Time is a shrinking commodity that cannot be replenished. Our only option is to manage it effectively before it’s lost forever. Discover how to custom design and execute high payoff activity that is most relevant to your success. Develop habits that will maximize your use of time and make the most of every day.
Recommended Meeting Agenda
Prior to Meeting Option
Choose a Workshop Organizer to review the guidelines, keep the discussion on track and evenly distribute time for sharing between participants.
Review the guidelines at the start of each meeting
- Learn from the past but don’t dwell on it. Keep it “Now and Next”.
- Complaining and blaming is a waste of time. Positive interactions only.
- Practice confidentiality as a respect to other members.
- Be discreet with sensitive information.
- No political posturing. Please don’t use Achieveopedia to air your political views.
- Refrain from small talk during workshops to keep a constructive purpose to conversation.
Workshop Starters:
- Introduce yourself and share a few goals in your life that you would achieve if you could manage your life more effectively.
Discuss key points of the training information:
- Hi-light key points of the workshop and discuss how they are relevant to your situation.
- How would these ideas impact your business or the quality of your life?
- Feel free to add any additional ideas or suggestions to the discussion.
- Choose the action steps and perspectives (Strategic Options) from this workshop that will increase your personal effectiveness moving forward.
- How are you going to integrate these Strategic Options into your weekly Power Circuit?
Discover how to redirect your actions so to integrate the highest payoff activities that make the biggest difference in your success.
Invest Time Properly
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Time is money.” We obviously can’t argue with the concept. However, in reality, time is much more valuable than money. If we lose or waste money, we can make it again. If we lose or waste time, it is gone forever. It is a shrinking commodity. How and where we invest our time directly relates to the quality of our lives. Time management is about doing the appropriate actions when necessary in accordance with our goals, values, and being in-sync with our purpose.
The Five D’s to Effective Time Management
There are five options to choose from when you’re addressing a task in your life. It comes down to the five Ds for managing your time and becoming more effective.
- Design –– Make proactive positive choices. Design your high-payoff activities and best practices for each area of your life.
- Disregard — If the time, effort or money that is needed to accomplish this task does not justify the benefits you receive, you may want to reconsider this task and choose to reinvest your time more wisely.
- Diminish — The task or activity is worth the time but not as much time as you may be putting into it. It may be a good idea to consciously reduce the amount of time you spend doing this activity on a regular basis.
- Delegate — the task or activity needs to be done, and it can be delegated safely and effectively. Many people under delegate because they have outdated attitudes about asking for or hiring help. Sometimes people under-delegate because they are simply being cheap. An old adage is “penny wise but dollar foolish.” They may not want to spend the money it may take to delegate the job. This can lead to missing wonderful opportunities to increase income by having the time to do higher-payoff action steps or simply losing out because you are denying yourself more enjoyable activities.
- Do it — If it is an activity that doesn’t apply to disregard, diminish or delegate, then you need to make the commit to integrate this action into your personal or professional life. Make it happen! Get on with it! Don’t avoid what is best for your success and well-being. Learn to do it, and do it well. Make it a habit of getting it done. Enjoy the benefits of empowering yourself to do what you need to do to successfully and continuously improve the quality of your life.
A college professor once used this demonstration to educate his students on the principles of time management. He placed a five-gallon glass jar on top of a laboratory bench in front of the class. From underneath the bench, he pulled up a sack of rocks and proceeded to fill the glass jar to the top with rocks. Then he asked the class “Is this jar full?” The class responded, “Yes.” He said, “Ah, but wait!” He then pulled a pitcher of gravel from underneath the bench and proceeded to dump gravel around the rocks in the jar. When he could fit no more gravel in the jar, he asked the class again, “Is this jar full?” The class, now catching on, said, “No.” He said, “Right!” He then pulled a pitcher of sand from beneath the bench and poured the sand in and around the gravel in the jar. When he could fit no more sand in the jar, he asked the class again, “is this jar full?” The class said, “No.” He said, “Right again!” He then proceeded to pull from beneath the bench a pitcher of water. He poured the water to the top of the glass jar. Then he asked the class, “What did you learn from this?” The class, discussing it, came up with a unanimous answer and said, “There is always room for more.” He said, “No that’s not it, you missed the point. We need to put the rocks in first!”
The story relates to the five D’s (Design, Disregard, Delegate, Diminish and Do it!) The water is what you can disregard, the sand is what you can delegate, the gravel is what you can diminish and the rocks are what you need to design and do. Intelligently and creatively design and invest your time in things that will help you succeed in your goals and improve the quality of your life.
Even though we are in an age of more conveniences than ever before, we seem to have less time for some of the most important things in our life. So often we hear people say that they can’t find the time for the activities that lead to quality in their lives, such as exercise, quality time with their children, or fun and relaxing recreational activities.
