I have always been in awe when reading stories of business owners, executives and other leaders that talk about only getting 3-4 hours of sleep per night. I am in awe as I wake up dreary from my 8 hour nightly nap. How are they able to function on such little sleep? And, the more important question, what are they doing with the 20+ waking hours they have at their disposal?
One commodity which levels the playing field for every man, woman, boy and girl no matter what race, religion, creed, color, class or…you name it… is that we are all given 24 hours in a day equally. How we choose to use that time is what separates each of us.
How do you use the time you’ve been allotted?
I realized a few months ago that I was spending a lot of time on activities, processes and work that really didn’t offer me profitable, tangiable and relevant results. I sure looked busy, and was very involved, but when it came time to account for the time I was not producing results.
Some questions to consider.
1. Is your perfectionism costing you valuable time? Being a perfectionist is not inherently bad. In most cases, I like to keep a few perfectionists around me to help keep details in focus. However, too much perfectionism can be a hinderance as well. How much time did you spend perfecting an idea when you could have been implementing the plan and acting on it?
2. How many pointless meetings did you attend last week?
When I first started my career, I wanted to attend as many meetings as possible. The allure of being a professional and needing to attend meetings was more of a status thing for me. I thought that attending meetings made me look important. I quickly realized that most meetings are a waste of time. I read an article by a company that purchased a meeting time clock. Whenever they held a meeting, they inputted the hourly wage of each person in attendance. As the meeting progressed, the cost of hosting that meeting was constantly at the forefront. As each second passed, the price went up. Each person in attendance was using their allotted time to sit in the meeting. The results of this made the company be sure that every minute of their meeting’s were used as effeciently as possible. After all, Time Is Money!
3. How are you allocating your schedule?
Do you have a filter in place to keep valuate your time? Franklin Covey explains this with the ‘Big Rock, Little Rock Principle.’ Take a jar. This jar represents your allocation of time. You then have a handful of Big Rocks and a handful of Little Rocks. The goal of this exercise is to fill the jar with the rocks. To make a long illustration short, the only way to make all the rocks fit in the jar is to fill it first with the Big Rocks, then let the Little Rocks fill in the gaps around. What is the application? You must first focus and allocate your time to your Big Rocks, Family, Faith, Major Goals, Priorities. From there you can allows the little rocks to fill in the rest of your time. By focusing your time on priorities, you will find that you have more time and get more of the tasks that are important to you accomplished.
What steps are you going to take today to focus on your priorities? Let us offer you some suggestions on making your life more simple. Contact us today for a list of ways to save time in your organization.
