Managing your time abusers is not about managing their time; it's about helping them confront their inner demons. While you are limited in what you can and cannot do in this respect—some time abusers really need professional treatment—the following advice may be helpful:
Promote.
Make preemptives feel in control by putting them in charge of other people. This will enforce socialization, which should make them more comfortable with uncertainty.
Praise and protect.
Keep a close eye on the workloads of your people pleasers to make sure their time isn't consumed by others' requests. Also, praise your people pleasers for their regular work so they don't take on others' work to get that praise.
Flood.
Expose perfectionists to frequent low doses of evaluation—progress reports, updates, and so forth. This lowers their fear of final approval. (Often, however, they won't get relief from their symptoms without therapy.)
Attack the fear of failure.
Force procrastinators to confront their fears, and help them dissociate their specific output from overall performance evaluation. They'll be less likely to sabotage themselves.
Excerpted from "Chronic Time Abuse," Harvard Business Review, Vol. 82, No. 6, June 2004.
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