Different Time Management Situations

We all have a life situation that is unique to us. This is why there is no straight forward way to do anything. If there was a cookie cutter solution to everything to life, we would all be doing it. Don’t get me wrong, there is always room to improve anything. Time management is not an exception. We all have different time management needs that will vary from time to time. It is important to understand that everyone has a unique situation that changes as our lives do. Here are just a few examples of what we should understand about a different time management situation.

1. Someone is a student. When you are a student you need to organize your classes, exams, assignments, etc. Time management plays a large role but not the only role in success in school.

2. Regimented schedule. There are situations where your time is completely managed by someone else; for example, like basic training in the military (thank you for your service). In this situation, the time management advice does not do you a whole lot of good.

3. Working a 9-5 job. You don’t have much control over your work hours and frequently not what you do at work depending on your situation. In this case most likely you will be able to do a lot of things that you will be able to make yourself as efficient as you can.

4. A lot of freedom over your time. There are many different reasons you can be in a situation like this. You may be an entrepreneur and are responsible for all of your time, you may be retired and have your time to yourself. You may be working a really flexible job or you are a freelancer. If you do find yourself in this category, then time management is the most important to you than the others.

Remember that everyone is unique and has an unique situation. There are situations that can require us to improve our time management situations that may call for us to lay off the regimented schedule for a while. For example, a vacation or a significant life event can cause having a schedule to take a back seat for a while.

My Dad’s Efficiency

This week I will not be releasing a typical blog post. My dad passed away on Saturday and I want to take time to honor him for who he was. He always loved to get things done and be very efficient. He was excited about crossing many items off of a to do list and then bragging about how much he got done! Like me, he was very systematic and always had a system set up to do the things the best he can. He was also obsessed with being organized. As I grew up I became more organized and systematic. Dad has always set an example of productivity and I will continue to carry the torch. Thank you all for reading.

Practice Makes Perfect

We have all heard the phrase “practice makes perfect.” While I personally believe perfection at anything is really hard to define, I do want to emphasize that the more you do something, the better you can get at it. This is true if when you have a knack for something and also true if you are terrible at something. The only difference is that you go from good to great or from terrible to just bad at something. The same applies to productivity and time management. It is a skill that can be developed as you practice it. There are several ways to “practice” your productivity that can get you further along. Here are a few examples.

1. Keep making schedules and practice your routine. As I have said in previous posts, making some kind of schedule is a skill that can be enhanced when used. It is something you can get better at. I should also mention that making a schedule and actually following it is two different skills.

2. Tracking your time. Deciding on how you want to track your time and how much you want to track is the first step. The next step is actually doing it and getting results that are helpful for time management decisions.

3. Evaluating goals. It is a skill in itself to establish goals. It is another to track the progress of your goals. It is yet another to actually achieve goals. All of these things are challenging, but we better with time.

4. Keep working at it. There are several times when you are working on something but get off track. It can be easy to get discouraged in the beginning, especially when you are not good at something to begin with. Making an effort to improve will get you to where you need to be. It is best practice to only compare yourself with yourself, not with others.

There may be times when it seems like we are really off track or inefficient. Just remember, it’s like playing a sport like basketball, leaning a subject, reading, writing, math, etc. It is something you can get better at and will. There are times where I get so far off track despite doing this for a long time, we will all have off days. Just remember, whenever you are have an off day, don’t compare your day with yesterday, but rather from longer ago when you started working on improving productivity.

The Perils of Flying Time

I wanted to give this post an unusual title mainly to put an emphasis on the topic. Time flies by very quickly and here’s a spoiler alert, it doesn’t seem to slow down. The older any person gets it seems to speed up. As you may know if you know me is that I do have a really strong long-term memory and can recall details of any given date for over a decade. This ability only magnifies the reality that time flies by and waits for no one. The events from a year ago feel like they just happened. As I go through my memories, I feel both a joy for the progress I have made in certain areas, what has changed for the better, and what I have learned. On the other hands, I know there are goals that I had a year, two years, and even 5+ years ago that I haven’t reached. There are things that haven’t happened and I don’t know why they haven’t. We all have these kind of thoughts when we look back and realize how quickly our lives do go by. It is so easy to think of when you are young that you have so much time, but don’t let this be a reason to procrastinate or wait until later. If there is something you can do now, do it now! There is no reason to wait because if you keep putting it off until tomorrow or some day, you will realize five years later that those days never actually came! Here are a few reminders for you whenever you want to put something off until tomorrow, next week, next month, etc.

