Time Management Self Improvement

Time management - that’s like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. We are trying to harness something we can’t touch of feel - only experience and see the results. We have a gazillion time saving devices. Just think for a moment of all the ‘things’ in your life now (microwave, speed dialing on your phone, high speed internet connections, TVs that can be programmed to watch 2 shows at once, etc.), all of which are designed to save time. And for those moment that are ’saved’, well, saved for what? We are a hurried, frantic society with a pace that is on wide open from the moment our feet hit the floor.

A recent search on Google for “time management” yielded 700,000,000 hits! If you visit Amazon.com and search books on time management, there were more than 7,600 books on the topic. We are constantly look for THE system, key or process to manage that thing we can only experience. At some point in your life you have probably longed for a 36 hour day. Sometimes the “busy-ness” of our lives consumes our time. What if we switched our thinking from managing time to three building blocks that define our time?

Value Management

Look at a person’s calendar and checkbook and you’ll get a powerful snapshot of what they value. It’s a statement of what we think is important, what we value. That’s what we consider worthwhile or desirable. Take a moment (you know one you have saved!) and jot down what you value most in life. Jot down your top 5 values. Now, with the same paper, look at your calendar and think about the normal course of your life. Jot down the top 5 things that capture your time. How do the lists compare? If you are like most people there is a huge incongruence here. What they say they value and where their time is spent does not truly reflect their heart. Let’s start here. What do your truly value? In what ways does your life reflect those values? What changes are you willing to make to close the gap of incongruence?

Priority Management

What gets priority in your life? Typically, what you value. Priorities reflect what’s of greatest importance to us. Is there still a gap between priorities and our values? If you focus on what is truly of value to you (not your neighbor, co-worker, cultural/societal expectation) then it becomes easier to prioritize. If we focus on what we value, then prioritizing is easier. That change in focus will provide more options, more choices. Having choices is the “power, right, or liberty to choose, options.” We are faced with a multitude of choices in a day. How we make the choice is a statement of who we are based on our personality, environment, culture, preferences, comfort zones, etc.

Your boss comes in your office and says “I need you in a meeting now” doesn’t seem to offer you many options. You value your job (and what that allows you to do in your life) so of course, you will respond a certain way - even if it is not preferable. Sometimes we can make a choice about which way we drive to work. That may be influenced by our mood, where we may want to stop off along the way, how quickly we need to get somewhere, etc. This is just one way to illustrate the number of choices we make in a day. But if we were to think about how those choices influences our time, well, hmm, why do I spend my time that way? What does that choice reflect about me, my values, and my legacy?

Decision Management

Did you know that not making a choice or decision is still a decision? After reading this article and you don’t make any changes in your life - you are making a decision - that the “same old” is preferable. You are actively deciding what you want your life and legacy to be like every day! To make a decision is to reach a conclusion, reflecting that you’ve made up your mind. Are those conclusions/decisions what you want your life to reflect? What you wear each day may not be that big of a decision, but how your time is spent can have huge ramifications. Are your decisions about time based on your values and priorities? What decision about time could you make today that would bring about a shift in your view of time management?

There are a plethora of time saving devices. The process, system or strategy is not THE answer - it’s just the conduit. The key to the success system is YOUR
answers and the actions you choose to take. By making an opportunity to review and evaluate our values, priorities, and the power of decisions we can then make choices that manage our time effectively.

Jan Hinton is a coach, presenter, and humorist. She has been called the perfect blend of Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres. She is wildly passionate about unleashing great answers to big questions. She provides a variety of resources to help you stand out from the crowd at her website, http://www.stonesoupcoaching.com.

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It’s amazing how many sayings there are in our culture about the number three. Think about it: “Good things (or bad) come in threes;” “Third time’s the charm.” A rule of thumb in speaking is, no more than three major points in a speech. (That was three examples, wasn’t it?) And then there are all of the mystical references to powerful threesomes. My purpose today is to look purely at the practical application of this “rule of three,” and see how we can use it to become more effective managers of our lives and priorities.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

* What are the three most important goals I want to achieve this year?

* What are the three most important things I need to complete today?

* What if I had only one hour in which to accomplish something important, what three things would I choose to do?

* What three clients or prospects do you most need to contact today?