The priority activities and perpetual action steps are the “rocks” in life that must be accomplished first. Activities chosen as priorities in life need to be scheduled on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. They often rest in perpetuating action steps that are part of the ongoing Weekly Design and Power Circuit Program. Having sincere Power Partners to help with Tactical Accountability is also a major instrument for creating positive change. The renewing of the cycle and competing against oneself week after week, month after month, stretches our behavioral patterns. It allows the ability to transcend previous levels of accomplishments and for new patterns to take shape. At first, it is a real struggle to find the time. It takes an open mind, a little discipline, and a generous dose of patience, creativity and commitment.
We need to be especially vigilant to take the time to spend with our loved ones; they are not going to be around forever. Remember to hold hands, have long talks and cherish the precious moments of love that one day will be a beautiful memory.
Time and Belief
We need to start with the concept and belief that we have an abundance of time if we choose to use it correctly. We have 24 hours a day, renewable every day from the day we are born to the day we die. We need to start by believing that time is in abundance and we have enough time to make the most important things in our life happen. If we believe that there is not enough time to do the things that add quality to our life, we will have a very difficult time finding ways to implement the important activities as we operate our life on a day-to-day basis. We need to find out where our time is going, to define our goals clearly, and to determine what action steps both progressive and perpetual will lead to a higher level of life experiences and success.
To create positive transformation in how we manage our time has to do with evaluating our present situation. Implementing a Daily Time Use Analysis may be challenging, but the value of the information and awareness level can be life changing. It requires you to track the use of your time, from the time you are awake until the time you go to bed. It would be very similar to what a nutrition counselor would have you do. They would want you to write out everything you eat for a week because we eat so unconsciously, it’s the only way to track our personal eating patterns to determine where to make the most needed changes.
At the end of each day on the Weekly Time Survey, add up your tasks to see how much time was spent on each task each day. At the end of the week, add up the total time spent on each task.
Research shows that people are spending approximately one hour a day on social networks. In a year’s time they have spent 45 workdays worth of their time. Which accumulates to 2 months a year of full time work being spent on social networking. At this point, it’s time to decide if the time you’re taking to do each task is equal or greater to the benefits you’re receiving from the activity.
The Time Management Sheet can be useful in prioritizing time. Once we look at where our time is going, we need to look at what we can disregard completely, what we can diminish, and then what we can delegate to another person. This exercise should open plenty of time and space for your “do it” high pay off activities.
This may sound easier than it really is, mostly because of outdated attitudes that exist in our daily lives. Old habits sometimes die-hard, there are things we do for no logical reason but for the fact that we always did it that way. There’s a well-worn story about the newlyweds sitting down to enjoy a pot roast, their first official meal together. The new husband notices his wife cut the ends off both sides of the pot roast before she cooked it. When he curiously asked her for the reason, she says, “That’s the way mom always did it.” So the husband, undaunted, decides to call his new mother-in-law for further investigation. Her response was, “I don’t really know, but granny always did it that way.” Well, at this point, there was no way he was about to let it go without making one more phone call. So he calls granny and asks why she cut the ends off a perfectly good pot roast and grand-mom’s answer was, “When my kids were little, I never had a pot quite big enough.” Sometimes it’s amazing what routines we can find in our life that makes very little sense once we take the time to more objectively look at what we are doing.
Often it is a matter of perspective. We hear some parents say, “I have several children, I have no time.” In reality, they have several children, to whom they could be teaching and sharing responsibilities, allowing for more quality time to focus on building a good relationship with their children. Then there is, “Do it! once we decide what it is that we need to do, we need to integrate that activity into a habit. We need to put the rocks in first!
This evaluation of time and analysis of activities is where time management begins. For those who are truly committed to finding the time needed to do the things that improve the quality of their lives, this survey is crucial. It is extraordinary how quickly time moves and how rapidly time can add up.
Daily Time Use Analysis
| How I Spent My Time | |||
| am 6:30 | pm 2:30 | ||
| 7:00 | 3:00 | ||
| 7:30 | 3:30 | ||
| 8:00 | 4:00 | ||
| 8:30 | 4:30 | ||
| 9:00 | 5:00 | ||
| 9:30 | 5:30 | ||
| 10:00 | 6:00 | ||
| 10:30 | 6:30 | ||
| 11:00 | 7:00 | ||
| 11:30 | 7:30 | ||
| Noon | 8:00 | ||
| pm 12:30 | 8:30 | ||
| 1:00 | 9:00 | ||
| 1:30 | 9:30 | ||
| 2:00 | 10:00 | ||
At this time, you may find it useful to identify your most important to least important activities and total time spent in your day at each level.
