“Soon is not as good as now.” – Seth Godin
Viewing entries tagged
time management
“No is the best word.” – Nick F. Nelson
“Eventually, we all run out of time.” – Dr. Kevin Hickey
“Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything.” - Arnold Bennett
“Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” – Thomas Carlyle
“It’s not a question of whether being in a meeting is a good use of an individual’s time; it’s a question of whether it is a good use of the company’s time.” – Rick Jackson
“It may not be your fault, but it is certainly your time” – Barbara Williams-Skinner
“What you do with your billable time (work time) will determine your income for the year. What you do with your nonbillable time (free time) will determine your future.” – Art Gensler
I was at an event recently and as an ice breaker each table was asked to answer the question “would you rather have more time or more money?” A great discussion ensued about upcoming college bills or the need for more of the finite hours in the day.
Do we have enough hours in the day? Do we have the hours we need to accomplish what is necessary? I know I never feel like I do, but I am also aware that I waste time on a fairly regular basis. I am sure you can say that same.
Do I need more hours, or do I need to use them more productively?
How much downtime do I actually require to be refreshed enough to do what needs to be done? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I prioritizing things like exercise, study, and family time the way that I should? What use of my team leads to the most happiness?
These are incredibly personal questions and ones worth asking.
“Information is pre-digested experience. Experience is messy, wasteful, and takes time.” - Chris Dede, Harvard
Most important things in life should be done as fast as possible and as slow as necessary.
Wise people know when to push and when to pause.
Good advice. Stay busy with what you can do. Don’t worry about what you can’t control or influence.
“To build the relationship with your clients for the long term,” said Flavia Sparacino from SensingPlaces at a recent conference, “you may need to say ‘no’.”
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Much has been written in professional and personal development circles about the importance of doing things that scare you. Tackling projects that take you out of your comfort zones. Roles that challenge you to grow. This has been the justification for exhilarating thrills like climbing Mt. Everest or life-changing moves like leaving an abusive relationship or embarking on a new career.
I have never thought of myself as a risk-taker. I generally had a “big fish, small pond” mindset. I liked to tackle projects that I believed I could do successfully. I have prided myself that my hobbies, my relationships, and my work are not drama-filled. I don’t even like horror movies. Alas, I am missing all the tell-tale signs of a risk taker, so I figured I wasn’t one.
Until now.
I now see that I am just a different type of risk taker and here are three things I am learning about managing risk.
1. Sometimes it’s the stop-watch, not the altimeter which measures the risk
It might not be the altitude of the mountain that is the risk, but the speed at which you are trying to ascend or the number of hills you are climbing at once. When I get overwhelmed or scared, it is generally not because of the enormity of any individual task or commitments I have made. It is rather because I am trying to do them all at once. I scare myself in this way regularly and I know I am not alone. Recognizing that deadlines and commitments, served up simultaneously, adds stress and complexity to otherwise reasonable tasks, is important to acknowledge. Those of us who rush to do more can give ourselves permission to recognize the risk for what it is and pull back or lunge forward as necessary.
2. “But isn’t multi-tasking bad?” is a trick, and surprisingly personal, question
Behavioral scientists say multi-tasking is a fallacy and that this lack of focus costs organizations millions of dollars a year in lost productivity. I respectfully, I don’t believe it. Maybe for some it is a bad thing. Making people work outside their natural work style can certainly backfire, but for me, it’s the only way. Experience has taught me that when I multi-task I accomplish more. I achieve better results. I think more clearly. I make connections between things that lead to new insights. I remain more open to ideas from others. I have certainly had professional failures and disappointments, but throughout I have found that action itself is a source of energy. The busyness isn’t the secret sauce, but it is certainly in the winning recipe for me.
3. Managing risk is about knowing your risk tolerance
You don’t gamble, what you can’t afford to lose. Whether you are analyzing the risk of an investment portfolio or contemplating bold moves in your career, managing risk appropriately requires an appreciation of risk tolerance. My risk tolerance has to do with judging my commitments against my priorities. Despite my multi-tasking ways, or perhaps because of it, I am a big believer in looking at my life in chapters. There is a time and place for everything. The good things need to find more time and space in my schedule and attention, crowding out things of lesser importance or urgency. Avoiding the fallacy that tasks or priorities are permanent or immovable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson summarized it well when he said, “Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” So, you might just scare yourself busy.
This article was published on LinkedIn.
Have you ever thought that each day you regularly do more than is humanly possible? You can do a load of laundry, bring in water, cook dinner, commute, and talk all at the same time, thanks to modern convenient appliances, innovations, infrastructure, and automated processes. You measure modern engines by how many equivalent horses they could replace. I wonder how many humans our modern lives could replicate on a day to day basis. No wonder the world seems to be speeding up. We are all living multiple lives in parallel.
Most things we do have a defined beginning and end. We keep appointments. We meet deadlines. We work on projects. We deem these activities worthy for a time. Like a sprint. From firing gun to finish line. But what things are worth doing for a longer duration? What things are your marathon?
