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Time Management - Part 1
Ashley Burgess-Payne • July 7, 2020
President Eisenhower, “Most things which are urgent are not important, and most things which are important are not urgent.”
Top Tips to Help You Manage Your Time Self Effectively So That You Can Achieve More
‘I just don’t have the time!’ Sound familiar? If you’re often racing around playing catch up, feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list or frequently find yourself in a state of panic, fearful and stressed then take a moment, breathe a sigh of relief and relax. This article is for you.
Over the next two weeks we’ll show you how to become more effective and get significantly more value from your time so that your output matches or even exceeds your input. Stop working hard for little reward and start working smart.
But before we begin, use this quick and simple tip to get you focused.
Write it all down. That’s right. Write down on paper all of the tasks that are currently racing around your mind causing you stress and anxiety. Don’t think about priorities or deadlines just yet. Simply write it all down so that it’s off your mind and you can see it. It may sound overly simple but writing it down frees up mental capacity meaning you can begin to think about solutions rather than problems and panicking. Sometimes trying to remember everything and making sure nothing is forgotten is half the battle, making it appear worse than it actually is.
This simple activity alone will relieve some of the stress and tension you may be experiencing. But there are many more tips you can implement to help you use your time better.
Let’s get started.
1. You Can’t Manage Time – You Can Only Manage Yourself
Time is a funny thing. It can’t be seen, yet it plays a massive role in our daily agenda, often dictating lives. One thing that is common for all is that we all want more time. However, it doesn’t matter who you are, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or even Donald Trump, it is irrelevant because you can’t manipulate time no matter how much you try or what your net worth is. Time waits for no one. The only thing you can manage is yourself.
We often feel we are ‘up against time’ and therefore associate the perceived lack of it with powerful emotions such as fear, stress and anxiety. But as we will show in this article, it is not time that is the enemy, it is a lack of personal organisation.
Time can in fact be viewed as an asset. It is the great equaliser that levels the playing field. We all have the same number of hours in a day, but it is what we choose to do with them that makes the big difference. Therefore if utilised correctly, time is our most valuable commodity. Unfortunately, we are not always careful with how we spend it. And just like money if we aren’t careful, we can quickly find ourselves without it.
So, the starting point of time management is to understand it isn’t about managing time. It is about managing yourself. Start by asking yourself this important question: Q. How and where do I spend my time?
Take inventory and analyse this. What do the results show you? Are you dedicating too much time towards the wrong activities and places that are not conducive to you achieving more and what you really want?
To get the output you want from life you may have to change the input. Be ruthless with this activity and really analyse what you are getting out of the time you are putting in. Perhaps it is time for a change of mindset and acquaintances.
#Tip 1: To start improving your use of time, start by managing yourself – how and where are you spending your time?
2. Have a Plan – Without a Plan You Will Quickly Become Part of Someone Else’s
What do you actually want from life?
If you are like the majority of people you will have not dedicated enough time to answering this question. When asked what most people want from life the common answers are to be rich, happy and have the freedom to do what they want when they want. But in order to turn this dream into a reality the first thing you must do is specify with clarity what ‘rich, happy and free’ actually looks like for you. In order to get somewhere you need to know where it is and what it looks like.
The same principles apply with time. If you are to maximise your output you need to know what your inputs should be, otherwise you could waste your time on the wrong tasks. It is all about reverse engineering e.g. working backwards from the finished product/end goal. Using this method, you can identify the key steps and action points along each step of the way that you must take to build the lifestyle you want. Effective time management is about taking the right actions at the right time to get you where you want to be in the quickest time possible with the minimal input.
If you don’t know the answer to the above question you are like a hamster on a wheel - active and busy, spinning around and around but going nowhere.
Often people who are time poor feel this way because they are busy being busy e.g. doing tasks that don’t move them towards their bigger picture goal. Their time is taken up by menial tasks that add to their stress levels and feelings of being time poor instead of moving them closer to their goal and leaving them feeling fulfilled and satisfied that progress is being made.
#Tip 2: Don’t waste your time on menial tasks! To get to where you want to go, you need a plan.
However, in order to have an effective plan you need to prioritise.
3. Prioritise – Pre-qualify Your Tasks Against Your Plan
Prioritisation is essential if you are to free up more time in your day. Tim Ferris, author of the Four-Hour Work Week states, “a lack of time is actually a lack of priorities.” In order to ‘have more time’ we need to focus on our priorities.
Remember it is not about being busy, it is about being productive (effective and efficient). Just because they are on your ‘to-do list’ does not mean they should be done, at least not imminently or necessarily by you. Not all tasks carry the same value.
Here in the UK we are conditioned by society to believe that there is merit in working ‘hard’ and long hours e.g. being the first in and last to leave the office. We have a culture of busy is good/busy is effective. But this is not always the case and is highlighted by the large proportion of the population who work long and hard hours with little to show for it. Success is not about hard work it is about effective work and effective work begins in the mind with prioritisation. Remember, you don’t get paid by the hour. You get paid for the effectiveness you bring to that hour – and prioritisation is effectiveness.
Sometimes busyness is in fact a disguise for ineffectiveness as Tim Ferris again states, “being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” To become more effective with our use of time and reap greater rewards we must be analytic and decisive in both our thinking and our actions. What would provide the greatest return for my investment of time, effort and energy? If you apply this thinking to your ‘to-do list’ you will begin to create a ‘to-day list’. This differs to a ‘to-do list’ as it only contains tasks that will be pre-qualified against your big picture plan from point 2 above.
A ‘to do list’ grows longer and is rarely completed as more tasks are added without thought thus resulting in even more stress and unease. A ‘today list’ is a closed list and works alongside your overall plans for your life e.g. activities are pre-qualified/measured in value by how they contribute towards you achieving your overall goal.
By pre-qualifying the tasks in this manner, you will ensure that you are focusing only on the tasks that will 1) provide you with the best returns for your investment of time and 2) move you a step closer to your overall goal.
This will not only relieve stress but increase effectiveness which is the ability to decrease the amount of time you spend doing something but increase your profits. What tasks carry the most weight in your business?
Prioritise - things often aren’t as important as you initially thought. If you find this difficult to do simply search Google for the Urgent-Important Time Quadrant activity. This will help you to distinguish what is Urgent and Important from Urgent and Unimportant as well as identify the things which are Not Urgent but Important and Not Urgent and Not Important. You want to spend the majority of your time working on the Not Urgent but Important tasks – these are the tasks that will provide the greatest rewards and are likely to move your business forwards and get you off the hamster wheel of busyness. As President Eisenhower said, “Most things which are urgent are not important, and most things which are important are not urgent.”
Tip # 3: You need to pre-qualify! Focus on doing the tasks that will reap the biggest rewards and move you closer to your goals. Always ask why am I doing this? What will this add to me/my business and how will it help me get towards my goal?
Part II will be available next week.
Written by Ashley Burgess-Payne
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