Hi everyone, Chris Coward here, executive coach and leadership development expert. I want to talk today about the thing that is going around in everything I'm hearing from my clients, and I'm even talking about it for me too which is this concept of time management. And what the heck is time management?
The first thing that I'm thinking about is time is finite. We don't have any more time than anyone else. It's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And so we can't really manage time. What we can do though is manage ourselves.
And I think that's the piece sometimes that we're missing. And so as you notice even yourself saying, you might be doing what I'm doing like, "I can't do that all the time, or I don't have time to get x done and y done. And this is really important but I'm not getting it done because I don't have time."
If you think about the important things, and maybe one thing even comes to mind, that you want to get done, you've been putting it off, maybe you're procrastinating, and using the excuse that you don't have time.
It's essential that we time block, which means looking at our calendar, finding the chunk of time, maybe it's just two hours, and locking in that important thing that we want to get done.
And when I say lock it in I mean lock it in. Close your door, turn off all your email pings and your social media notifications, move your phone aside and make sure it's not dinging and buzzing, and really use that time uninterrupted.
You may have to let people know that you're doing this so they will leave you alone and really honor this time for you.
And when we can do that it just feels great. You know this because you've probably experienced this before. And this is just a reminder to bring this back into your life. There's nothing magical about it.
The other thing to really think about with this too is when are you at your best? What kind of conditions do you need personally? Because what I noticed, there's a lot of clients they want time management secrets and tips. And the reality is the first step is to know yourself. Know what your unique way of doing things is.
For example, do you work best bright and early in the morning first thing, or are you a night owl and your chunk of time is going to be best if it's 10 pm at night. That will not be good for me but I know many people that thrive at that time.
Do you like working with others, or do you work best alone? Do you do best when you have a little bit of music in the background, or do you prefer to have utter silence?
Those are just some examples. There's a million of them. And just think about that for yourself. Check in around that. And if you want any support around that I have a handout that I can share for you to do your own self-rating around this.
But I invite you to play with this. Just pick one thing, start small, carve that time out, get ‘er done, and see how good it feels. And check with me and let me know how you do. Good luck with that and have a great day.