IT'S NOT ABOUT TIME MANAGEMENT
“Hmm, this is strangely good,” my husband commented around a bite of chicken satay burger. It was a new paleo recipe I’d tried for dinner, no longer paleo with the burger bun added into the mix, but close enough. “How was your day?” I inquired. (We try to have family meals together during the week and catch up as much as our kids will let us get a word in.) “It was ok. I ended up in call after call and felt like I didn’t get anything done,” he responded. “Daddy did nothing today?!” my daughter interjects with a mischievous smile.
“I got nothing done today” is a sentiment I personally feel and hear often from others- friends, family, clients. Does this mean we’re all spending our day lazing about, stretching and doing deep breathing in between long meal breaks and online shopping? I wish. Sounds amazing. Sadly, no. We are often borderline frantic, tearing through our days like we are on Supermarket Sweep, addressing one mini emergency after another. And at the end of our day, there’s that familiar epithet. I got nothing done.
Too many days like this, and we’re tempted to turn to what my son calls Life Hacks: quick fix tips and tricks for time management. They sound so promising. Wake up early! Batch your tasks! Delegate! Do the easy things first! Yes, I do love a good time management tip. I’ve always been an early riser. I have to do lists with an appendix that refers to another to do list. There are stickies all over my desk and reminders clogging my phone calendar. Most of us a few favorite time management tricks and are always on the hunt for new ones. So why do we continue to feel like we got diddly squat done today?
I think it has more to do with message management than time management. When I say that I got nothing done today, what I’m really saying is that I didn’t get the most important things done. I traded the urgent, unplanned demands of others for the more thoughtful, impactful items I placed on my list and sublist at the beginning of the day. Why did I do this? Because of the messages I send myself about the ways in which I bring value.
Even the most brilliant, strategic, hard-working people I know struggle with this. We trade the strategic and impactful for the urgent and loud because of how we feel about our value and impact. It’s easy to feel like we are valued when we manage our colleague’s urgent issue. We see their response of relief and appreciation when we solve their problem. We can point to this and say, “See, I made a difference today!” We set aside the strategic planning work that we planned in favor of all of the tiny, dramatic problems that come our way over IM, text and email. It happens every day, and it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.
We do this because it’s easy. It’s reinforcing. We say “yes” when we should say “no” or “not now” and we get positive feedback from the people who need their problems solved. The alternative- holing up at our desk with Do Not Disturb on while we tackle bigger picture projects- is much more difficult. It feels selfish, even arrogant. Spending time on strategic work is basically saying, “My longer-term opportunities are more important than your shorter-term problems so I’m going to focus on them.” Or even, “I can have a bigger impact if I spend my time in deep reflection and planning than if I spend it responding to daily demands.” These kinds of messages sound downright audacious. But they are also, most of the time, completely true.
When my clients come to me to work on time management, we don’t start with tips and tricks. We start with the messages they are sending themselves about how they make the biggest impact. In order for all of the time blocking and week planning tricks to work, they have to first believe that by setting aside and protecting strategic time, they are bringing their very best to the work and making the biggest impact. The message has to be, “This is the very best use of my time.” This message has to be so internalized that it no longer sounds audacious. It needs to sound like it is the best way to serve all of the people around us with their hair on fire, trailing flames of the crisis du jour. This is when they start to make real progress with how they manage their time.
Are you unsure of whether you are in need of some message management? Try this: track your success every day for a week, asking yourself whether you got the top three most important things done that day. Maybe you consistently get one of them done each day. Well done! Maybe you don’t even know what the top three most important things are some days. It happens. Chances are, there’s some room for improvement on your message management. Here’s some other ways to build awareness and improve the messages you send yourself about how you make the biggest impact with your time.
Ask yourself what you get paid to do. Bear with me here! At the very essence of your role, what do you get paid to do? You can use this as a focal point for allocating your time.
Track your time for a week. Most of us are unaware of how we really spend our workdays. Keeping a time log can be very eye opening. There are a number of apps available for doing this.
Reflect on how well your time management lines up with what you get paid to do. Would your boss hire you to fight fires 80% of the time? If not, what percentage of your time should be allocated to those activities? To other, more strategic ones?
When you catch your time being hijacked, stop and seek awareness. Ask yourself, what choice am I making right now? Why am I making it? What message am I sending myself about how I bring my best to the work?
Practice saying “No” or “Not Now.” A “no” to something is a “yes” to something else. Saying no can be uncomfortable, but also empowering.
Interested in managing your messages, rather than just your time? Reach out to explore working together!
