Archive for Time Management
Time Management Tip – Parkinson’s Law
Posted by: | CommentsTime Management Tip – Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law says that an activity will take all the time that you allot to it. If you have a report to write and you think it will take two days then you’re right – it will take two days. If however you get a sudden phone call from the boss who says that he needs it by the end of today – hey presto – magically you get it done today.
You can’t defeat this law – but you can play it to your advantage. Use Parkinson’s law to decide how long you want a specific activity to take. Decide that you want to finish preparing course material by the end of the day. Decide that you will catch up on some emails by lunchtime. Decide that you will return five phone calls between now and your next meeting.
In making the decision you are thinking about what you need to get done, stating an intention and then focussing your mind on getting it done. This means that you are more likely to be successful at completing the task or tasks within the given time frame than if you hadn’t made the decision and just allowed yourself to drift through the day.
How To Make Time For Important Activities
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I give time management training one of the tips I suggest is to recognise when you just don’t have time to do a particular activity, you stop trying to shoe-horn it in to an already stressed and busy life and say – “I just don’t have time to do this at the moment.” The three words “at the moment” are important. They mean that you are not admitting defeat to ever getting around to a task; instead you are making the decision that you just don’t have space right now or are not willing to prioritise it. These three words leave the door open to the fact that you do fully intend to do the activity at some point in the future. You can then stop exhausting yourself trying to do it all safe in the knowledge that this is just a temporary hiatus on the activity.
For me this meant that I could not continue to do all of my marketing and networking activities for Lead The Life and have enough time to devote to writing a book. Now that the manuscript is more or less complete I am really enjoying picking up the marketing activities again.
American coach, Michael Neill, uses an analogy of fitting rocks, pebbles, sand and water in a jar to illustrate how to prioritise our time. The challenge is to fit as much of the rocks in the jar as possible. It all comes down to in which order you put them. If you put in the water and sand first then there isn’t room for the pebbles and the rocks. If you go for the pebbles first then you still can’t get the rocks in. The trick is therefore to put the rocks in first then let the pebbles fall into the space between the rocks. The sand can then fall into the remaining spaces and you can top up the jar with some of the water.
As far as time management goes, the rocks represent the activities that you really want to do. Fit those in your day and your week first. Then fill up the remaining time with less important or less fun activities. If you let your time get filled up with the wrong stuff then you won’t be able to fit in what is most significant to you.
One of my rocks has been writing the book and my pebbles have been other ‘should do’ activities. The book was such a large rock that I had to make some tough decisions on the other pebbles. Of course, if I stopped my marketing activities forever then my business would grind to a halt but for the time it took to get the book written they were a necessary exclusion.
What are you trying to squeeze into your life right now that just doesn’t fit? Would it be less stressful to say – “I just don’t have time to do this at the moment?” Can you make plans for when it is more possible in the future?
Is Time Management In The Mind?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve always been fascinated by time, and my use of it. Part of this comes from the fact I help others with their time management, but mostly it is because feeling that I have enough time for everything I want to do is very challenging for me to achieve.
Recently I have been doing some consulting on a three day a week basis. While this has been great for cash flow, it has been less great in terms of the time I have to devote to growing other areas of my Lead The Life business. When I take into account the travelling time each day to my consulting client there isn’t much of the day left. Evenings have tended to be get home, make tea, do my Buddhist chanting, watch TV for about forty minutes and then it’s time for bed. It feels like there is no time for anything else. The commute to this client is slightly longer than I would prefer and I feel that I am short of one hour in the day. If there was a way of conjuring up that additional hour it would make a huge difference to my creative output and general sense of well-being.
However, over the past few days I have decided that I no longer want to be defeated by this situation and have banned the phrase “I don’t have time for that” from my mind. Instead I am determining to do one small thing towards my creative output or my business on each of these busy days. I have discovered that this provides an excellent opportunity to send out follow-up emails to those where I am pitching for business as well as to re-connect with people with whom I have formed a relationship in the various networking circles to which I belong. I’m also spending a few minutes here and there developing a new marketing plan for Lead The Life. This is quite naturally resulting in a series of tasks to be performed that I can then carry out as my daily ‘do one useful thing’.
