So let's talk about time management, how to do it, and why it's important.First of all, I want to share a quote with you that I got from Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.Stephen is a genius, and he says, "Time management is a misnomer.The challenge is to manage ourselves." See, you can't actually manage time.It runs at the same speed whatever you decide to do, so you can't really manage time.But what you can do is learn to manage yourself.The big challenge in this day and age is to manage ourselves.We are dealing with all kinds of challenges that we never had to deal with before.Al Reese and Jack Trout who wrote the book positioning, they said in that book that we live in the world's first over-communicated society, meaning that there's too much information and communication coming in.Now they wrote that book back in 1980.Think about that for a moment.They said that we're in the world's first over-communicated society before the internet and before everyone had cell phones and before everyone was dealing with instant messenger and all of these direct access 24/7 ways to get in touch with everyone, anytime, everywhere.So if we were the world's first over-communicated society then, what are we now and what does that mean? Well, where we are now is we are completely drowning in communication.We're drowning in information.We're drowning in distraction and interruption.We're overloaded by all the things that are happening.And in order to confront this, we have to realize that we can't do everything, we can't look at everything, and we can't see everything.We can't take advantage of every opportunity.We have to become very selective.When we talk about time management and productivity, what we're really talking about, again, is self-management and getting ourselves to do the things that are the important things.What you'll find in life is that if you just focus on a few key, important things and do them over and over and over, the rest will take care of itself.If you eat simple meals of healthy food and do a little bit of exercise everyday, health just takes care of itself.If you invest quality time, one on one, in an open dialogue on a regular basis with people that are important to you, the relationship will take care of itself.That's the way things work.But we don't do these things.What we do instead is we eat a bunch of snacks and junk food and forget to exercise, or we say I'll do that later, or we buy the food that has the thing that says low fat on it, and you think, "Oh, that means that I won't have to do any exercise." Or we make a quick call, and we say, "Hey, how are you doing? I love you," and we think that that's quality time.Or even worse, time that we're spending with people that are important to us.We're checking our phones and our Blackberries, and we're looking online and text messaging.We're really not having that deep, quality connection.That is what destroys health and relationships.Well, same thing destroys productivity.It destroys getting results in business and in our lives.When we focus on just those few things that are important, and we figure out how to get ourselves to behave to focus on those things, that's when life really turns around.Interestingly enough, I've discovered that time management really comes down to setting conditions in your life that make it so that you can't do anything but focus on the important things.It's not about making a list of things to do and then doing the right things, although that can be important sometimes.It's about setting up your life and your environment so that you automatically do the things that are important, and you don't have the option to do other things.Examples include when you first get to work in the morning, don't check your voicemail and your e-mail.Work for a couple of hours on your most important project, and work on something that has a high lifetime value.Something that is going to make a lot of value, create a lot of money now and in the future.What do most people do? They come in, they check their e-mail, voicemail, and they see what everyone else has on the agenda for them.Another thing to do is to set aside entire days.Entire days of time where you're only focused on the things that create the most value and bring in the most money so that you're not checking your e-mail.You're not checking your voicemail.You're not doing any of that stuff.You might check your e-mail and your voicemail once or twice during that day, but only for a little period of time.The rest of the time, you're just solely focused on getting something done.Another thing that we need to train ourselves to do is invest time in focused, uninterrupted blocks.Now this is an idea that all the great time management gurus teach.All the way from Peter Drucker back in The Effective Executive.The modern experts like Dan Sullivan, Jim Lare, and Tony Schwartz who wrote The Power of Full Engagement.It's very important to just focus on one thing for an extended period of time.Cultivate the ability to focus your mind.And when you're focused on one thing for an extended period of time and you block out all the distractions and interruptions, and I mean turn off the phone, turn off the computer, turn off everything else, you don't have anything to do but that one thing.So time management, what it is, it's about managing yourself.Not about managing your time.It's about learning how to develop healthy habits and rituals so that you do the right things everyday.And counter intuitively, it's about setting up the conditions in your life physically, emotionally, and logically so that you're forced to do the right thing, and you don't have any other options.So get to work right now doing the right things every day and blocking out, creating an environment that blocks out any distractions and any interruptions so you just stay focused.If you just do that one thing, create an environment that blocks out distraction and interruption and keeps you focused on those few important things, you'll watch your productivity start to skyrocket immediately.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Time Management - What it is and Why It's Important
