“If I could save time in a bottle.” Jim Croce spoke for all of us when he sang that line over a quarter of a century ago.
How many times have you said to yourself, “I wish I had more time!”?
We all feel that way. Twenty-four hours in a day just aren’t enough in twenty-first century lives.
The lack of sufficient time is one of the greatest causes of stress in our lives today.
* Not enough time to get your work done
* Not enough time to maintain your home
* Not enough time to enjoy your family
* Not enough time to have a family
* Not enough time to plan for the future
* Not enough time to enjoy the present
* Not enough time to relax
* Not enough time to …
Fill in your own blank.
And yet, we are so often guilty of wasting the one commodity that we all yearn to have more of.
I heard on the news this morning that scientists from the British Medical Association have been conducting a study into lifestyle and health. They have reported that people who work over 60 hours a week, and those who regularly deprive themselves of sleep are twice as likely to suffer heart attacks.
Is that surprising?
Nobody can tell you how magically extend each day by a few hours, but there are plenty of strategies that you can easily use to make better use of the twenty-four.
The term ‘Time Management’ is very dangerous. It lulls us into a false sense of security, thinking that we just have to follow a few rules and time will somehow manage itself.
It won’t.
The only management that can have any affect on how your own time is used is self-management. You are in the driving seat – it is time to take hold of the controls.
In this short article, I will discuss two strategies that can seriously improve your working day. There are many others, but introduce these ideas into your life first and you will be on the right track.
First, realize that you are not a clock that ticks perfectly until it stops. People are more like batteries that slowly wear down.
Research shows that the human brain can only work at 100% efficiency for about ten minutes. After that, concentration gradually declines until after about half an hour it is below 50%. At 45 minutes it goes completely.
Yet how often do we push ourselves to work on complex problems for hour after hour?
The same research demonstrates that a ten-minute break is sufficient to recharge the battery to 100% again.
So work smart. Schedule regular breaks every 30-40 minutes. Make a cup of coffee (or preferably herbal tea), visit the restroom, even read your emails. So long as your brain is able to completely detach from the job in hand, it will return to the task firing on all cylinders.
By the same token, most people function at close to 100% efficiency in the mornings, but start to decline rapidly after lunch. The food you eat at lunchtime does have an effect (high carbohydrate food is the worst, high protein the best) but the problem is not just food related.
It is far better to schedule ‘thinking’ work for your best hours (9am – 1pm) and reserve the afternoons for non-vital meetings, dealing with paperwork, filing and planning,
Secondly, become aware.
The very first thing you can do is to become aware of where your day leaks. If time is in a bottle, nobody remembered to put the cork in. Time leaks out of our lives so secretly that few of us notice where the leaks are.
Sealing up just one or two leaks can slow that flow down dramatically.
Take a good hard look at what you do for the next couple of days. Don’t try to make any changes – just note what you are doing and how you feel about it.
Look for external leaks as well as internal ones.
Are you frequently interrupted? The phone, email, colleagues and other distractions don’t mean to mess up your day, but more often than not they do.
About seven years ago I did a survey in a large advertising agency to find out what people had to deal with before they got any work done. The average person had this lot to contend with:
4 genuine business letters 12 pieces of junk mail 18 phone calls (the highest was 63!) 8 emails (email was in its infancy, these were mostly internal) 2 internal meetings 1 sales visitor
Earlier this year I did the same exercise. Junk mail and phone calls had gone up slightly, but emails had rocketed – the average was 37 per day and the highest 236!
That is a lot of wasted time.
Once you become aware of all the leaks in your life, you can set about scheduling them time of their own. Nothing will stop them from happening, but you can control when and how you deal with them.
For example, if you get a lot of emails, turn off the facility in your computer that notifies you each time a new one arrives. This is a huge thief of time. The overwhelming temptation is to check each email as it comes in – ruining your concentration for whatever else you are doing.
When you need your regular concentration-replenishing break, check your emails then – and deal with the most urgent.
Phone calls can be incredibly distracting, but you can at least control the ones you make. Jot down a few brief notes about what you want the call to cover, and stick to them. Don’t get too sidetracked. Again, make your calls in your 10-minute recovery time.
For incoming calls, if you have an answer machine, turn it on when you are trying to concentrate. Always return the calls in your ten-minute recovery time and you will rarely offend anyone. Don’t overdo this, though. Only use it when you really have to think without distractions.
As you can see, there are things that you can do to make your day easier. These are just two simple strategies that can help you make the change from being managed by time, to managing yourself.
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” Harvey Mackay.
Martin Avis is the author of the best-selling ‘Unlock the Secrets of Private Label eBooks’ – a complete blueprint to private label rights success. Visit http://www.plrsecrets.com to see how you can tap into this goldmine for yourself.