It may be difficult to boil down your seemingly endless “to do” list to just three things, but asking the question forces you to make some powerful decisions about what is really important in your life, and what is, as Shakespeare wrote, is “sound and fury signifying nothing.” And while you may still have many other tasks you want to complete, knowing your top three will begin to create a clarity, focus and momentum to your day.

Thoreau once admonished people of his day, who lived without the so-called time saving devices of cell phones, email, fax machines and rapid transportation, to let the affairs of the day number one and two, rather than having a long list of duties and obligations to tend to. I think he was on to something. What I’ve noticed (and hear from coaching clients and many others I speak to) is that we all try to cram too much stuff into too little time. As a result we’re on constant overwhelm, running faster and faster but making little real progress toward what really matters because we don’t know what really matters.

Experiment today and in the week ahead with this rule of three. Decide the three most important tasks you want to accomplish today and go at them first. Work the rest of your “to do” list around your top three. You may need to declare some time boundaries, i.e. closing your office door, letting the phone go to voicemail or not responding to every email that drops into your in box, but the results may well be worth it. Far too many of us (myself included) allow others to steal our time and make their priorities ours. It doesn’t have to be that way. This week I encourage you to use the power of three: to focus, to build momentum, to create clarity about what’s really important to you.

As with anything, applying the rule of three may require some extra discipline at first. But remember, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”

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Quote of the Week
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“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” ~~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Betty Mahalik has been coaching small business owners, independent professionals and leaders who want to achieve more but stress less, since 1996. Her background includes several years in the broadcasting and public relations fields prior to starting her own firm in 1987. She is an accomplished public speaker and corporate trainer specializing in communications, goal-setting and leveraging your strengths. Since 2001, she has written a weekly motivational message, free to subscribers, titled Monday Morning Coach. To subscribe or learn more about Betty’s coaching and training services, visit http://www.dynamic-coaching.com

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Years ago when I started in this business, it seemed many clients had difficulty identifying their priorities. This isn’t as true today as it was then. Unfortunately, now what I hear clients say is’I can identify my priorities with no problem, but I can’t get to them. At the end of the day I look up and realize I never got to the one thing I needed to do.’ We are all busier today than ever before. A certain amount of chaos in our lives has become acceptable. But it has also cost us focus. Here are a few suggestions on identifying and working on getting to your priorities:

Create SMART goals and visit them regularly.

In order to know your priorities, you first need to know your goalsboth personal and professionalbecause one flows from the other. Make sure your goals are SMART. Zig Ziglar says SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Relevant and Timelined. Now make sure you visit them daily. If your goals are SMART and visible, you are paving the road to then identifying your priorities.

Create focus time.

If you have identified your priorities but are not protecting time to work on them, you are setting yourself up for frustration and stress. Everyone deserves some amount of uninterrupted time to work on things they have identified as ‘important’and not necessarily ‘urgent’. The Covey Time Matrix this represents Quadrant II activity and it is where about 75% of our time should be spent. If you think you don’t have time to do this, consider the fact that you don’t have time NOT to do this.

Minimize priority busters.

During my ‘Clear your desk. Clear your mind. Organize it.’ workshop, we identify and talk about how to handle the 3 top priority bustersinterruptions, overcommitment and procrastination. Not only are we interrupted at least 8 times an hour, but it takes about 20 minutes to climb back into the project we were working on prior the interruption. If you are committed to your priorities, over-committing is more difficult. Each time you encourage or allow an interruption or over-commitment, you are letting others pull you into their priority at the expense of your own. The third and most obvious priority buster isprocrastination. Every time you delay a decision to work on something important, you become your own priority buster! Identify your procrastination roadblocks and move forward in overcoming them.

Begin practicing these basic time management principles and remembertime flies but YOU are the navigator.

Copyright 2002. Cynthia Kyriazis. All rights reserved.

Cynthia Kyriazis is an organizing and time management consultant, trainer, speaker, coach and author with over 20 years management experience in multi-unit corporations. Organize it, a division of Productivity Partners, Inc. is an organizational training firm she founded in 1995 and has been serving Fortune 500 clients ever since. Cynthia works with business and their employees to help improve performance and realize productivity gains.

Cynthia has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kansas City Star and the Legal Intelligencer. She currently serves as Secretary on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), member of the Kansas City of the International Society for Performance Improvement - (ISPI-KC) and consultant to the American Coaching Association.

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