My Time Management = My Life Management

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days....it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”              

Annie Dillard

In our consulting, it is very rare for people to come up to me and say, "Hey, I have got plenty of time and not much to do." In our experience, so many people feel stressed and under constant time pressure, dogged by their many commitments and hampered in achieving them.

As a result, people often work harder and longer, often at the expense of spending time with family and friends, often at the expense of their health and well-being.

My purpose in providing this website is to offer a range of strategies to work smarter. To manage time, lead a life of value, and experience the satisfaction of achievement and pride in your accomplishments.

So if you, like so many of us, feel you have inadvertently joined the new generation of techno-slaves, welcome! Or if you just want to get the very best out of your days, welcome!

Does this sound familiar?

  • Spending 2-3  hours and more reading and responding to emails,
  • Trying daily to manage up to 20 trivial low-value interruptions,
  • Responding to seemingly urgent requests,
  • Attending too many unproductive meetings, 
  • Spending up to 45 minutes a day looking for stuff you've lost somewhere in a file,
  • Multiple handling your email, tasks, and documents,
  • Procrastinating on your big-ticket items,
  • Waking up at night worrying about the things you haven't done,
  • Losing sight of your long-term personal ambitions,
  • Concerned that your relationships need more time and care.
 

Where should you start your time management journey?

In my experience, time management consists of three elements

  1. Efficiency. Efficiency is like climbing a ladder quickly. As such, efficiency is about doing things right and doing them quickly.
  2. Effectiveness. Effectiveness is asking the question of whether the ladder is leaning up against the right building. So effectiveness is whether I spend my time on the highest investment return. 
  3. and the habits and routine to regularly implement. 

Performance is a balance between efficiency and effectiveness, and by tweaking work habits in little ways, you can dramatically increase the quality of your life.

In my experience, effectiveness is more important than efficiency.

It is more important to ensure you are spending your time on the highest-impact activities rather than worrying about whether you have a clean Inbox or your files are all named correctly.

However, it is challenging to deal with effectiveness from an implementation viewpoint if we haven’t sorted out efficiency.

So what tactics to choose when wanting to improve time management….. your tactics can be found below.

Start where you feel the pain the most. Then, each strategy you apply will strengthen your resolve to go further and build a habit of progress rather than perfection.

“You cannot start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.” 

Michael McMillan

Overcoming Procrastination

Are you a specialist in action avoidance? A wiz at justification? a Maestro of excuses?

Find out what kind of procrastinator you are and get on with your life.
Too Stressed to Focus

A brain flooded with cortisol simply can’t think straight.

Alleviate the stress that is getting in your way of you using your time well – and on the way feel a lot better.
Stay on Top of Email

The sink-hole of email can swallow up to 30 hours of your week. Plug it now and stop the drain strain.

Here are 8 tips to get on top of email today.

Prioritize Now

There is a highway for getting things done - effective goal setting sounds cliché – but here is how you get rubber on the road. As with every road trip you start with a clear set of directions and a good easy-to-read map. Simple right?

The 4D approach makes it so.

Time Management Tips

Did you know we spend 46.9% of our days with our minds wandering off task, 6 weeks looking for stuff we already have and up to 4 hours daily on interruptions?

But we really want to stay on task…these tips will help.
Personal Time Management

If only I had spent more time on... the catchcry of the chronically time-poor.

Keep up your energy for work and play and nurture the people and pursuits nearest and dearest to you.

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