Yes, it’s true but sometimes it feels as if there’s only 5 hours and on other days it’s as if time stands still and we sail through the day. But really its how we plan our day and what we do that makes the difference oh, and how we think about it… including our mindset.
As the end of the year is not far away whatever you do between now and the end of the year I’d encourage you to take some time to sit and plan … not perhaps in the traditional way but plan how you’re going to plan and how you’re going to manage your time as opposed to letting time and circumstances manage you.
If you’re like me you have good intentions every day, with an action list and diary and project plans for larger tasks/projects. So far so good but then life happens, we don’t feel that great, the wheels appear to come off something and we get called away or something else… That then has an impact, which takes time to recover from – not just ‘making up the time’ but how we feel about it.
So if we’re going to manage time and as opposed to it managing us what do we need to think about?
- I often ask clients what time management means for them and usually its spread sheets, apps, lists, juggling, tension and feelings of having to run to stay in control. Does any of that sound familiar?
- So how do you go about planning your day, week, and month? Are you being realistic in your expectations of yourself and others? And are you taking into account that things will happen so you can allow for them, work through them and, not feel that it’s a massive inconvenience/disruption?
- How do you react when someone else in the business hasn’t been planning and so your plans aren’t going to happen as you’d expected them to? Perhaps you need to look back at how you communicated your plans so they could, in turn, do their own planning? Remember it’s the messenger who has the responsibility and not the receiver.
- In a world that expects instant responses the same people who want that instant action would be peeved if we stopped working on them as a client because someone else wants our instant attention. Does that really help, especially how we feel about the situation? And what can we do to manage expectations and to mitigate these calls on our time?
- It’s when these things happen that we ‘feel’ as if there aren’t enough hours in the day but is that true or is it that we haven’t taken the critical step back and looked at the overall plan for planning?
As always, questions to consider but if we do take the time to consider and answer them and then take that time to plan how we plan we will start to manage time and not the other way around.