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The Time Management Fiasco
How much energy we have at the end of a day depends on:
- What we did during the day
- How we did it
- Why we did it
- How resilient we are.
In this post, I’ll touch on the “What”.
“Oh no! We’re not going to hear the time management lecture again, are we?”
I know, we’ve all heard it so many times: prioritize, delegate what you can, chunk the rest. So my question is: How come most of us are still so swamped?
The Time Management Fiasco
I won’t surprise anyone by saying that we will always be asked to do more, to do as much as we allow ourselves to take on. No one is protecting us, our time or our health. So it’s up to us to set boundaries…and rarely do we do that well, if at all.
Why not? There are many reasons, from fear of failure to not taking the time to organize ourselves, and I want to touch on a few interesting ones that usually don’t get discussed that much:
Immediate, lower priority tasks seduce us.
Time management expert Alex Mackenzie found in his surveys, that most executives don’t get to their most important tasks until mid afternoon. So it’s a common “disease”.
It hits us because we want the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing something concrete. Lower priority items tend to be shorter, easier, and we’re not as tempted to procrastinate with them since they are not as emotionally charged as the project that could impact our success…one way or another.
The cure? Making absolutely sure that we take time to “script” our day; to decide where we are going to direct our attention. It’s not just “one of those” time management tools; it prevents us from wasting our lives away on things that don’t matter most to us.
The dispensability factor
No matter what we say, many of us don’t trust others to do the job right unless we are involved. And/or we subconsciously think that if we are not kept “in the loop”, it diminishes our self-importance. (How could things function without me?)
The cure? Asking ourselves what might really go wrong. Maybe we can create a way to minimize those instances. And wouldn’t the occasional slipup be worthwhile in exchange for freeing up our time and attention?
Strengths vs. Weaknesses
Everyone agrees that we are so much more tired after doing work we don’t like. But somehow, we don’t use that fact in planning our work.
As a business owner, executive or manager, we can choose to work in our areas of strength, and hire for our weaknesses. Notice over the next week what kind of work leaves you drained, as challenge your thinking: do you really have to do this yourself?
What matters to us
We always have a greater reserve of energy for doing work that is aligned with what we feel is important. So why wouldn’t we spend some time reflecting on what we do, to make sure that, as much as possible, we devote our time to what matters to us.
Even within the confines of “having to make a living”, we can find ways of adjusting our work to reflect our values. In some cases, it might take a while to get there (often with the assistance of a mentor, coach or friend), but it’s worth the investment. We are talking about our lives here.
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