How often do you say ‘I don’t have enough time?’ or ‘I have too much to do?’ or ‘Where did the time go?’
In more than a decade of coaching, I’ve never sat with a business owner that has complained that they have too much time! I have sat with many (if not all) business owners who complain that they don’t have enough time.
Time management is a funny term we use, because in the end, you can’t manage time. The clock will keep ticking, you can’t slow it down or stop it (unless you have some cool time machine and if you do, why are you not sharing it with us!!). In the end, time management should actually be called personal management, because we can manage time, but we can manage how we personally use the time available to us.
There are many strategies on time management and how to schedule your time and what to do to more effectively use your time. The challenge I find with time management is that it is a bit like growing an apple tree. To grow an apple tree you have to plant apple seeds. To grow your time, generally you have to ‘plant time seeds’. It means you have to find time to get more time.
One of the best books on time management is ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. It is a great book, all be it a little boring on occasions, but my biggest issue is that it is a really long book! So those people that need to read this book the most to work more effectively, don’t generally have the time to read it!!
I have a simple and easy strategy to implement to start taking control on your time and it works! It is called not negotiable time.
Imagine that you have a specialist doctor’s appointment. You have had to wait 6 months to get this one hour appointment with the specialist doctor. What would it take for you to cancel this appointment? What would have to happen for you to simply not show up to the appointment? Would you take your phone in with you to that appointment and whilst the doctor is talking to you take a call in the middle of the appointment or reply to an ‘urgent’ email? Would your team freak out completely that for that one hour you were totally unavailable to them? Would it be likely that all hell would break lose in that hour and no one would be able to manage or cope without being able to get a hold of you in that hour? What if someone did call you, would they be totally infuriated that they had to leave you a voicemail that you then returned in an hour?
Are you thinking right now, Tracey, this is kind of a ridiculous scenario…. Of course I’d turn up to the appointment, of course I wouldn’t have my phone on, of course people could leave me a voicemail, of course all hell wouldn’t break lose that I could fix if I wasn’t available for just one hour!
So my next question is… why do you value this appointment with the doctor more than you value an appointment with yourself to do something that if important for your business… or life?
To start getting a hold on your time, all it takes is a one hour appointment – with yourself!
Have you ever had just one hour of uninterrupted time and in that hour you got more done than you normally get done in a whole day?
Have you ever had to leave your business early to catch a plane or go to an important meeting and even though you had to leave a few hours earlier than normal, you still got everything you needed to get done that normally takes you the full day to do?
All this strategy takes is for you to decide on the time, turn up at that time, turn off your phone and emails (unless you are using your hour to do calls or emails) and to tell your team that you are not to be disturbed for the hour. Imagine one hour a week – for a start – where you have uninterrupted time to work on those really important things in your business that normally you just run out of time to do.
What do you work on? Up to you, but it might be your cashflow projection, a new marketing campaign, restructuring your business, setting your goals, priorities and activities. What is important in your business, but not urgent, that you are always running out of time to do. This is effectively that old saying of work ON your business, not IN it.
Did you know that one hour is less than 1% of all the available time you have in a week…. Less than 1%! Imagine what focussing what you do in that 1% of your time could do to your business? Could it have a significant impact? Could you feel like you are accomplishing more important things each week and not feel quite so frazzled throughout the week?
It is also amazing that when you know you have that time set aside, you will be calmer in the week not wondering how you will get everything done.
Once you have mastered the one hour a week, why not try to put in two or three, one hour appointments? I recommend you start simply with one hour appointments and then over time you can build up the frequency of those appointment times and then after that build up the time allotted to the appointment time. Bit like building a muscle lifting weights – don’t go to a heavy weight first, build up.
Imagine if your staff all got a not negotiable time each week – uninterrupted – to get the important things in their role done that needs a little absolute undivided attention. What would happen to their productivity.
The key point of this is that this appointment MUST become NOT NEGOTIABLE. That is you don’t miss it, you don’t swap the time unless absolutely necessary and in fact, if you do need to put something in that time, then you MUST reschedule your not negotiable time.
It is only one hour a week, less than 1% of your time … you deserve to make this a priority.
If you are having trouble making it not negotiable then there are two options – swap what time you have it booked for. If you can’t go uninterrupted, then get up early and do your time BEFORE your business opens. Find a time that works. The other option is, imagine that if you are not going to show up for your appointment (which is pretty easy as you are the only one that has to show up by the way….) or you need to reschedule it, imagine that your not negotiable time is with me. If you want to swap, not turn up or reschedule, you have to phone me to about the appointment just as you would if I was also showing up to that appointment. Do you think I will let you get out of that appointment easily? No way!!
Not negotiable time…. It is an simple way to gain control on your time and all it takes is less than 1% of all the available time you have in a week AND you just have to set the time and show up!!
Action Step:
Obviously, I want you to set your first not negotiable time. That was not a far stretch of the imagination right?
What I do want you to do in your first not negotiable appointment (this week… hint hint!) is to write down all the things you can do in your not negotiable time. What are the things you need to work on when doing your not negotiable time? What is the best way to use this valuable time?
Then each week, BEFORE your not negotiable time, I want you to write down a to do list or an agenda of what you will do in that hour. You want to do this prior to the time, otherwise you will waste the first 5 or 10 minutes working out what you need to do and getting the items together for your hour. This should be all worked out PRIOR to the not negotiable appointment time.
Good luck…. Remember that 1% of focussed time might be all the difference to the results you achieve in your business this year!