Weekly Time Survey
| Week of | |||||||||
| Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun | Total | ||
| Task | |||||||||
| Task | |||||||||
Time Management Sheet
| Day/Week/Month | ||
| Urgent Tasks | Important Tasks | |
Multi-tasking
Humans are the only creatures able to perform separate tasks simultaneously without losing track of what they are doing. Scientists at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke have found that one specific form of multi-tasking called branching — where you leave a main task for a secondary task, then return to the main task where you left off — can be mapped to the prefrontal cortex part of the brain. Some people do it instinctively; in others it is a learned behavior.
Some may think of multi-tasking as a jumble of things happening at one time. They’re right. However, it doesn’t need to be frantic. If we study people like airline pilots we realize it can be smooth and deliberate behavior. Recent studies have shown that the average American spends three hours a day in front of the tube. Watching TV is the ideal multi-tasking behavior. So many other things can be accomplished while doing it; chores, exercise and surfing the web just to name a few.
Multi-shifting
On television shows everyone stays in one environment the entire length on the program. Police and detectives never have to go home, sleep or even use the bathroom. The reality of life is we have many priorities that need to be tended to throughout the day and throughout the week. Business issues, family events and responsibilities and health maintenance just to name a few. We need to identify what our priorities and objectives are and shift into those focus areas as needed throughout the day and throughout the week. Organizing your schedule on a weekly basis seems to be the best approach. It is a rotation of concentration that is needed to develop and maintain quality in multiple areas of our life. Being able to manage our time is almost like an art form we need to embrace and master.
Chronos vs. Kairos
The linear measurement of time is called chronological time, from the Greek word Chronos. However, the Greeks had another way of measuring time. They also had the word kairos, from which they derived the kairological measurement of time. The growth measurement of time is the time it takes for maturity and is not always measurable in chronological terms. For example, if you are going to grow pumpkins, you can pick out a date in the spring to turn the soil, choose the right time to plant the seeds, regularly water the seeds, cultivate the ground and weed the garden. These are all chronological timelines. You cannot say for sure, “On October 15, I will pick seven 15-pound pumpkins from this pumpkin patch.” It is not possible to designate chronologically when the pumpkins actually will appear, their size, and the quantity. In the wine country in Napa Valley, California they have a saying, “The grape is the boss!” They understand Mother Nature is on her own pace with perfection. As long as you can continue to trust the process you are using, the timing may take more patience than you originally anticipated.
This is a very helpful philosophy to keep in mind when working toward goals and developing those things that will bring quality to life. Two years ago I had my body fat measured, it was information I really didn’t want to hear. On the positive side, it did motivate me to start a professionally designed exercise program. My goal was to reduce the percentage of my excess body fat by a significant amount by the end of that year. Here I am, two years later and I have only reached half the goal at this time. My body is on kairalogical time and my ego is on chronological time. Instead of being discouraged, I need to keep reminding myself I am at least progressively moving in the right direction. If I stay the course, I will one day realize my goal. A kairological perspective helps us develop patience in the achievement of our goals.
Many times, when people start a business, it does not grow as rapidly as their projected chronological dates. This creates discouragement. The owners do not realize that, at the same time, the business is growing in a kairological sequence. They can chronologically add more activities in a shorter period of time or even heighten the quality of activities, but ultimately, kairologically, the business will develop and grow at its own pace. Many times in life, it is helpful to step back and look at growth in terms of kairological time, not chronological time to get a better understanding and a more encouraging attitude. Where belief enters the picture; the farmer is confident he will get pumpkins. Cultivate the belief in your ability to create opportunities, overcome obstacles, and progressively keep moving toward your personal creation.
We do not have the power to slow it down nor is there any guarantee of tomorrow. The opportunity to enjoy life and bring joy to others passes all too quickly, so it is our personal responsibility to invest our time wisely, one day it will surely run out.
Learn how to say “No”
The best time control word in the world is the word, “no”. Unwillingness to say no will keep us adding more and more items on our plate. Next time you’re asked to do something, instead of rushing in and agreeing, first get clear about the request. Make sure you really want to take the responsibility and that it will be worth your while. Say yes for the right reasons. Be aware of what you may have to give up by accepting the task or responsibility. We say yes when we want to say no for a number of different reasons.
- We feel guilty.
- We want to be liked or avoid confrontation.
- We are afraid of being criticized.
- We have unclear personal goals and priorities. Low self-esteem can magnify any or all of the above reasons.
There are some suggestions on how to say no.
- Be firm and calm and say no as soon as possible.
- Be honest and brief when explaining. Don’t make up a reason, it will only complicate things.
- If the person tries to give you more reasons to say “yes” just keep repeating your first and honest reason.
When you fine tune the use of your time you are making an investment in the quality of your life. Continue to strengthen your time awareness as an important ingredient in your recipe for success!