Overall, planning our schedule and keeping it is our responsibility. Time management is not so much about checklists, sticky notes, calendars, and Outlook reminders as it is about knowing what is most important in your life and aligning your activities with your priorities.
If you are not sure how you spend your time, REALLY spend your time, try an exercise. For one week, record what you do during your day and night. Use fifteen-minute increments. You don’t have to be detailed, just write down the gist of your activities. You don’t have to say, “called Jenny, Mr. Davis, the contractor, and the library”. You can just record, “made various phone calls for home renovation.” Be careful not to record “miscellaneous”. This category will become like the junk drawer in your kitchen: filled with items that lead everywhere, but nowhere useful.
At the end of the week, review your record. Do you see any patterns? Can you tell which part of the day is a time for you to do heavy-thinking items, because you seem to be at your most awake and productive? Is there a time of the day when you could be delegating those “clean-up” items (filing emails, moving projects into computer folders, finish laundry), because these can be done when you are somewhat tired and don’t have to be at your cerebral best? Are there tasks that you do which seem to take a lot of your time, but produce minimal return?
Stephen R. Covey, in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about internalized principles and patterns of behavior. Habit three is “put first things first.” He believed the essence of time management was to organize and execute around priorities. Covey presented a four quadrant matrix, in 2 x 2 fashion. The top two quadrants, from left to right, represented “important” tasks. The bottom two quadrants, from left to right, represented tasks that were “not important”. Quadrant 1 (top left) and Quadrant 3 (bottom left) are labeled “urgent”. Quadrant 2 (top right) and Quadrant 4 (bottom right) are labeled “not urgent”.
Activities in Quadrant 1 can be crises, project deadlines, and pressing problems. Activities in Quadrant 2 can be planning, fixing a system, and relationship building. Quadrant 3 consists of activities such as some phone calls, some meetings, and interruptions. Quadrant 4 consists of activities such as busy work, some phone calls, and pleasant time wasters.
People who manage their time well spend most of their time in Quadrant 2. Great leaders spend most of their time in Quadrant 2. People who spend the bulk of their time in Quadrant 2 are aligning their activities with their priorities.
Go back and look at your weekly record of how you spent your time. Try to match activities with the quadrant in which they fit. Now, you are really able to see where your time is spent.
Take some time (no pun intended!) to write down your values which drive your priorities. Some might be: improve my health, increase my skills be reading more, attend more of my son’s piano lessons. Arrange the activities that go with these priorities into the various quadrants. You will see that most of them fit into Quadrant 2.
Now, put these into your schedule for next week. Let everything else fall around these prioritized activities……not push them out. Time management is your choice. And, it is within your power to achieve.
To learn more about how to practice this understanding, contact Results Group, LLC at www.ResultsGroupLLC.com or 515-330-2866.
Post a Comment