The smartphone age is still in its relative infancy, yet Gen Z police officers and staff are pretty much well up on how to use these infernal devices. But if I were to stereotype their use it would primarily be to suggest that their focus is on the communications capabilities and their use to research and pay for all the things that millennials want, like the coffee that they like to take for walks.
Anyway, just like the dinosaurs among us, what they don’t use them for is organising and planning. Or they don’t use them optimally. Now I can’t be all holier-than-thou because I’m only just getting better at that, myself, because I have been a paper planner for thirty years. But it is clear that smartphones are a very good, albeit expensive way to manage the four elements of time management – tasks, appointments, notes and contacts.
In my book Police Time Management, I cover how to run (weaponise?) your TANC utilising your smartphone. I learned by experimentation. Many policing organisations rely on you to do the same: I know my last laptop course included mention and promotion of, but absolutely no actual input on, Microsoft OneNote. ‘Learn that yourself’, seemed to be the idea, just as it was the training approach (at least for ‘my generation’) for MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other extremely valuable tools.
I suspect you will have to learn how to better use your phone the same way – hit, miss, adjust aim, try again. So my book will save you some of the heartache and stress that the DIY approach entails.
But just to provide you with a heads-up on how you might not be using your phone to its maximum (and remember that this advice applies to your personal as well as your work devices), I wonder how many of you use the Calendar app to its fullest.
Do you use, or even disable the alarm notification each time you make an appointment? Some need alarms, some don’t, but many users have a default position either way that causes stress, like a loud bonging in Crown Court Number 1, right in the middle of the Judge’s summing-up.
Do you add critical files to appointments as you make them, when you know you’ll need those documents at the appointment? Failing that, do you keep such files in OneNote or Evernote and create a link between the appointment and that entry (app permitting)? Do you add contact details relating to the appointment in the appointment entry – all suggestions which can result in a one-app approach to managing the calendar related activity.
And, from a data protection perspective, do you delete all ‘used’ information from an appointment – and the appointment itself – on completion of the work at hand? (I cover why that is Disclosure-compliant in the book, too.)
Finally, do/can you use an app that is available across platforms? I’m using Google Calendar (because I have an Android phone and Outlook just doesn’t quite cut it) and it means I can access that (and MS To-Do) on my desktop, laptop, tablet and phone, and all synch automatically so that what I need is always where I need it – in other words, wherever I happen to be, and therefore whenever something arises that needs recording, organising, executing or otherwise acting upon.
I might be preaching to the choir, I know. But seeing colleagues typing with their thumbs at infinity MPH would be impressive if they could manage their TANCs with as much dexterity. It’s not the fault of the individual (in the main), it’s the failure of the organisation to teach time management properly. But, as that individual, you can take responsibility for improving your self-management capabilities.
That’s entirely up to you.
Police Time Management 