Time Mangement, The Value-Added Way

June 30th, 2010

By Tom Reilly, author of “Value-Added Selling”

Long before the U.S. Military created a Green Zone in Bagdad or Old Spice launched a deodorant named Red Zone, we had been working on a new time management paradigm called Red Zone/Green Zone. It follows the value-added philosophy, and its brilliance is its simplicity. I choose the colors red and green because of what each of them suggests.

Red is the color of stress and anger. Green is the color of freshness or calm. All of time management can be broken down into activities that move you toward your goals or away from your goals. Red zone activities are things that add cost without meaningful value. Green zone activities add value to your efforts.

When you are in the Green Zone, you are in producing mode—creating value. When you are in the Red Zone, you are in a busy mode—wasting time and energy. Green Zone is goal-oriented behavior. Red Zone is more grunt-work oriented. Green Zone feels good and right. Red Zone feels stressful and frustrating.

The key to effective time and self-management is to spend more time in the Green Zone and less time in the Red Zone. In reality, we all operate in both modes. Life contains Red Zone stuff. The secret is to limit the amount of time you spend in this zone. You can use this model to analyze your time management habits and to plan your activities. These two colors offer instant, visual indicators to your productivity. Too much red means too much grunt work. A sea of green means you are operating in a producer mode.

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