2/19/2024-Time Management

It’s unhealthy (and lame) to regularly announce, "I’m so busy, I’m so swamped." It’s an admission you’re losing the battle to control your calendar. It’s high time you regain control of time.

Usually, hearing the term time management makes the mice – and sales reps – scurry for the cracks! ("Don’t you start judging how I spend my time!!")

Relax. TM is not a judgment game…it’s a productivity game played by yourself.

The TOP 10% know there are three keys to maximizing time:
1. Understand where you spend your time.

2. Build a disciplined scheduling system (calendar management).

3. Set and manage goals.

If your time spent is not aligned with specific goals, you’ll continue feeling stressed and, ultimately, a time martyr always complaining that you have no time.

Create a personal time tracker that summarizes where you spent your time this past week.

List every time category in the A column of a sheet with names like "prospecting," "client meetings," "internal meetings," "proposal building," etc.

Next, review your calendar from the week and insert your time spent in the B column next to the bucket names.

What does the data tell you? What can you cut? Which category do you need to increase?

Don’t be intimidated by the truth of the data. The facts are there to help steer you toward higher productivity.

What better day than today to examine how you spend your time?

The conditions are perfect: you’re exhausted and have seventy-nine things to do before 6 pm when you promised your sib you’d go shopping for clown suits for your nephew’s 7th birthday party.

Properly managing your time includes repositioning your attitude on how you feel about your time spent. If you feel productive, you’ll enjoy your time working more. Likewise, you’ll feel more fulfilled with your work if you perform tasks aligned with your goals.

Time-tracking exercises present the ultimate question: what will you change to improve your productivity?

One thing is sure: staying the course and changing nothing means more inefficient and, perhaps, disillusionment with your role and work. This is your chance to turn that around, but you must do the work.

Wouldn’t it be great to arrive 20 minutes early to meet your sib later this afternoon instead of 20 minutes late? Where are those 40 minutes going to come from?

Time management models and theories are bountiful. That’s a good thing because what might work for you might not work for the BFF who sits next to you.

If you don’t have time to watch this 13-minute Ted Talk featuring Hitesh Choudhary – then you need to watch Hitesh.

Teaser: Hitesh opens with the bold proclamation that time is unmanageable.

He might be on to something interesting…something that could help IF you find the time.