Tweet

The Elusive FailSafe Time Managment Strategy

Written by: Laura Young

Article Overview: You've Mind Mapped and Gotten Things Done. You have a Blackberry and 7 Highly Effective Habits. When you feel sassy, you kick it old school with Post It notes and a hand written To Do List and you still can't make that time management stuff work out in actual life the way it looks on paper! What's the problem?! Is it you?

The Elusive FailSafe Time Managment Strategy

You've Mind Mapped and Gotten Things Done. You have a Blackberry and 7 Highly Effective Habits. When you feel sassy, you kick it old school with Post It notes and a hand written To Do List and you still can't make that time management stuff work out in actual life the way it looks on paper!

What's the problem?! Is it you?

Possibly. Planning is a favorite self-sabotage technique of many a would-be successfully self-employed person.

However, it may be that you are using the right tool in the wrong way.

But first, a distinction:

There is a difference between ACTIVITY and ACTION.

Planning is an activity. It makes you feel like you have done something. Activity is the shallow stuff. Reorganizing your files. Making new folders. Cleaning your closet. Reorganizing your inventory. Reading e-mails and surfing (Yeah, I know, it's "research".).

It isn't that activities of this nature are bad, but it is important to remember these are not foundation setting ACTIONS. Actions are meaty. They get you somewhere. They represent actual movement, integrated, results oriented, "you are now in a different place on the path" movement.

It's important to understand this distinction so you don't ask your new planning software or system to do for you what it cannot. And what it will do for YOU may be different than what it will do for ME because we may have different organizational needs. We may be using our planning efforts to achieve different goals.

For example, some people fall into excessive planning when they are afraid of stepping out. They don't feel ready, legitimate or fully prepared to embrace their new venture publicly. This is the "let me just read one more book" person, always on the verge of being ready.

Some people think that thinking IS doing. They also confuse things like revenue and profit. There is a gap between the internal picture and the external reality and often it's a blind spot. This is one place where coaches are particularly effective resources.

Some people make goals out of fear. I used to do that. Oh, Andy has a blog? I'd better get one! Andrea has a book? I'd better start writing! Oh, Alice told me I need to read this book? Must get over to Amazon. Michael is teaching classes? Guess I should add that to my offerings, too. What's this? No way can I make a living only doing 1:1 coaching? (Even though I have been for 6 years!). Oh no! I have to make a bunch of passive revenue streams! I was basically taking every good idea that I saw,and accepting every prediction for my business by people who didn't know me as true and adding to my own list because I thought I had to model my success after every one else. Coaches are notorious for this, but I see other self-employed people doing the same thing. In fact, Americans in general can be prone to this. Oh, Oprah said I need to do these 10 things for a happy life? Put 'em on the list. And, summer is coming...let me get those thinner thighs while I'm at it.

This is YOUR list, first and foremost. What do YOU want out of life? How are the goals you are setting and the plans you are making relating to your values? Are you setting goals based on your assessment of what you know to be true for you or on what others are telling you that you will have to do to "win the game"? What is the game, exactly? How are you defining success?

When you have a handle on THEN progress to these questions about organizational aids: What are you trying to organize and what function does writing things down serve for you? Does it calm you down? Help you focus? Get you to do things? Help you identify where you need help or guidance?

Some folks start using tools and systems before they really have identified their need for them. It's not that different from buying kitchen gadgets. Everyone needs an apple corer and lemon zester, right? And muffin tins. And how about wrist watches? Have to have one, right? Well, I haven't owned one in YEARS. YEARS AND YEARS. Every place I go, including my car, is full of time pieces. Sometimes we assume we need things just because they are so common.

Let your need guide your hand here.

As a recovered time organizing flunkee, let me share some insights with you that have made all the difference in the world for me:

What I have come to understand now is that I am a visual organizer. I think through my fingers and all those pretty markers and graph lines (I'm an old school organizer) help my brain with conceptualization of my goals. I have a serious freedom jones, however, so I know that putting down a formal to do list is the kiss of death for me. I need the field defined, but not each stepping stone. Sometimes I want to walk on the grass, or cut through the brush. Sometimes I LIKE learning things the hard way because once I've learned something, I KNOW I've got it.

Even when I thought I had a doable 'to do list' that wasn't soul crushing, the fact is that when I am on the right path there is so much synchronicity that happens that I HAVE to abandon my original plans to accomodate the better opportunities that come along that I had no idea were going to show up.

What does this mean for time management?

For me, doing my conceptual work on paper includes asking myself the basic question WHY? Why is this on the paper?

