Are you too busy or do you need to Organize, Prioritize, and Optimize
Time is the one resource that has been distributed equally amongst all humankind. Are you maximizing yours?
This article will help you manage your time optimally so that you will feel like you have more of it. You will also be setting yourself up to achieve what you want to with your life. The more I apply these principles, the more time I feel like I have and the better I feel about how I spend it.
What’s the truth behind ‘I am too busy’?
Have you ever said ‘I am too busy’? I agree with author Brianna Wiest in “that only signals to others that you do not know how to manage your time or your tasks.”
It can be used as a strategy to distract ourselves from what we know we really need to be working on, but something is holding us back from acknowledging that.
Are you just trying to feel busy so that you feel like you have put in a solid effort to get your work done? Are you allowing the distractions because it gives you an excuse to not spend time on the more difficult and more intimidating work?
Be a Quad 2 Type of Person
I am a strong believer in spending our time in Quadrant 2 of Stephen Covey’s time management matrix, on items that are important but not urgent. This is where we want to spend the bulk of our time and where the truly successful people spend most of their time. They focus on what they know needs to be done whether or not it feels important or urgent at the time.
Covey’s brand elaborates that “our sense of what is urgent [often] depends on how we feel, while our sense of what is truly important depends on how well we’ve thought out our values [and goals] and planned accordingly.”
The Other Quadrants
The first quadrant is emergencies, the ‘fires’ we have to put out or that may descend upon us from superiors in the form of urgently needed information (e.g. for a board meeting even though the board meetings have been on the calendar for a year :).
The third quadrant is described as distractions and usually it is for items that feel urgent and important but aren’t, like a phone call or text or any of the many notifications we get these days. This quadrant also includes interruptions. Just because someone calls or texts you doesn't mean you have to deal with it right away.
Dr. Robert Lustig describes the cell phone as a slot machine in our pocket because of the addictive tendencies it leads us all to.
Unless it is an actual emergency or an expectation of/agreement with a significant other in your life (boss, friend, parent, child, partner, etc.), you do not have to answer that call or text or email until you have time. Just because it is urgent to someone else does not mean it is urgent for you. Turn off notifications if you need to. Don’t get distracted from the important work you are doing.
Finally, the last quadrant is the time-wasters like gossiping or escape activities, like scrolling through social media when you know you should be doing something else. We all need relaxation but we when we are honest with ourselves, we know when we are doing it to avoid something else. The key difference is that urgent tasks are usually reactive vs important work is usually proactive. Urgent things are more visible whereas important things are more about results.
And these time-wasters are costing you money! Time-sucks like conversations that have gone way past their useful time for productivity, responding to requests/emails/texts/calls that aren’t priorities, and of course, any conversations that are based on anything besides data/what we know to be true (i.e. hearsay, opinions, gossip, assumptions, feelings and emotions, outright lies vs facts).
These do not contribute to the bottom line; in fact, they take from it so stop spending your valuable time on them!
Be a Quad 2 type of person. Set yourself up to spend your time based on importance, not urgency.
You may be thinking this isn’t realistic so try this to start.
When you are overwhelmed by how much there is to do, first get the information out of your head if you haven’t already. Get it into whatever tracking system works best for you. It can be a notepad, an advanced software, AI tool, or a dictation to your human assistant; it just needs to be documented so that it stops swirling around in your mind.
Then prioritize the work, adding in hard deadlines as applicable, and get to work doing the first most important thing. I continue to start with the next most important things with dedicated planned time and as I have unexpected time. That way no matter what issues come across my desk or what unexpected changes take place, I know I am getting the most important tasks done.
You are also ready for those opportunities when you have extra time that you didn’t expect; you can just hop into what you know is the most important thing you could be doing with that extra time because you already determined this. You will do this instead of that natural inclination to look around for something that feels productive and busy but isn’t really needed at that time.
With this method, you will no longer be paralyzed by or in denial about the overwhelming amount of work you have and/or want to do; you will also start to gain momentum, and most beautifully, you will gain peace.
Stay tuned for my next article about focusing your limited time on what has the greatest potential. You know what the top drivers of your revenue and costs are (or find out if you don’t). Then focus your valuable and finite time on where it can have the most impact.