Each of us will have our own list. It could include mundane things like flossing each day to maintain your dental health. It could include specific eating or exercise habits. It could include commitments to stay close to family and friends. It includes marriages, decisions to become a parent, or involvement in causes.
I got involved with a non-profit called Marathon Scholars earlier this year and they take a long-term approach to solving the access to higher education gap among low income students in the Portland area. High potential students are selected in 4th grade and given their first college scholarship. The organization then walks with them with mentoring and educational programming until they earn their college diploma. Most will be the first people in their families to graduate from college (many are the first to graduate from high school). The program has been around long enough to see graduates exiting the program at 7x the average rate, speaking to the power of the long-term approach. A marathon, for sure.
There are opportunities for individuals to get involved in short and long-term mentoring and sponsorships. One of the most popular programs is scholarship sponsors committing to give $100 a month for 12 years to fund a scholarship. Giving in parallel to the student’s academic progress, this approach illustrates the partnership between the students that do the work necessary to generate results and the organization and the organization and the sponsors that make the mission possible. Although this kind of commitment is not required, it is a beautiful metaphor to how problems are solved for good – they take time. For more information and to see how you can get involved, see www.marathonscholars.org.
There is a ladder, if you will, that you must climb to be qualified and recognized to take on more responsibility (in exchange for more authority, more compensation, and more influence that may come along). There are many rungs to the ladder, but today I want to talk about the first four and how you can give yourself a promotion and grow as a leader. In short, you should be secure on each rung before you could expect to climb to the next. Together, you can give yourself a promotion in four easy steps. Let’s begin.
Rung 1: You can manage your time
Most individual contributors (that is, people who are not managers, but responsible for their own work) have one main resource that they alone can allocate: their time. We all have the same 24 hours a day and how people choose to allocate those hours makes a huge difference in their results. A lot of experts have written tomes on this subject (some of my favorites are Getting Things Done, the classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the provocative 4 Hour Work Week, and the insightful Better Than Before), mobile apps have been written to help track and monitor time allocation, and there is no shortage of life hack websites that will walk you through best practices for time management. But if you can not manage your own time and get work done in a reasonable timeframe with reasonable effort, no one will consider you ready for more. If you don’t know how you spend your time or feel like you are chronically under-estimating the amount of time things will take, missing deadlines, or letting down your team mates, this is a place to start. To be a manager, you must first manage yourself.
Rung 2: You can optimize your potential
Once you have mastery over your deadlines and tasks, you can build upon that to make the most of your capabilities and interests. You start with an understanding of your style, approach, and thinking processes (using tools like Myers-Briggs, StrengthFinders, Kolbe, and others that I have blogged about in the past). You get feedback from worthy mentors. You seek out professional development opportunities. You strive to get better and to outgrow your current assignment. You broaden your perspective beyond how you spend time today to apply yourself in new ways to new problems. You know what you need to inspire and drive you and you make sure your environment is right (which is described in detail in the book Triggers). You never stop managing your time and you never stop growing, of course, but you have reached this rung of the ladder when you have a vision of your best self and understand yourself well enough to play from your strengths and propel yourself to new heights of performance. If you want to be a leader, you must first lead yourself.
Rung 3: You can manage other people’s time
The first supervisory job that most people have involves managing other people’s time. You make sure people show up for their shift. You make sure the phones get answered as expected and the call queues are not too long. You make certain that there is adequate coverage to handle expected traffic at a trade show or retail environment. You sign time cards. You help them know what to do between punching in and punching out. You offer up work instructions and on-the-job training. In many cases, you can help others reach the first rung of their ladder by managing projects and allowing more capable people to manage their time towards the good of the project. This is where basic employee engagement comes into effect. Good managers have employees that have the time and resources to achieve the goals at hand.
Rung 4: You can unlock other people’s potential
This is the run where leaders emerge from among the sea of managers. Their employees not only want to use their time better, but they want to be better. Using both encouragement and discipline, they realize that honestly, delivered respectfully, is a gift and can help high potential individuals achieve more than they thought possible. Identifying latent talents. Probing for unrealized motivations. Describing hidden possibilities and bringing those to light. Establishing new standards and enabling people to do more than what is required so that they can feel pride in their work. Helping individuals bloom, where they are planted and to find new landscapes to explore.
These first four rungs on the ladder illustrate a great truth about getting recognized and promoted: most things are within your control.
Whether or not you want to be a manager of people (that is not everyone’s ambition), these same principles apply. As I have said before, you don’t have to wait for someone’s permission to get the experience you want and need to further your career in whatever direction you wish to direct it. You, alone, can effectively manage your time for maximum results. You alone can be curious about your own potential. And without a job change or a fancy title, you can help others do the same. From whatever role you are in today. It won’t be long before you are ready for the next challenge and that will be recognized by others. You’ll be doing a bigger job already when the opportunities come your way.