I heard once that a company allows for their employees to use 20% of their time to work on whatever project they like!

Well that is definitely true in kindergarten they give you a lot of time to use it on whatever project you want and everybody will be very supportive :).

However when it comes to an actual organization it is very hard to see employees not aligned with their company objectives or just coming up with ideas that make no sense. It is not even healthy for an organization to have very super smart guys and that's it. Even I think in my own opinion there should be a mix of very smart and average smart people in order to be successful or else you will have team members quarreling on who has the smartest idea :), and I guess I am one of those average smart guys.

Anyway that's not the point, but the idea is you don't need to work at a company just because they let you do what you want for 20% of the time, because at Microsoft actually I do that and still do my job. Well I don't use 20% of my time doing projects that doesn't align with my team vision, but at least I find something that would be a win for my organization and a win for me.

Microsoft is one huge diverse organization, where each team has his own unique culture but at the same time they inherit some from the great culture of the whole company. I love the fact that you are the owner of your destiny at the company and you can shape your own future if you have the passion to do so.

So How can you save 20% of your time? Well first you need to organize your time very well and this is a key to making sure you have 20% of your time to use at projects that fuels your aspirations in technology.

1. First start by planning your week.

Every Monday I come to office and first thing I do is to create a Task in Outlook and I basically like to call it by week number "21/2008" and there I categorize the work I need to do. Well I put everything even the stuff I want to research and explore. I sometimes find no time to do all that stuff so I make sure I plan for the highest priority work first.

2. Make sure you actually look at your weekly plan every day

The key to successfully acting on a plan is to monitor it. Everyday open your weekly plan, update it with information and make sure you work on the items you have identified. Well sometimes I was just wondering at my office after long day of meetings and asking my self what should be doing? Well then I open my weekly plan :)

It really helps out to have this kind of planning during the week, just a simple task in outlook that you can look at every day to make sure you're on the right track.

3. Make a reminder at the end of the week and measure your performance.

At the end of each week this task has a reminder. I take a look at my week and see what I have or haven't achieved, and start planning the next week if possible. Sometimes I find my self swamped with work that I couldn't deliver so I make sure that doesn't happen the week after. Continuously learning from your weekly plans really excels your ability to accurately plan and estimate your abilities to complete your work.

4. Submit your weekly report if you have to.

Usually I like to have a weekly report even if my manager didn't ask for it. Oops I actually forgot mine this week:).

Having those weekly reports really helps when you go out to your review and say hmmm what have I actually done during the year :). It also helps to provide visibility at what you have been working on.

5. Measure how successful you were on achieving your plans at the end of the year.

Well I actually have a task in outlook called FY08, which I measure against the full year. I then say have I done what I was planning for my self in FY08? well it is really so rewarding when you find that you have achieved all your objectives and even more because you planned to do so.

The planning process of my time helped me actually save 20% of my time and sometimes more to work on projects that would benefit me and my organization. I can't say it was 100% perfect, cause sometimes I investigated technologies that weren't even related to my work, but lets say I still enjoyed it, and it pays off later.

So it doesn't need to be stated in the company employee handbook that you can use 20% of your time on anything, you can actually make it happen at Microsoft just with the right set of time planning activities and definitely a manager who understands.