Managing time is impossible

“Concentrated action beats brilliance” – Mark Sanborn

People always talk about time management as if it can really be done. You see that it is not the moment that we have to manage. Everyone has the same amount of time in a day. From the president to the janitor, we all have 24 hours a day. The answer we are looking for is how to use our time more effectively.

Most of us spend our days like a firefighter putting out fires with a hose. Reacting, looking for problems or fires to put out. Some of us use lists of things we “need” to do today and start each day by checking them off, usually doing the quickest and easiest things first and happily letting other people’s priorities pull us in many directions, putting out those fires.

In other words, we are always busy, busy, busy and we are trying to be as efficient as possible by multitasking and trying to touch everything on our plate, at least for a moment, every day. We believe speed is the answer, go full throttle, get everything done before the end of the day, so we can do it all over again the next day.

In fact, I remember interviewing prospective employees and asking them how well they could multitask, juggle many balls in the air at once. Now I understand how ineffective this “attribute” really is.

STOP. SLOW DOWN and think about effectiveness, not efficiency.

As my coach Steve Chandler says, hustle is laziness. Why? Because most of us don’t take the time and effort to change the way we work and the way we decide what we’re going to work on. We are too lazy to say “no” to people and things that distract us from the important things we need to focus on. You can’t tear clothes, but you can replace them with better ones.

It all starts with setting the goals you want to achieve and then writing them down. Personal, business and professional goals. Then write down the key Actions (we’ll call them the Rocks, more in a bit) you need to take to reach those goals. As Yogi once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you may not get there.”

Once we know what the important things are, our Key Rocks/Actions, we can manage priorities and be more effective in using the finite time we have. This is how you should handle your day. Make sure you prioritize the Rocks first.

This is crucial –

1. Block out your calendar – Block out certain times each week to FOCUS on a key rock during that hour (actions to achieve your goals). Make this an “uncut class”, turn off the phone, the email, close the door whatever it takes to focus on that one thing for that hour.

This involves making a commitment to yourself to do it. You see, we make commitments to people all day and we keep them, or we feel bad when we don’t. But it’s easy to break a commitment we make to ourselves. This needs to stop: this time on your calendar has to be just as important as the appointment with your most important client, a flight you have to catch, a doctor’s appointment, etc.

Plan your week this way by setting aside specific times to do specific Rocks and focus only on those Rocks during that time. Let pebbles fill the rest of your day. Pareto’s Law says that 20% of your work will produce 80% of your results. Finish the rocks.

Focus: Studies show:

– 3 hours of interrupted time = 1 hour of concentrated time

– When you are interrupted, it takes 26 minutes to return to the level of concentration you were at.

“You can’t catch one pig when you’re chasing two.” -Moe Schaffer

I have clients who have communicated this concept to everyone in the company and have gone so far as to bring real rocks into the office and put them on top of the cubicle or on the floor in front of the door when they are working on a Rock-in other words “don’t bother me now that I’m working on a Rock”.

These two actions will do more than anything else to lay the groundwork for starting to work effectively rather than efficiently and will put you on the path to less stress, a better business and career, and a much more productive and fun life.

In short, we all need to be more effective in the use of our time. My clients tell me how much this has changed their lives. They are getting much more satisfaction out of everything they do. In fact, they are achieving important things, feeling vital, in control and doing things in their personal lives that until now have been in the background. All of this is accomplished by committing to establishing a few new habits, like blocking your calendar for the Rocks, whether it’s for work or your personal life. If you want to take your son fishing this summer, lock the calendar now for a certain day and make a commitment to him, otherwise the summer will pass him by because he was too busy.

You can’t manage time, but you can eat priorities and Rocks. Are you too busy and lazy to start now?

Check

Commitment: You must commit to start with new clothes and keep each appointment with yourself (blocked time for a Rock)

Objectives: write the objectives and the actions to achieve them.

Rocks: List and prioritize rocks

Block: Block your calendar an hour here and there each week and focus on a specific topic.

Rock

Say no, you have to learn to say no to things that are not going to achieve your long-term goals but take time, you can’t do everything for everyone.

Delegate – We’ll cover that later in the show

All the best,

rick wallace