Once I know the WHY, what I find I need is a flow chart and a general sense of my calendar. Spring and fall will NEVER be times for big projects. I have an acre of perennial gardens. I can't redo my website when the weeds start to come up or I'll regret it all summer long. I always take a week with my husband to celebrate our anniversary, so June is out for major projects, as well. February and March, however, are dead times in Chicago...what a great time for marrying myself to my computer, redoing my website, tweaking my infrastructure and writing book chapters! The fact is, I have about 6 dedicated weeks a year (without scheduled clients, home/garden demands or vacations) to devote to big projects. That's it. Suddenly a year, which seems so long, becomes much more concrete to me when I really look at the flow of the predictable demands.

Remember: there will always be unpredictable demands. My parents both had major health crisis in the last 4 months. Welcome to middle age, baby. Better leave some wiggle room.

When you align yourself with the larger rhythms of your life and the natural world (like my garden seasons) and have a sense of your values, you will become a much better gatekeeper where your goals and projects are concerned.

Better gatekeeper means less organizing to do. Make friends with the concept of time and it's limits. Time management is NOT about making more of it. It's not about turning yourself in to an efficient robot that never wastes a moment. It's about learning to flow within the time that is available and recognizing that it is a limited resource. It's about making friends with it.

Time is a non-renewable resource.
So are you.


Laura Young, M.A. is a life and business coach and owner of Wellspring Coaching. She is a contributing author to A Guide to Getting It:Purpose and Passion, Become Your Own Great and Powerful and A Guide to Getting It: Creative Intelligence, due out Spring 2006.
Laura specializes in working with individuals facing midlife transitions (personal and career), self-employed individuals on business development strategies and high level leaders on communication and leadership skills.
Please visit her blogs and website to tap in to her extensive resource base.

Related Articles
  Topics You Might Not Want to Share With Those You Supervise
  Lesson #5: Build a Strong Team
  Create Leaders for Business Sustainability
  What are the 3 biggest challenges faced by supply chain/purchasing professionals today? (Survey Result 16)
  The Key to Happiness

Article Tags:



Related Forum Posts
Book: Secrets of Six Figure Women - Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to up your earning and change your life Barbara Stanny, 2002 Jacket: Maybe you've noticed - a subtle trend is gathering steam. Quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is increasing, and it continues to rise at a rate faster than for men. From entrepreneurs to corporate executives, from white collar executives to free lancers and part timers, women are forging careers with considerable financial success. Through extensive research and hundreds of interviews, including dialogs with more than 150 high earners whose annual incomes range from $100,000 to 7 million, Stanny discovered that ...they all had certain traits in common: 1) a profit motive 2) Audacity 3) REslience 4) Encouragement 5) Self-awareness 6) Non-attachment 7) Financial knowhow She amplifies on these in the book itself. Table of Contents Intro: Welcome to the era of the six-figure woman 1. The Queen in the Countinghouse 2. The Lowdown on low earners 3. Raising the bar 4. Strategy 1: The Declaration of Intention 5. Strategy 2: Letting go of the ledge 6. Strategy 3: Get in the Game 7. Strategy 4: Speak Up 8. Strategy 5: The Stretch 9. Strategy 6: Seek Support 10. Strategy 7: Obey the rules of money 11. Claiming our power Appendces: Resources and websites Tips for getting out of dent Investing Basics: Wealthbuilding 101
Question: What has been your biggest business challenge? - Regardless of the industry they may be in, it seems all small business owners and entrepreneurs face similar key challenges in growing their business and becoming as profitable as they would like. These can be grouped into the categories of "Time", "Team", "Money", and "Exit Strategy". What has been your most significant challenge, the one that seems to be your biggest hurdle to moving forward and achieving the level of business success (however you define that) that you would like to? If you could have one issue solved in your business, what would that be? Your insights are invaluable and I appreciate your honesty. Regards, Gavin
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - We've also expanded the list for Contest and All-Time Leaders. It's great to now see David and Yinka on the All Time list and recognize the contributions they've made to the forums!
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Re: Question: What has been your biggest business challenge? - [quote="gcr1976a":1niq7gnj]Regardless of the industry they may be in, it seems all small business owners and entrepreneurs face similar key challenges in growing their business and becoming as profitable as they would like. These can be grouped into the categories of "Time", "Team", "Money", and "Exit Strategy". What has been your most significant challenge, the one that seems to be your biggest hurdle to moving forward and achieving the level of business success (however you define that) that you would like to? If you could have one issue solved in your business, what would that be? Your insights are invaluable and I appreciate your honesty. Regards, Gavin[/quote:1niq7gnj] The biggest hurdle for moving forward and achieving the level of business success for me is getting enough traffic to my website a day. There are many ways to do this, and there are many "perfect plans" out there, but doing so is a lot harder than it seems. That's why I must keep trying.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

The new marketing question. Will they follow?

Severance and Separation Agreements

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.