Sorted! Tips to help you get more from work and life |
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| June 2006 | Feel fr*e to forward this, but please without cutting |
- Remember your Scout or Guide days? Be prepared. What does being prepared mean for you?
How can you be more prepared? - Do deadlines sneak up on you? Schedule tasks.
What needs to happen for you to plan better? - You have a choice about how you spend your time. Take Ownership, both of your time and of the task in question.
So who are you doing a particular task for? If it's not for you or your benefit, is it your responsibility?
What do you choose to do today? - Are you working on the right things? Priority? By taking time to sort out your real
priorities, you are much more likely to spend your time doing the things that take you to your goals.
What tasks are most important to you right now? - What or who are the main time stealers in your life? Write a list. Do you actively give them permission to steal your time? Or does it just happen?
Where do you give away your valuable time? - Notice what you are doing. Ask yourself the following question throughout the day.
What is the most valuable use of my time right now? - Say No to tasks that are not important, time stealers or things that are not your responsibility or that you do not want ownership of.
How can you say no today? - Do the most important or hardest task first. Yes really!
What are you resisting? - Make it fun. Tap into your positive energy and make the task a game.
What would make this task be more fun? - Reward yourself. If the task is big, then break it up and reward yourself along the way.
How can you treat yourself today?
Time is a great leveller,
it is one of the few things in life that is fair; we all have exactly the same quota of time. Time just is. How is it
then that some people seem to have more time or get more done in a day? Time management is really a misnomer, what we
are actually managing is tasks there will always be more things to do than time available. The secret of successful
people is that they identify the important tasks and then get them done.
Are you doing
the important tasks first? There is an old saying 'Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse can happen
to you for the rest of the day'. Your important tasks are your frogs, get them out of the way and you will feel much
more productive. If you have to eat two frogs - then eat the ugly one first!
Do you set yourself goals? If you don't know what you want to achieve, how do you know if
you are spending your time wisely? Setting goals helps you determine what needs to be done to achieve them.
Be realistic about what you can achieve in a day. Make sure that the tasks that you
have on your 'to do' list are really yours. Are you doing other people's tasks because you don't delegate enough?
Are a perfectionist and don't trust other people to get it right? Do you accept tasks because you can't say no?
Make it fun. And why not? What would make the tasks you least enjoy doing more pleasurable? At the very least build in
rewards to your day - a short walk, a coffee break, 5 minutes reading a magazine, or my favourite a quick
game of Spider Solitaire (now on four suits, win rate only 11%, watch this space!). By all means set big rewards
for big goals, but make sure that they are not something you are going to do anyway. Make it real.
Make space in your life for you. Spend some time each day doing something just for yourself. Practise focusing
on things that are really important to you, even if it's only for ten minutes.
Do you worry about all the things you have to do? Have you tried writing them down so that you aren't carrying
them around in your head? It works. Trust yourself to get things done, believe that you will meet your
goal or deadline, stop using your precious energy worrying and enjoy the journey.
Lastly are you one of those people who say that they work best at the last minute, burning the midnight oil?
Here's something to ponder on: how do you know that you do your best work at the last minute?
Remember the saying 'Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy'?
To manage your tasks and therefore manage your time better, you will need to start doing things differently.
Try this quick exercise. Get a sheet of paper and write four headings:
- Stop Doing
- Replace With
- Keep Doing
- Start Doing
(Or download a form from here.) Now fill it in.
A survey of the UK workforce by Brother UK found that employees can lose up to two hours from their working day - that's 45 days a year - thanks to distractions. Distractions include noisy colleagues, phones and mobile phones, printers and e-mails.
Psychologist Dr David Lewis explains: 'Having the opportunity to be creative, develop a complex strategy or having a logical train of thought depends on uninterrupted "cognitive flow" - allowing the brain to explore a problem without distraction.
'Once interrupted, we can lose our flow. It can take us up to four times as long as the interruption itself to return our mind to the task at hand. So an interruption lasting no more than five minutes may well put you back by up to twenty minutes.
'Interruptions may also affect the quality of our ideas so that once the train of thought is derailed, it may not return to its previous high level of functioning for hours.'
Thus, when it comes to answering your phone, you have several options depending on what you are about to do. If you need uninterrupted time, you can:
- Put the answering machine on/divert to an answering service (the latter sounds more professional);
- Ask someone else to answer it;
- Ignore it - yes, this really is an option!
- Use caller identity to choose whether to answer it;
- Answer it, decide priority of caller then act appropriately:
- Take message;
- Explain you are in the middle of something and ask the caller to call back or offer to call back when you have finished. Don't go into long details or explanations.
- Spend half an hour gossiping!
However, you also need to ask yourself the following questions: Is the underlying issue that you feel that it's rude not to answer the phone if you are in? Do you believe that the world cannot survive without you for an hour or two? Do you find it hard to say no? Do you like being distracted!
On the other hand, are there situations where you find it easier to ignore the phone? What is it about those situations that make it easy to not answer the phone? Or in other words, when do you find it easy to put yourself or the task you are doing first?
Remember, you always have a choice.
Effective time managment for busy people
This workshop takes place on Thursday 30th June 9.30 - 12 noon, at The Abbey Hotel, Tintern.
You will discover how to 'unblock' yourself so that you can make the most of every minute. You will take away loads of new ideas and practical techniques to apply straightaway. More information about this workshop is on the Sorted Coaching website: How to make the most of every minute
Price £30, but if you get organised and book by 17th June it's only £25.
Reserve your place by emailing me at sue@sortedcoaching.co.uk or call me on 01291 621985.
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Contact Information
Sorted! is published by Sorted Coaching
T: 01291 621 985
15 Wallwern Wood, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, NP16 5TX
Find out more at http://sortedcoaching.co.uk
At Sorted!, we help people develop personally so they get more from their lives and work.
©2006 Sorted Coaching