Winning the Race: What F1 Can Teach Us About Managing Time
Why Time is the Most Valuable Asset in F1
In Formula One, a single second can be the difference between victory and defeat. Time isn't just a metric; it's the most valuable resource, meticulously managed and aggressively optimised at every level of the sport. The highly competitive nature of F1, combined with the immense complexity of designing, building, and running these state-of-the-art machines, means that time management is a non-negotiable part of the culture.
Applying F1's High-Performance Time Management to Your Business
The lessons from a Formula One pit lane are directly applicable to the modern business world. In today’s competitive market, a few extra hours of preparation or a more efficient workflow can translate into a significant advantage. By adopting an F1 mindset toward time, you can transform your team's productivity and performance.
By learning from the world's most time-critical sport, you can unlock a new level of efficiency and performance for your business. The clock is always ticking, make every second count.
Winning the Race: What F1 Can Teach Us About Managing Time
The F1 Approach to Time Management
Time is everything in Formula One. The highly competitive nature of the sport and the complexity involved in designing, building and running the cars means that time is always at a premium.
F1 teams operate within extremely tight development cycles, with races taking place every few weeks during the season. There's constant pressure to develop the cars within very limited timeframes. Teams have to ensure they have the most efficient processes in place to optimise the available time. Even when flying the cars to the races, teams like Red Bull and Mercedes will ship their freight as late as possible to allow a few more precious hours of preparation in the factory.
Once at the racetrack, there are tight deadlines to ensure the cars and drivers are ready for the practice sessions, qualifying and race. Across the weekend, a systematic, pre-planned schedule of activity makes the most of every available minute.
Then, of course, each of those on-track sessions is run against the clock, including the famous pit stops during the race. At the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix, it took the McLaren pit crew just 1.8 seconds to change all four tyres on the car to complete a pit stop - the fastest F1 race pit stop to date – and those times keep getting faster as teams streamline processes and improve the equipment they use.
And finally, lap time is precious. Success or failure in Formula One can be measured in thousandths of a second. Screens displaying timing information are scrutinised by the engineers on the pit wall, and split-second decisions can win or lose the race.
Embracing a Fixed Volume Mindset
Underpinning all this activity is a clarity of purpose and total focus on what’s important. Whether they are designing parts in the factory or turning the cars around between sessions at the track, everyone involved in F1 knows what the goals are. They are clear on the priorities and this enables each individual to concentrate on the tasks needed to achieve the goals and cut out the distractions.
Having a clear focus is just as important in other organisations. A six-year global survey of 351,000 employees carried out by FranklinCovey found that 40% of time in the workplace is spent doing unimportant tasks. Based on a 40-hour week, this equates to about 832 wasted hours per person each year.
In order to help prioritise workload, and also fit in some non-work time too, Stephen Covey created the FranklinCovey Time Matrix®, loosely based on the Eisenhower matrix:
Covey recommends spending as much time as possible each week in Quadrant 2, as this results in the highest level of productivity. By focusing on Quadrant 2 activities, F1 teams can drive innovation, development and reliability, which in turn generates performance and reduces the last-minute emergencies and crises that take up so much time in Quadrant 1.
The temptation is to get caught up in Quadrants 1, 2 and 3, so it’s important to actively schedule time for Quadrant 2 activities into each week and then review on a daily basis to make sure these are being done. As Head of Aerodynamics at Mercedes F1 team, Mike Elliott used to encourage his team members to set aside one afternoon a week for creative thinking, innovation and learning.
Time Limits
“The problem with trying to make time for everything that feels important - or just for enough of what feels important - is that you definitely never will.” Oliver Burkeman
In his book ‘Four Thousand Weeks” Oliver Burkeman invites his readers to embrace the truth about their limited time, and their limited control over that time.
He suggests adopting a ‘fixed volume’ approach to productivity. We need to begin from the assumption that tough choices about how to spend our time are inevitable, and then focus on making those choices consciously and well. Here again, having a clear understanding of the priorities and focusing on what is actually important will help to streamline workload.
Burkeman recommends keeping two ‘To do’ lists – an open list for everything on your plate and a closed list for around 10 key tasks that really need to be done. Feed tasks from the open list to the closed list, and only add another task to the closed list when one is completed.
He also advises readers to decide in advance what they are prepared to fail at.
Failure is an Option
J.K. Rowling was once asked how she managed to write her first Harry Potter novel and look after a baby at the same time, to which she replied:
“I didn’t do housework for four years! I’m not Superwoman and living in squalor - that was the answer.”
She was prepared to fail at housekeeping in order to focus on the important tasks of raising her child and writing her book.
The benefit of adopting this mindset is that it helps us focus our time and energy more effectively. If it’s not possible to achieve everything, it’s worth identifying in advance what we are prepared to not achieve. Then it won’t be a distraction when it doesn’t get done. When the pressure eases, some of the neglected tasks can always be picked up again.
Celebrate the small wins
Finally, Burkeman notes that we often don’t feel good about ourselves until we think all the work is finished, but the reality is that it never will be. There’s good evidence for the motivating power of small wins, so he suggests keeping a ‘done’ list of all your accomplishments throughout the day, however trivial they may seem. Seeing that list grow as the day progresses acts as a small reward for the work achieved. It's also often surprising to see how much we actually have done on those days when we feel nothing has been accomplished.
When time always seems to be at a premium, life can sometimes feel like a tug-of-war between work deadlines, family commitments and personal aspirations. The pressure to do it all can be overwhelming.
Formula One teams manage time pressures through clarity of purpose, prioritisation and a relentless focus on what really matters. They intentionally plan their workload to gain crucial seconds on the track, whilst also ensuring a focus on activities that promote productivity and performance.
Embracing the truth that we can’t do it all can help us focus on our priorities, make the most of the time we have, and celebrate the small achievements along the way.
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Julien Simon-Chautemps, was most recently Kimi Räikkönen’s last Formula One Race Engineer.
Julien is a race and performance engineering specialist with over 22 years of experience in Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3 and multiple other motorsport series. He has travelled to over 265 F1 Grand Prix, completing 14 seasons in F1 working for teams like Toyota, Caterham, Lotus, Renault and Alfa Romeo Sauber. During this time Julien worked closely with drivers like Marcus Ericsson, Romain Grosjean, Robert Kubica and Jolyon Palmer to name a few. In 2022 Julien has launched JSC7 Engineering ltd, a motorsport consultancy service that provides Julien's extensive expertise to clients wishing to engage specialist race engineering advice.
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As part of our ethos "Watch on Sunday, Learning on Monday" here at Ignition Human Performance, we are always looking for ways to take the lessons you will see this weekend at the race track and look at how they can be translated into unlocking business or personal performance.
As part of our ethos "Watch on Sunday, Learning on Monday" here at Ignition Human Performance, we are always looking for ways to take the lessons you will see this weekend at the race track and look at how they can be translated into unlocking business or personal performance.
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The Ignition Book Club is a weekly review of different books from the bookshelf in the Ignition Human Performance office. These books all have a common cross over, which is a focus on lessons from elite motorsports that can be translated into business performance
The Ignition Book Club is a weekly review of different books from the bookshelf in the Ignition Human Performance office. These books all have a common cross over, which is a focus on lessons from elite motorsports that can be translated into business performance.
The Ignition Book Club is a weekly review of different books from the bookshelf in the Ignition Human Performance office. These books all have a common cross over, which is a focus on lessons from elite motorsports that can be translated into business performance.
The Ignition Book Club is a weekly review of different books from the bookshelf in the Ignition Human Performance office. These books all have a common cross over, which is a focus on lessons from elite motorsports that can be translated into business performance.
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