your client base, you’ll end up spending your time where it’s most valuable,” she says.

Hire a junior advisor to look after lower-priority clients you don’t want to lose, and bring in an administrative assistant to take care of the tasks you’d rather not do. “Don’t worry about the money, you’ll earn it back,” says Zavitz, who manages one of the largest blocks of disability insurance in southwestern Ontario — with the help of a team of 13.

@page_break@After you’ve delegated what you can, prioritize the tasks that remain — right down to how you respond your e-mail and voice mail.

“Anyone who works in the service industry needs to be responsive to clients, but you need to be clear on what’s a distraction and what really needs to be done now,” says Chadnick.

Michael Linenberger of Cali-fornia, author of Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook (New Academy Publishers), calls the urge to act immediately on a request the “everything is a fire” approach to work. “Constantly being in a reactive mode, instead of a proactive mode, is inefficient,” he says. “You’ll never get ahead this way.”

Technology is a major culprit behind this time-sucking mindset — which can be triggered by something as innocuous as the ping of arriving e-mail. “E-mail management is a huge problem,” says Grall, noting that opening every e-mail immediately is a huge distraction. To combat this temptation, she suggests turning off the sound option of your e-mail and checking your in-box only three times a day. “Very few things in life are so urgent that they need to be answered in less than a three-hour window.”

Linenberger has a different tactic for e-mail management, one he claims can help regain up to 25% of your workweek. His system hinges on using the task management tool, which you configure to sort tasks in order of priority, on your e-mail application.

Let’s say you receive an e-mail from your assistant requesting your expense receipts from the past month. You are likely to respond in one of two ways: either moving along to the next e-mail while making a mental note to submit your expenses, or completing the expense form immediately before moving on. “You may just have wasted half an hour on your lowest-priority task of the day,” warns Linenberger.

Instead, he recommends immediately converting every action-oriented e-mail you receive into an Outlook task. Do this by dragging the e-mail to the task icon (found on the left-hand side of the Microsoft Office Outlook window; some versions may require you to switch on the task icon in your user preferences). Rename the e-mail (“File expenses,” for example), prioritize it (high, medium, low), set a due date and then complete the task as you work through your list in order of priority. “Block out time in your daily schedule to work on your task list, and only label things as ‘high priority’ if they absolutely must get done today,” Linenberger advises.

Aside from taking advantage of the task function (available on most e-mail programs), Linenberger also recommends saving e-mail in one folder. “I save all of my e-mails because storage is so cheap,” says Linenberger. “You might waste 30 seconds deciding whether you should throw something out.”

Storing mail in one big folder allows for easier searching and saves the hassle of sorting mail into multiple folders. “The No. 1 mistake people make is in filing their e-mail,” says Linenberger, who completely empties his in-box several times a day. Instead, use a search engine (he recommends using X1, Windows Desktop Search, Google Desktop or Outlook 2007’s search function) to retrieve what you’re looking for. “You may have to try a couple of different key words, but you will find it.”

OFF THE CLOCK

Weekends are when Zavitz regroups, although she admits to attending to the occasional work-related matter. “I try to avoid working at home because it zaps your energy,” she says, “but it happens.”

Relaxation takes the form of skiing, reading or a hike with her husband and two dogs, but one thing it doesn’t involve is cleaning the house. “Think of yourself, think of your schedule and hire out whatever you don’t like to do,” says Zavitz. “Your whole attitude will change when you don’t have to go home and do the dishes.” IE