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Lisa Tough emptied her desk drawers under the watchfull eye of PEP® instructor Eric Magnussen. (Photograph: Jeroen de Jong.)
Get organized to do more in less time: that is the aim of the PEP® , from which hundred of thousands of people worldwide have already benefited. For them, searching for documents is now a thing of the past, and so are overflowing drawers and piles of papers. PEP® is a strategy devised by the American Kerry Gleeson for making optimum use of working time by creating order and planning properly. Kerry Gleeson has representatives in many countries, one of them being Eric Magnussen from Sweden who gives the PEP® course in the Netherlands. After visiting Amsterdam, he called at Hague Central Office where on 13th and 28th June seven Mechanical Engineering staff opened up their cupboards, drawers, computers and diaries for his advice.
Eric Magnusson instructing John van Beek (r.) Photograph Jeroen de Jong
Business Group Manager Mechanical Engineering Hans Mes has been benefiting from PEP® for six years. A glance in his office shows that he still consistently applies PEP®, and his colleagues benefit as well. "Hans is tremendously busy, but by keeping every thing in such good order he always stays calm and cheerful and he has time for us," says one of his staff. "He aims to have an hour ‘ s face to face talk with each of us every three weeks. At first I wondered whether it was really necessary, but now I took forward to it. They are fruitful discussions where anything can be brought up including things outside work."
Hans, who came to The Hague from Chemicals in Moerdijk eight months ago, thought that PEP® would be good for his new department. "We constantly have an enormous inflow of work and PEP® helps you to cope in a well ordered way. This saves time and gives you the feeling you've got your work under control, which reduces stress," he believes. "I found the course to be very helpful and interesting. It eliminates a lot of superfluous work, and it's also applicable at home."
The issue is: "How do I get my work done?" PEP®'s answer: "Do it now." Don’t put off what you don’t feel like doing, because then you're putting it on a pile which gets higher all the time. "Do it now" is also the title of the programs introductory video. Cupboards and drawers are emptied and their contents are divided into what can be thrown away and what's genuinely needed. Of the latter, a minimum of stationery and files is kept within reach for use today, and the rest is filed clearly and systematically.
"The aim of PEP® is to save time," says Eric. "If an average of one hour per day is spent searching that mounts up to six weeks per year which is equivalent to quite a long holiday!" The message is made clear by the way Eric works through a pile of papers: "I'll phone him shortly – I still have to read this, but it's not urgent , this one I'll send off in a minute , this I can really throw away, but I'll I just hold on to it for the tome being..." Finally, the pile is ready to be worked through exactly the same way tomorrow.
Eric goes on to take a look at John van Beek's electronic filing. "My drawers, cupboard and electronic data filing system are tidy enough," says John, "but my weak point is my Email system. I've got 47 notes in my intray." Not many compared with the hundreds that other people have, but Eric gets to work nonetheless. "What date is the oldest one" Eric asks. "15th June 2000. What's it about" John has no idea: "I suppose it can go." Scheduling is tackled as well: Eric tells John how he should distinguish between what must be done today and other ongoing activities. He then tours the offices of all seven PEP® participants in Mechanical Engineering, calmly observing and giving instructions: "Get accustomed to a new way of doing things by applying it 21 days in succession. If you miss a day, you have to start over again." John concludes: "My aim is to handle each Email and every piece of paper once and once only."
Planning was the theme of the second PEP® day on 28th June. The message was that you mustn't plan for the sake of planning, nor do you have to plan everything. Only urgent and important actions have to be planned, and they have to be prioritized according to time and importance. It's also important to plan not just reactively, i.e. according to agreed arrangements, but also proactively by setting milestones: by when do I aim to get this done. Many things don't need to be planned at all if you do them straight away. With everything that lands on your plate, you have to decide whether to do it now or if not, when you will do it. But don't put things on side, because then you'll be handling them time and time again.
John comments: "Proactive planning is a good idea, but broadly speaking I'm already doing the other things. During my talk with Eric, we concentrated on finetuning Schedule+. He recommends including a task in my Schedule+ 'to do' list to make back?ups of all data files once every two weeks. I personally find that rather a long interval, because if the system fails you've lost two weeks' work. I therefore make a back-up now on a zip disk every week. Alternatively, you could park everything on the server, but storage space on the server costs money."
Lisa also benefited most from the Schedule+ part of the Planning theme: "In my job, 50 per cent does not need planning because it depends on the work of others, With respect to the other 50 per cent, what I learnt about Schedule+ was very useful. Many things I didn't know such as listing daily tasks."
Reflecting on PEP®, she says: "What I like about it is that Eric comes back for feedback. Most other courses are soon forgotten unless you really have to work with what you've learnt. The PEP® sessions were very useful to me, since I'm not the most organized person. I benefit from it at home as well. I've had a big clear out, and I think more about doing things immediately instead of putting them off. I've made a list of things that I wanted to do for a long time. Now I've done most of them, and new things are a matter of 'do it now' ' When I get home in the evening I now have a lot more time than I used to."
