There are many different methods of effective time management. Once you have a diary to schedule your day and tasks, began setting goals and milestones, stopped all distractions and learned how to prioritise work, things should feel under control and manageable. One problem is that your carefully laid plans can be disrupted by the actions of other people often unintentionally. How do other people affect our time management and how can we better take account of this in the planning stage to minimise the negative effects?

When I took a career break to start my family, I often took my son to a half hour music group. The group was supposed to start at nine and finish thirty minutes later when another group started. The problem was that many people turned up exactly at the start time or slightly after. Each person had to take time to sign in and settle down which meant the group often began up to fifteen minutes late. I found the situation was often similar with planned meeting at work where attendees would turn up and require time to settle down, unpack stationary and set up laptops. Starting before they were ready meant nobody was really paying attention and the productivity of the meeting dropped. This often meant a delay to the start time of the meeting, which caused it to overrun leading to further problems in time management.

If you are hosting an event or meeting with a set start time, always consider what procedures need to happen before things start. While it is not practical to plan time for people arriving late, you can plan time for any procedures that must take place before the meeting begins. Either allow time for these by adding an extra five minutes or formerly request attendees to come a little earlier in order for the meeting to begin promptly at the start time. If a meeting is at a regular time and people are frequently late, look at possible causes for this. Is the meeting scheduled as lunch finishes? Are people not having time to get back from lunch and pick up their things before coming to the meeting in a timely fashion? A problem like this can be easily solved by moving the meeting to another time slot or allowing an extra five minutes at the start.

In an office environment people often work in an open plan area. One issue with this is that there are many interruptions. Colleagues will often ask questions, make comments or need ad-hoc information and tasks completed. This can impact adversely on your time management. Additional ad-hoc tasks may upset your schedule. Distractions may stop you concentrating on the tasks you need to work on. In order to stop this impacting, allow some extra time each day on your schedule to complete such ad-hoc things. Make sure that you correctly prioritise these tasks. Request that when possible, (and except for critical tasks,) people email you with requests rather than interrupt you.

If you find that people are distracting generally then it may be worth considering wearing headphones. You can either play a choice of music to block out the noise from others or use the headphones to give out a 'do not disturb' vibe. People are more aware that they are interrupting you if they have to wave or touch you to get your attention and then see you remove headphones.

Some clients can be just as distracting and time consuming as colleagues and are more difficult to turn away. Many clients prefer face-to-face time regarding even small issues and this can be cumbersome when travel is required. If a client is demanding meetings in person, attempt to find out what is that they want to achieve by these meetings? Is it a question of trust? Do they feel that seeing you in person means you are more likely to be listening to them? With this type of client, suggest other methods of communication and prove that they work. For example, while working on a project hold weekly conference call meetings and use agendas to show progress so far and the plan for the week. Once the meeting is finished send them clear minutes with action points. In this way they are more likely to realise that your time is better spent working on the project rather than travelling to and from the client offices. If you are working on support issues, send them daily or weekly reports on their logged issues with progress so far in order to convince them that you are taking their issues seriously. Find other ways to make the client feel confident and valued without having to travel to them.

It is never possible to foresee or prevent all the problems to your time management caused by colleagues, clients, suppliers or any other people you come into contact with on a daily basis. The trick is to take a step back and objectively examine what difficulties you have to deal with and how they can be solved or prevented in the future. Keep notes about distractions and issues that come up over a week and then spend some time looking at possible solutions. If you have an event or meeting that overran or began late due to other people, consider carefully the causes for this. In this way you will be able to minimise the negative impact other people have on your time management.