Taming the Time Management Beast
Have you ever found yourself writing a proposal at 9 PM that’s due tomorrow while fielding client emails at the same time? All while trying to remember if you’ve approved this week’s set of timesheets and expense reports. That’s all part of the geoprofessional dream, isn’t it? That place where a special kind of chaos lives, where everything is urgent, and nothing can wait.
The truth is time management in our industry isn’t just about managing your own calendar. It’s about juggling client expectations, staff needs, project deliverables, business development, and maybe twenty other things that all seem to be needed at the same time. The good news is that with a few strategic approaches, you can tame the time-management beast.
Balancing Billable vs. Non-Billable Time
A big topic for Geoprofessionals is utilization, whether measured by yourself or your supervisor. Every hour you spend on proposals, billing reviews, or internal meetings is an hour you’re not billing to projects. Yet these activities are essential to keeping the business running and winning future work. It’s the professional equivalent of needing to eat but not having time to grocery shop.
The key is to treat non-billable work with the same respect you give to billable projects. I know this doesn’t always come easily, and for some, it may be counterintuitive. But you need to block dedicated time for proposal development, administrative tasks, and staff management, and be disciplined with protecting that time. If you try to squeeze these activities into the margins of your day, they’ll either get done poorly or consume your evenings and weekends. For those who have done this, you know that neither option is sustainable.
Consider establishing windows of time in your day, or even half-days if possible. Maybe Monday mornings are for collections, Wednesday mornings are for team meetings, and Friday afternoons are for personnel mentoring. This creates rhythm and reduces the mental overhead of constantly switching between billable and non-billable activities. At least it’s a step in the right direction of trying to control what is otherwise a crazy schedule.
Emergency Interruptions
Client emergencies are part of our reality and happen way too frequently for most geoprofessional’s liking. A client’s foundation is failing, contamination was found where it
shouldn’t be, or test results came back out of spec. These situations genuinely need immediate attention. The problem isn’t when you have one thing that truly needs your “fireman” response; it’s when you treat everything that way, unnecessarily.
Start by establishing clear, consistent communication protocols and expectations with your clients and staff. Not every question requires an immediate phone call or interruption at your office door. Some can be handled via email within 24 hours, or a phone call the next day. When you receive an “urgent” call, take a few moments to assess whether it truly requires dropping everything or can be addressed with a scheduled callback later that day.
Everyone appreciates respecting time and personal limits, not to mention a good work environment and culture. For your team, you might create guidelines on when to interrupt focused work time, especially if you’ve been proactive in scheduling it. True emergencies justify interruption. Questions that can wait an hour or two don’t. This isn’t about being unapproachable or dismissive; it’s about being effective. You’re more helpful to everyone when you can give focused attention rather than respond in a broken or frustrated way between tasks. You’ll also be modelling and setting an example to them of how to handle these situations with others, which our entire discipline will appreciate!
Surviving Proposals Strategically
As a fundamental law of the geoprofessional universe, proposals have an uncanny ability to coincide with your busiest work weeks. It’s like our clients know when we’re already stretched thin and decide that’s the perfect time to ask for a quote or statement of qualifications. Since none of us can control when RFQs and RFPs are released, you need a system that works regardless of timing.
One strategy many people use is to maintain a running file or database of proposal content to draw from at short notice. This can include project descriptions, staff qualifications, and standard technical approaches. When a solicitation hits, you’re not starting from scratch and have ammunition for your response. Delegation can also help by assigning specific team members to own different sections of the proposal, so you’re not the bottleneck. And be realistic about which opportunities to pursue, sometimes the best time management decision is knowing when to sit one out, especially if your response is going to be below standard. Most of the time, a bad submittal is worse than not submitting at all.
Build proposal development into your weekly schedule even when nothing is immediately pending. Use that time to update your materials, refine your approach, or get ahead on known upcoming opportunities. This transforms proposal work from a last-minute scramble into a managed process, but it requires a lot of discipline. Make the effort and see where it leads!
