The Heart Of Business

Is it just my perception or is life getting faster?  I long for the days when tasks didn’t overlap each other, when there was a weekend, and when the work day didn’t begin at dawn and end in darkness.  But, I can’t slow down.  Too much to do.  Too busy, again.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s too busy.  Every place I go, when I ask people how they are doing, the response is “busy.”  And then they follow up with some quip, “better to busy than slow, better than the alternative, ha ha.”

Why are we so busy?  Is it possible that we’ve forgotten how to prioritize and focus on the important things in our lives, instead of focusing solely on urgent tasks?  It is a vicious cycle and a hard one to break, but if we don’t begin focusing on the important things in our lives, there’s a good chance that we’ll always be too busy.  To begin focusing on the important issues, we need to clearly understand what we spend our precious time doing each day.

Years ago, when I attended a time management seminar, the instructor asked those of us in the class to keep track in great detail how we spent each hour of each day for two weeks.  I thought that this assignment was quite absurd at the time, but since we needed to report back to the class in two weeks, I complied.  It was astounding how much time I spent doing useless tasks and responding to other people’s crises.  These tasks kept me from doing the things I held as important, but because my tasks weren’t urgent, I put them on the back burner.

I suggest that you try this exercise, even if you don’t think you need to do it.  My guess is that you’ll be astounded, too.  You will probably find yourself turning on your computer, checking your e-mail, and before you know it, two hours will have passed.  You’ll probably find many other things you do on a daily basis that keep you from focusing on what you want to do with your life.  After the exercise is complete and you know the activities on which you have been spending your time, the real work begins: changing your behavior.  As you may suspect, this is easier said than done.

Here area a few ideas that I have tried:

Focus on the important tasks first:  Each day you will be confronted with things to do and people to see and talk to, including people who rely on you for various reasons that don’t fit into your description of important.  Set aside a time of day for these things that are important to others but not necessarily to you.  But make sure you have first been able to spend significant time on the issues you deem important.

Organize your task list:  Stephen Covey gave us an excellent tool in his book “ The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  He suggests organizing  tasks by the following four categories:

1.  Not Important, Not Urgent
2.  Not Important, Urgent
3.  Important, Urgent
4.  Important, Not Urgent

Obviously, the key is to work on the important tasks.  We will always have important tasks that are urgent, but as we focus on the important tasks that are not urgent instead of the not important tasks, the theory is the important tasks will not grow into urgent status.

Let your colleagues know what you are doing:  Enlist help from your colleagues.  Let them know that you are trying to organize your time to be more effective.  Ask for their support and negotiate the amount of time and when you will be able to spend time together to help each other.

These simple behaviors might be difficult to initiate, but if you stick with them, they will yield results.  The more you develop these new habits, the less “busy” you will be.

I’d like to hear from you:

• Do you have an example of someone who is exemplary in his or her time management? • Does that person use any special techniques that you have observed? • Have you seen these techniques manifest into any specific behaviors? 

Until next week…

Craig

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.