1. Time goes by quicker than you think. All of our lives are busy in some way. There is so much information coming at you these days and all kinds of events that each day brings us that make the day fly by. One minute you sit down with a cup of coffee in the morning and before you know it, you are turning the lights off to go to bed. Now it is hot outside, but before you know it we will have the snow shovels and heavy jackets out.

2. Procrastination is your really your worst enemy. To re-emphasize my last point, whenever we put things off, it doesn’t help us. Putting off something until next week, may actually end up being years!

3. Limit the number of projects you have going on at the same time. The more you have going on the same time, the quicker time will fly and the quicker you will realize that you are not really making progress because you are scattered all over the place. This is all the reason more to have focused and detailed goals

4. Don’t drive yourself crazy. Another mistake you can make is that you take the realization of how quickly time flies too seriously. When you do this, you try to accomplish too many things too quickly and burn yourself out. You do this long enough you will drive yourself into the ground and you won’t be able to do anything for a while if you really go too far to the point of serious burnout.

I encourage you to make it a practice to realize that time will go by quicker than you anticipate and you have less time then you think. In the short term, you should plan 8 hours for something that you think should take 5 or 6 hours. In the long term, plan a year if you think it’s 8 months. Of course this is not an exact science, but a general rule of thumb is to plan for more time than you have. This will relieve you of a lot of stress and aggravation. Finally, this works on the other side as well, giving yourself too much time to accomplish something will give you the license to continually procrastinate and keep putting something off until “some day” which as a reminder, is not a day of the week and will not go on a calendar. I hope this serves as a reminder as it does for myself as a push to get working on your goals!

What is Your Productivity Personality?

We all have an unique personality. There are several different types of tests you can take to find out more about your personality. I am pretty sure you have heard of introversion and extroversion. You have probably heard of task orientated vs people orientated. There are many tests you can take to help you find out more about yourself like the MBTI, Color Code, DISC Assessment, Enneagram, etc. For over a decade I have been fascinated about the concept of personality and how learning about it can help you and those around you to work better and more productively. Productivity is an important part of everyone’s life and is the goal for everyone alike whether you are a business owner, manager, employee, a parent, and even a student. Just like we have our own personality, we have our styles on what make us the most productive. Below are just a few examples of productivity personalities.

1. Yak Yak Yak to the Bank. Most people look at someone who talks a lot and wants to always be interacting with other people as not productive, but that is only the case in a task orientated atmosphere. There are careers for people like this like talk show host, news reporters, speakers, hostesses, etc. These people really do get energized by interaction with others and discussion and even if people like this are not in a job that requires interaction, allowing them a few breaks just to shoot the breeze with others will boost their productivity. I am like this in the way that I get energy from interaction and that talking to people will help me energy to focus on something.

2. Line em up and mow em down. This is the person that just wants to get things done. People like this are like a freight train and will barrel through whatever they are doing. It is best not to disturb this person when he or she is in the zone. That is unless you don’t mind getting run over. I could be like this at times, but not always. This is the person who may have a to do list of over 100+ items, and plans on accomplishing all of those items right away. This I brings me back to a time when I did actually have about 100 items completed on a to do list in one day.

3. Best left alone. This is the opposite of the talker and a person that really needs to be left alone to focus. They do their best work alone and hate being interrupted. Now pretty much no one likes to be interrupted, but this productivity style hates it the most. There is plenty of work in the world that requires a deep focus so it is good to let this person do that.

4. Planning and analyzing but not enough doing. Some people prefer to plan rather than take action. We can make great detailed schedules but get bored trying to follow them and can get off track. Or maybe we just like that part of the process so much that that we get stuck in them. This type of person will most likely love details and will notice all kinds of things that the rest of us may overlook.

5. The “lazy” one. Some people do not place a high value on productivity, therefore they prioritize other aspects of life. It is important to find out why someone on your team doesn’t work as they should or carry their weight and address it. They may not always be lazy either as there may be life circumstances outside their control to cause then to be this way. Also, someone who may appear “lazy” may just be slower paced, calm, and relaxed. This is a very valuable characteristic in organizations. This is why I use the quotation marks for lazy because what I intend to do here is provide a different perspective.

As you may have concluded already, we are much more complex than what we see here in this list. We are probably all a combination of at least two and probably a little of all of them at times. Each of you should be able to identify one that fits you the most but will probably different ones at different times and for different reasons. We are all wired differently and are productive in different ways. It is definitely beneficial to understand each other and what makes us tick the most towards productivity.

Why You May Not Have Enough Time

We all have gotten so busy that we don’t have enough time. Some people are busier than others. We all know the person who is always so busy and gets stressed out but can’t seem to figure out why. Then there is the person who loves being busy and gets energized by living a life of constant chaos. There are also people who somehow always seem to have free time somehow. Our lives change all the time so we have problem been on both ends of continuum of busyness at one time or another. If you are finding yourself on the busy end of the spectrum for any length of time, and especially if it has been going for an extended period of time, here are some of the reasons why.

