Knowledge Base · Time
What are the five steps of a DILO study?
Document a full week in short increments, colour code it into the book's six categories, examine the gap between the picture and your priorities, redo the calendar around what matters, and run the new design as a PDCA experiment. Chapter 11 of the book presents DILO as the honest audit that makes time redemption possible.
A DILO study, Day In the Life Of, is Chapter 11's diagnostic for a leader's calendar: a brutally honest audit of where your hours actually go, measured against the priorities you claim. The book sets out five steps:
- Document: for one full week, log every activity in fifteen or thirty-minute increments, meetings, email, travel, interruptions, all of it, without editing for dignity.
- Colour code: sort the log into the book's six categories: Strategic Thinking and Planning, People Development and Coaching, Operational Management and Problem-Solving, Administrative Tasks and Email, Crisis Management and Firefighting, and Personal and Break Time.
- Examine: compare the picture with your stated priorities. The book calls this the moment of truth, and its common finding is a calendar dominated by the urgent: firefighting and administration crowding out strategy and people.
- Redo the calendar: redesign the week around the priorities, protecting time for the important work first rather than fitting it around whatever arrives.
- Leverage PDCA: treat the new calendar as an experiment. Plan the change, run it for a few weeks, check whether the balance actually shifted, and adjust.
The study's power is that it replaces an argument about busyness with evidence. Most leaders who run it discover the same gap the book predicts: the work they say matters most, developing people and thinking ahead, receives the smallest share of the week. You cannot redeem time you have not first seen clearly, and DILO is how you see it.
Related questions
- What is a DILO (Day in the Life Of) study, and how do I run one?
- What is the Pomodoro Technique, and how do I use it for focused work?
- How does time management connect to continuous improvement?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 11 (Time Management for Leaders: Redeeming the Time).