Protecting Your Focus Time
I hear a lot of Geoprofessionals talk about “Big Thoughts”, the kind needed to write technical reports, review complex data, or develop thoughtful proposals. I’m glad they do! We are all thankful for the people doing this important work to make our communities a better place! But it all requires uninterrupted blocks of time, which is where the problem starts. Our days are often fragmented into fifteen-minute blocks between meetings, calls, and staff questions, which disrupts the focused time that is needed.
Identify your most productive hours and guard them fiercely. For a few people I know, this is early morning before the onslaught of emails and calls begins. For me, it has always been at the end of the day, when others are wrapping up their regular schedules. If you can, identify what works for you, block this time on your calendar as “unavailable,” and use it for your most demanding cognitive work. Close your email, silence notifications, and actually focus.
If you manage staff, model this behavior. When your team sees you protect focus time, they’ll feel empowered to do the same. This will help create a culture where deep work is valued, and our day-to-day work as geoprofessionals is not just reactive.
The Delegation Mindset
Here’s a reality check that many people struggle to accept: if you’re doing everything yourself, you’re not managing your time or your team’s time effectively. Delegation isn’t about dumping work on others; it’s about developing your team while freeing yourself for higher-value activities. Identify the tasks only you can do and make them your priorities. Tasking others with the other items not only spreads the workload but also often develops them professionally. The argument against this is often “it’s just quicker for me to do it”. But when you consider your sanity, you might even say you don’t have time not to do it! Yes, that’s a double-negative….but think about it for a second. You don’t have time not to do it, so your only reasonable option is to do it.
Start small and build things as you develop confidence in your team. Identify tasks that others can handle with minimal guidance. Maybe it’s initial draft sections of reports, routine client communications, or specific proposal components. Yes, it might take longer initially to explain and review than to do it yourself. But that’s the investment that pays dividends later when that task is off your plate for good!
When you pass these tasks to someone else, the goal isn’t to become uninvolved. You are trying to shift yourself away from doing everything to orchestrating everything. Your time is more valuable when you’re reviewing, guiding, and making key decisions rather than doing every task yourself.
Audit Your Meetings
I know there are times when meetings seem to multiply like rabbits. Each one seems important on its own, but collectively they can fill up entire days or even weeks. Take a close look at your recurring meetings and be ruthless with it. Does that weekly status call still serve a purpose, or has it become a habit? Could we accomplish the same things in a 30-minute meeting instead of an hour if we tightened up the agenda?
When you do attend meetings, be sure you understand your role. Are you there to make decisions, provide input, or just stay informed? If it’s the latter, maybe a summary email would suffice. If you’re in a meeting that accomplished its purpose early, go ahead and end it! There’s no need to use up the whole meeting time, and nobody ever complained about getting twenty or thirty minutes back in their day.
Your Calendar is Your Friend
Your calendar should be a strategic tool, not just a record of where you need to be. Schedule time for deliverable production, not just client meetings. Block time for travel and preparation around site visits. Build in buffer periods between back-to-back commitments. You know any open time slots find a way to get filled in, so try to block out time you need and give yourself some cushion on each end.
Review your upcoming week every Friday afternoon (or at least on Monday morning) and your upcoming month at the start of each month. This forward-looking, proactive approach helps you spot potential conflicts before they become emergencies and ensures that important items are scheduled before your calendar is filled with everyone else’s priorities.
Be Disciplined!
Your goal isn’t to miraculously fit more work into your day; it’s to work more strategically so you do the things that you genuinely need to do, and the right things get done well. This means accepting that some things might not happen, some emails might not get immediate responses, and some opportunities might need to be declined. Be honest and transparent about what you can do, when you will respond or deliver, and what you aren’t able to take on. Your clients and team will appreciate it and realize consistency in your approach. Plus, what you do respond to will be work you know has been done well.
Time management for geoprofessionals requires you to be disciplined and intentional about where to focus your limited time and energy. It’s about protecting what matters while staying responsive to genuine needs while building sustainable practices that let you succeed over the long haul, not just make it through the next “emergency”. The beast can be tamed. It just takes strategy, boundaries, and the willingness to work a little smarter than harder.
Contact BSK Associates for geoprofessional and analytical laboratory services.