1. You can’t say no. If you are a yes man/woman, you are probably committing to way more than you can handle. There are a lot of people with a lot of needs, and the more you see it your responsibility to fulfill as many of those as you can, your time will quickly run low. Personally, I don’t struggle with this and sometimes even err on the side of saying no too easily. I do know several people from many different seasons in my life who were always short on time due to over commitment to others.

2. Too many projects/interests and over-commitment. Maybe you are like me and didn’t have too much of an issue saying yes to others too easily. However, you can be too busy by having too many interests and projects and getting involved with too many activities. In this case; however, no one is asking you to do these things, you may just be overzealous and trying to do a little bit of everything. This one I have been guilty of much more frequently. This is especially common for high school and college students, but can happen at any stage in someone’s life if they are prone to it. The best way to avoid this is to first realize that you do struggle with it, and then monitor it more closely so you know not to do it.

3. Poor Planning. There are many ways you can plan poorly. Some people just don’t have planning as their strong suit. However, it is not always so cut and dry. There are many other reasons someone can poorly plan. For example, not having enough or only having incomplete information can result in a poorly designed plan. A deadline that is unrealistically short will ultimately end in failure.

4. You don’t like what you are doing. I have been here. In the seasons where I really don’t like what I am doing, I felt like I never had enough time. The ultimate cause of this is that you spend a lot of time doing what you really don’t like doing, only to then spend a lot of time doing what you enjoy doing to make up for it. This will stretch you thin. While I understand work isn’t always going to be fun, it doesn’t to be terrible and draining you until you burn out either. If this is the case, I would recommend working towards finding something that is better suited for you so that way you won’t have to find a large amount of time to do what you want to do on top of your regular commitments.

There are many situations you can end up trapped without enough time. It has happened several times in my life. This would most frequently happen to me in school. I didn’t like the pressure of studying, tests, homework, and projects. It never felt like I had enough time in school and it was very frustrating. This happened at other times as well, it also happened when I was in a job that I didn’t enjoy. I would try to have all of the fun outside later on when I should have been doing other important things, like sleeping. Fortunately for me, I would never compromise on sleep too much, I know people who really spread themselves thin. I want to thank you again for reading, and would like to know what your experience with having enough time has been like.

What is Urgent is Not Always Important

The phone rings, you get a notification or a text, or someone walks into the room frantic saying this has to be done now or ASAP. You were working on your goals for the next quarter while all of this happened. If your experience is anything like mine, there are several instances on when you are doing something important but get interrupted by something urgent. Don't get me wrong, there will also be several instances on when what is urgent is also important. However, I would advise against mistaking everything that is urgent as important. Here are just a few ways to distinguish what is important vs what is urgent.

1. Urgent things are imposed upon you while important things are contemplated. People will usually impose an urgent request to you like "cut this check right away" or "return this report to me by the end of the day." Sometimes the urgency is legitimate and other times it is fabricated. In most cases though it is coming from someone else.

2. Urgent things come up suddenly. This is pretty much the definition of urgent. Something that is important has been important already, before you woke up today and far before this and several other urgent things have come up in your life. The urgent thing is something unplanned for and frequently takes precedence over very important tasks, even when they shouldn't be.

3. Urgent things can easily derail you. I have countless days I can speak of where my plans for the day have been completely derailed because of urgent matters. This is where many factors come into play. Some people are much better at handling urgency better than others, some people are much better at deciding what is actually urgent correctly more than others, and this can get even more complicated when dealing with teams and all kinds of other factors that can play into this.

4. Important things need to be planned for in advance. Since you cannot plan for when urgent matters will arise, you can plan for important tasks that you know of already. It is best practice to plan with flexibility in the event that something urgent does arise.

As you know, life can get very complicated. There are all kinds of events, tasks, people, etc. competing for our time and our attention. There are so many things that can arise and take us off of the course that we were on already. While this isn't something that is cut and dry, a good rule of thumb is to put a greater effort towards the things that are important, so that way you make progress towards those longer term goals when not dealing with urgent tasks. It is easy to grow accustomed to urgency and to only pay mind towards urgent tasks. Some people live their lives solely for urgency and are just short of living in constant chaos. If that isn't for you and you are more like me, you probably deal much less with urgency if possible by planning as much as possible. It is important to not err too much on that side either because then you may not embrace urgency enough and not act when you need to. There is a balance required on this as well. The best way to get this is experience.

