Use self-management to do more each day

The Office Coach

IMAGINE a life with less. Less stuff. Less clutter. Less stress. Less debt.

Now, imagine a life with more. More time. More meaningful relationships.

A life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you are imagining is an intentional life.

Not a perfect life. Not even an easy life, but a simple one.

What differentiates the high achievers, the people who get so much done every day, is their self-management, their ability to manage their thoughts, bodies and environments.

Apply these four techniques to create the temporal “space” needed to achieve more with less stress:

1. Visualise your ideal day, with time enough to focus on each of the areas that you value. Think about how you would feel at the end of such a day.

Would you feel a sense of accomplishment? Of fulfilment? Of deeper satisfaction? How would your relationships with yourself and your loved ones be affected?

Now, create a statement, in the present tense, that captures how you need to behave to achieve this kind of day. For example, “I am focused on what is important and do not feel guilty about those things I choose not to do”.

Notice that this is an action-oriented, empowering statement.

2. Prioritise what you do and what you give attention to. You can create more time in your day by focusing on important activities and not urgent activities.

Important activities are those with an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals. Urgent activities demand immediate attention, and are usually associated with achieving someone else’s goals.

They are often the ones we concentrate on and they demand attention because the consequences of not dealing with them are immediate. Shift from “fire-fighting” into a more strategic mode through planning, prioritising, delegating and pushing back.

3. Organise in a way that suits your personality. Popular culture would have you believe that logical, methodical and analytical people are left-brain dominant, while the creative and artistic types are right-brain dominant.

“Left-brainers” are said to crave designated locations for everything. Because they like to sort, options with compartments can be especially satisfying.

Categorising by date or event comes naturally.

“Right-brainers” are advised to forget about trying to adhere to strict rules, opting instead to organise using creative and the emotional tools.

4. Mobilise yourself to “Just Do It” (as Nike advocates). So much time is wasted agonising over whether to do something, or procrastinating, or trying to multi-task.

Trying to multi-task is one of the biggest time wasters in our day – multi-tasking is a myth!

Dave Crenshaw coined the term “switch-tasking” and defined it as “attempting to do multiple attention-requiring tasks at the same time”. When most people say they are “multi-tasking”, they are actually switch-tasking.

Each “switch” in attention incurs switching cost, which includes a loss of time, decrease in performance and an increase in stress levels.

By choosing to focus on one task at a time, to being fully engaged in that one task through to completion, we can create temporal space in our days.

Self- (not time-) management is a life skill that can be learned. Contact deirdre@theofficecoach.co.za for a copy of a self-assessment that can help you better understand yourself. The results will point you to the specific tools that will help you to work more efficiently and create temporal space.