How often do you hear yourself saying ‘I don’t have enough time’? I bet this happens every week, maybe every day. At work, at home, during your WE’s. And it’s frustrating you. You feel like time is running away from you. When in fact, time is here in front of you. Time management really means what you make of it.
The ‘time management’ buzzword is certainly thrown around a lot at work and in our lives. But it is always approached from the angle of the problem, not the solution. As in we have too much on, and it’s about conflicting priorities and cramming. It does not have to be that way.
Let’s start with debusting the major myth underpinning time management. It’s not true that the amount of time we have is insufficient. We all have enough time to live rich, interesting and plentiful lives. This is the cornerstone of ‘168 hours’ by Laura Vanderkam. In her book, she explains we all have 168 hours every week, and that it is well enough to sleep, work, spend time with your kids and have personal time. And when you actually look at how you spend every hour of your week, you will see this too. We don’t watch where some of our time is going, and we sigh about what we don’t have time for.
So time isn’t a currency we have more or less of. We all have the same amount and plenty of it. But what we do with it is what sets us apart individually. Which leads to this big lesson: time management is an active process. It requires from you to take actions to plan, make decisions and sometimes some trade-offs. That’s why it’s called management after all. If you approach time in a passive manner, others will manage it for you. They will spend it for you, take the space in your calendar, and you will always feel like you come last. Your free or personal work time will be a dream you are constantly postponing.
So who is actually managing your time? Is your calendar at work pretty empty, with people scheduling in meetings that suits them? Do you wait for other commitments before scheduling your own? Do you say yes to an invitation or opportunity because you are free at that time? These are all signs you don’t put enough value on your own time. So as a result, when you do want to invest some time for something that matters to you, it often has to give. Do you get the picture? It should be the other way around.
So get on board and start owning your time, like it is precious and you decide. Consider your 168 hours every week like a capital towards the own business of your life. This is what you have to achieve your goals, make a difference or learn that thing you always longed for. Not ‘when’ this happens, or ‘after that’. The time is now, every week and every day. So choose well.
Concretly at work, this means having a proactive management of your calendar. Knowing what you want to achieve every week and allocating time for that. Turning down meetings where you are not required. Showing up and leaving on time, even if others don’t. It is their way of spending their time, not yours. Yes perceptions and expectations exist in many companies, which make people work back late or answer e-mails outside of hours. But these tend to be specific to an organisation, not everywhere. So if the work culture does not fit your own goals, it might be time to look elsewhere.
We tend to forget that we are here to achieve what we long for. We get sucked into the routine of working, earning a living and feeling like we ‘have to’. Like we are constantly chasing a moving target, that we are pretty unclear about, apart for the chasing bit. Whilst on the contrary we are here to choose what we want out of our life and career, and make this happen. Your time then becomes your main tool to achieve what you want. Once you see through this paradigm, managing your time gets a lot easier.
On the other hand – and you are seeing this coming – there are plenty of ways where we let our time go to the bin, by our own actions. Browsing social media aimlessly twenty times a day is one. Agreeing to a meeting only to tune out for most of it is another. Look in your own weeks – where are you sitting idle or not knowing where your time has gone? To quote a few amazingly powerful time wasters: watching your inbox, checking your phone, doing mindless work because it’s easy, spending time with people you don’t get on with, even doing the dishes (vs. doing something of value). What’s on your list?
There are many ways to optimise your time – and they don’t fit this post. The key is to focus on deciding how your time gets spent, like money. And you put towards it what you want out of life. Start being aware every day if what you are doing is a worthy use of your time. Even reading this post! Literally.
For more time management tips, download the Productivity and Time Management Guide from my Library (link here – password in your welcome e-mail). Time management is a discipline, like exercising or learning a new skill – so it takes effort. But it pays big dividends. And since nobody is going to serve you time on a silver tray, it’s really up to you to nurture yours.