It is very hard to believe that this year is half over already. I cannot believe how quickly time if flying by. I have been writing this blog for two years! To further emphasize this week's topic, urgent and important are going to meet regarding Time is Me. I have been working on a book for quite a while now, and have been off track for a few months because of a lot of things that have happened personally, but lately I just haven't had enough urgency. It is time to get back on track with Time is Me. More details to follow.

To those of you who have been reading, I want to say thank you and hope you are having a fun, exciting, and productive summer!

Take Another Look at Your Goals

We are coming up at the middle of the year, which is a great time to take a step back and check to see how your goals for the year are doing. As we are in the summer season which frequently is a great time to relax and take inventory. While we are relaxing, having fun, and refueling, it is a good time to take a look at goals. As you plan your next steps, here a few things to consider regarding your goals.

1. Check your annual goals. If you made goals for the year, then this is a great time to see if you are on track. It is quite easy to tell if you are anywhere near the halfway mark or not. It is possible that you are way past the goal or have even completed it already, or on the other hand you may not even be close.

2. Reconsider your evaluation system. If you check your goals weekly and it works well, then stay on track and keep it going. However, if whatever you do isn't working, it is important to come up with a new goal evaluation system. You may not be checking your goals at all, so now is a great time to start.

3. Make the right adjustments to your goals. Once you decided what goals are right and still right at this point of the year, then it is time to make the right adjustments

4. Get yourself motivated. Motivation is a big part of pursuing goals. It is what gets you going. It is not the whole battle, but you can't go anywhere if you don't start moving towards your goals.

I am personally due for a change in my goal systems. This is also a great time to set up a goal system if you don't have one. It could be great time to be a trial run for your goals by going half a year rather than a full year. Also, you may subscribe to not being concerned about specific time periods at all. Regardless of your thought process, we can always improve our goal system.

Stop Making Excuses

Every once in a while I see a need to write a more motivational post. We all need some motivation on occasion to get us going. This can happen when we get caught up in every day life and all of the things that can come up. We all have things that we want to do and are not doing them and we end up making excuses on why we are not doing what we need to do. This has been the case for me several times. There are several reasons we are not working towards our goal, and excuses we can make. Here are a few of them and what we should do when we make the excuses.

1. I don't have time. This is a major excuse that I had used for a lot of things. I have had times in my life where I was busier and the excuse was more viable, still most of the time not having time is an excuse. This is basically the core of the this blog and what Time is Me is about. We all have the same amount of time in a day that everyone else has.

2. I don't know what to do. Starting something new and reaching a goal can be difficult. However, even when we don't know what to do, you can research on the Internet, ask someone, read a book on the topic, etc.

3. I don't know where to start or what to do next. The best remedy for this is to make a plan and follow it step by step. Flexibility is important still, but with a solid plan in place you at least have a guide to follow while continuing to the next step.

4. I don't think it is going to happen so why bother. There are things that seem impossible that see they will never happen. Even if you try at something and fail, it is better that you tried than if you haven't tried at all.

Here is some motivation for the beginning of the summer. This is a good reminder for all of us, as we can all end up making some kind of excuse at times so this serves as a good reminder.

Boundaries for Your Time

Have you ever seen someone who isn’t concerned about your time? In fact, they are probably not even concerned about their own time. They will call you at any time, talk as long as they want, and somehow always forget when you are busy. There are these kind of people all over and we all have them in our lives. Sometimes they are just jerks and don’t really care about anyone other than themselves, but most of the time they just view the world very differently than you. Regardless of that, it is important to set boundaries regarding your time, or else people will just use your time however they want. In addition, if you don’t have proper boundaries set up for your time, you will be wasting your own time as well. Here are a few things to consider regarding boundaries.

1. Decide what your boundaries are. The very first step is deciding what your boundaries will be and what you should be doing with your time. Otherwise, you won’t know what to say yes or no to.

2. Communicate this with everyone. Be clear about what you want and don’t want to be spending your time doing. We all have things that we don’t want to do but have to, but other than that you do not need to be wasting time on things you don’t want to be doing. 

3. Guard your boundaries. Be consistent with your boundaries. Do not let people cross them or set precedents for things that you know you don’t want in your life. 

4. Don’t be a jerk with it. Some people are better at protecting boundaries than others. Some go too far, and I have found myself in this camp more often than the other way around. There are times when you should make exceptions to the boundaries that you set up and you should go outside of your schedule to help someone or some kind of emergency comes up.

Let me reemphasize the value of boundaries. Boundaries play an important role in many aspects of our lives and by no means is time any different. Time is very important for us and it is something that you can’t get back or make more of like you can with money. Remember that you are going to spend your time doing something, so might as well make sure that you are spending it getting closer to the things that you really need to be doing.