So let's talk about time management, how to do it, and why it's important.First of all, I want to share a quote with you that I got from Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.Stephen is a genius, and he says, "Time management is a misnomer.The challenge is to manage ourselves." See, you can't actually manage time.It runs at the same speed whatever you decide to do, so you can't really manage time.But what you can do is learn to manage yourself.The big challenge in this day and age is to manage ourselves.We are dealing with all kinds of challenges that we never had to deal with before.Al Reese and Jack Trout who wrote the book positioning, they said in that book that we live in the world's first over-communicated society, meaning that there's too much information and communication coming in.Now they wrote that book back in 1980.Think about that for a moment.They said that we're in the world's first over-communicated society before the internet and before everyone had cell phones and before everyone was dealing with instant messenger and all of these direct access 24/7 ways to get in touch with everyone, anytime, everywhere.So if we were the world's first over-communicated society then, what are we now and what does that mean? Well, where we are now is we are completely drowning in communication.We're drowning in information.We're drowning in distraction and interruption.We're overloaded by all the things that are happening.And in order to confront this, we have to realize that we can't do everything, we can't look at everything, and we can't see everything.We can't take advantage of every opportunity.We have to become very selective.When we talk about time management and productivity, what we're really talking about, again, is self-management and getting ourselves to do the things that are the important things.What you'll find in life is that if you just focus on a few key, important things and do them over and over and over, the rest will take care of itself.If you eat simple meals of healthy food and do a little bit of exercise everyday, health just takes care of itself.If you invest quality time, one on one, in an open dialogue on a regular basis with people that are important to you, the relationship will take care of itself.That's the way things work.But we don't do these things.What we do instead is we eat a bunch of snacks and junk food and forget to exercise, or we say I'll do that later, or we buy the food that has the thing that says low fat on it, and you think, "Oh, that means that I won't have to do any exercise." Or we make a quick call, and we say, "Hey, how are you doing? I love you," and we think that that's quality time.Or even worse, time that we're spending with people that are important to us.We're checking our phones and our Blackberries, and we're looking online and text messaging.We're really not having that deep, quality connection.That is what destroys health and relationships.Well, same thing destroys productivity.It destroys getting results in business and in our lives.When we focus on just those few things that are important, and we figure out how to get ourselves to behave to focus on those things, that's when life really turns around.Interestingly enough, I've discovered that time management really comes down to setting conditions in your life that make it so that you can't do anything but focus on the important things.It's not about making a list of things to do and then doing the right things, although that can be important sometimes.It's about setting up your life and your environment so that you automatically do the things that are important, and you don't have the option to do other things.Examples include when you first get to work in the morning, don't check your voicemail and your e-mail.Work for a couple of hours on your most important project, and work on something that has a high lifetime value.Something that is going to make a lot of value, create a lot of money now and in the future.What do most people do? They come in, they check their e-mail, voicemail, and they see what everyone else has on the agenda for them.Another thing to do is to set aside entire days.Entire days of time where you're only focused on the things that create the most value and bring in the most money so that you're not checking your e-mail.You're not checking your voicemail.You're not doing any of that stuff.You might check your e-mail and your voicemail once or twice during that day, but only for a little period of time.The rest of the time, you're just solely focused on getting something done.Another thing that we need to train ourselves to do is invest time in focused, uninterrupted blocks.Now this is an idea that all the great time management gurus teach.All the way from Peter Drucker back in The Effective Executive.The modern experts like Dan Sullivan, Jim Lare, and Tony Schwartz who wrote The Power of Full Engagement.It's very important to just focus on one thing for an extended period of time.Cultivate the ability to focus your mind.And when you're focused on one thing for an extended period of time and you block out all the distractions and interruptions, and I mean turn off the phone, turn off the computer, turn off everything else, you don't have anything to do but that one thing.So time management, what it is, it's about managing yourself.Not about managing your time.It's about learning how to develop healthy habits and rituals so that you do the right things everyday.And counter intuitively, it's about setting up the conditions in your life physically, emotionally, and logically so that you're forced to do the right thing, and you don't have any other options.So get to work right now doing the right things every day and blocking out, creating an environment that blocks out any distractions and any interruptions so you just stay focused.If you just do that one thing, create an environment that blocks out distraction and interruption and keeps you focused on those few important things, you'll watch your productivity start to skyrocket immediately.
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