Tag Archives: “time management”

100-Day Challenge, Day 44. And about a ‘Cure’ for Stress.

13 Sunday Aug 2017

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This week I have been mostly exercising every two days, eating sensibly and producing like a dervish. I discovered that ‘being on holidays’ equates to ’90-120 minutes a day dealing with voluntary tasks’, in that two days of this week felt like I was one of those CEOs who claims to get a million emails a day. Every single one I dealt with generated two more, I swear. Hence this input on Stress.

Stress is self-imposed. (Cue anger.) Okay, let me temper that a bit.

On Monday I went to Cardiff Yes Group, a post-Tony Robbins event ‘alumni’ event where personal development lecturers keep the audience ‘on track’ with their commitments. All are welcome, and there are UK-wide events available.

The speaker suggested that (one of) the reasons for stress arise from overwhelm and an inability to cope with change and pressure because life/we/bosses etc haven’t allowed time for our neurology to get respite from the constant changes of direction (e.g. from interruptions like constant demands for attention from emails). That inability to cope can be genuine and physical, or it can be a perception. By that, I mean that the stress is all too real to the sufferer but if they weren’t so pressured they’d realise they could control it, if they only knew how.

In other words, the stressed individual says, “I have 101 things to do and I just can’t see a way to do it.” The individual with a control strategy says, “I have 101 things to do today and 8 hours in which to do them. Do-able.” That is 480 minutes – about 4.5 minutes a ‘thing’, and for every ‘thing’ that takes a minute, that rate expands.

Time management might seem like a management cliché but in my opinion, from years of applying it, time management properly taught, accepted, encouraged and applied is an absolute – yes, absolute – cure for stress.

Please understand, I am not talking about stress resulting from trauma, accident, disaster, relationship failures and so on. That’s different, even if some relevant TM training can help. I am talking about task overwhelm in work and in the home.

Charles R Hobbs, in his epic book ‘Timepower’, suggests that high self-esteem is served by the ability to be in control of events. I am fairly confident when I suggest that those with genuinely high levels of justifiable self-esteem (as opposed to ego) rarely suffer from work-related stress. And that is because they are, or they feel they are in complete control of what’s ‘appenin’, OR they know that they can take control – even of the unexpected. They have techniques and approaches that enable that control.

In the mid-1990s I had what I call ‘an episode’ where this 6’ tall, macho, fightin’, drivin’, chasin’, action-man copper left a boss’s office in tears and went home before his shift was due to start. (Short version, I think it was slow burn.) Fortunately, I had been reading The 7 Habits and books like Timepower for years. I went home, took the wife and kids out for a family meal, and took stock. I recognised that what was happening was a stress build-up.

Then I took control and decided what I was going to do about the situation. I was back at work within 48 hours asking for what I needed to regain control. And got it. Never happened again.

We all know of people who do the tears thing and aren’t seen for months. They lost control and didn’t or couldn’t get it back, and that was because they didn’t know that there was an alternative to pills.

Values-based time management – might not be penicillin but by all that’s holy it’s a damn good treatment for what ails a lot of people.

Try it out. My book or theirs, you decide. It’s you who controls your decisions if you want to.

 

100-Day Challenge: Day 37. What can YOU do in 20 mins an hour?

06 Sunday Aug 2017

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Yup. Reading the PMS daily does make a difference: I exercised after work daily, and spent the week finishing my planner pages with ticks all down the page. Lost some weight, got fitter (a bit, it’s only a week). Couldn’t ask for more.

Or could I?

Some friends have often asked how I manage to run an Institute, give driving advice, run a speakers club, do the social and side-business that those commitments entail, write a couple of books and compile this blog.

I, on the other hand, ask them how they manage to get so much done because my perception is that they are constantly being, doing and having a better social life than me, and their homes are pristine. (Occasionally it occurs to me that their houses are spotlessly clean because they’re never in them.)

When it comes down to it, the difference must be in the way we choose to spend our time and what lies behind how we choose to spend our time.

I’m not judging – the way they choose to spend their time and money may be different to how I do those things, but that doesn’t make either side ‘wrong’. It merely provides tangible proof that the things we value are different. Alternatively (and this is a bit deeper), our values are the same but the way we address those values is different.

For example – and see which side you fall – whenever I have conducted a values exercise I can be absolutely sure that for those who are parents, ‘Family’ always come at or near the top of the tree. And I look at the room and I see people who work 80 hours a week and who rarely even see the family that is so important to them.

Then I reflect on that values definition, and realise that while my value of family is defined to include ‘presence’, their value of family might just as easily (and validly be defined as ‘providing for their needs and wants by working hard to get the money that pays for them’. So we act differently on what we value to be important.

And what we ‘do’ takes up ‘time’. What I do to take up my time is write and serve the organisations I have joined. My friends spend their time differently – for example, running around after their children helping them learn, play, perform and so on. Which is something I used to do but now my kids are adults. What I do now is not necessarily what I did then. And I forgot!

How we spend our time is a reflection not only of our values but also that of our current situation – our obligations, duties, interests, and so on.

I get a lot done because I prioritise and plan my time. As a result, the reason I appear to watch so much television is because I have the time to do that. And said television is so predictable I can read a book or ‘do’ Facebook at the same time. (20 mins of adverts per hour helps. It’s amazing what you can get done in short bursts.)

Learn values-based time management. Apply what you learn to what you truly value. See if you can do more of what you value, less of what you don’t, and still get the things done that need to be done.

It is possible.

Buy My Book HERE. Read the opening pages at ‘Look Inside’. Available in Kindle or Paperback.

 

100-Day Challenge, Day 13. And a bit about kids and the world of work.

13 Thursday Jul 2017

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No run today – knee trembling (no, not like that) and as I am suddenly conscious that running as often as I am when I am as overweight as I am may not serve structural integrity unless I am careful. in other words, I must give my joints time to rest between runs, and if there’s a twinge – I should take note. I’ve also been to the doctor, who thinks my numb toes may be a recovering slipped disc somewhere around L5 in the spine and I certainly don’t want to make THAT any worse. Baby steps, Buster, baby steps.

Other than that, I’ve cleared out a bucket load of clutter and I can move in my ‘office’, which means I am closing on the final chapters of Police Time Management, which I am editing to make it more up to date. And I still eat wisely.

I was briefly amused by a report in the Welsh press about the Assembly’s desire to create 1,000,000 Welsh speakers by 2050. Nothing wrong with that, but such reports always give rise to swathes of comments about the pros and cons of that particular project.

Regardless of the debate on that particular subject, it made me think about children’s education in general. Universities are complaining that students are having to be taught ‘educational basics’ when they get into that top level of education, because they aren’t learning it/being taught properly at the primary and secondary stages of school. That may be so, but there is something even worse about those levels of education – they don’t teach our children how to live.

I am talking here about ‘Second Resolution’ competencies, competencies that enable people to live and serve others because they aren’t busy simply trying to live. Where are their money lessons? Where are their ‘how bureaucracies work’ lessons? Where are their driving lessons? (Okay, maybe that’s a logistical issue but simple drivers’ education may help them get jobs when they leave – and stay alive, perhaps.) And my personal favourite, how to manage their time to be most effective at getting what they want while providing service so that others can get what they want.

Years ago, it was suggested that education was warped because it had one malign intent – to prepare children for the workplace. Well, that horse has bolted. Kids are arriving at work unprepared for it. They have a Geography GCSE but its relevance in entry-level retail or repairing computers remains to be seen.

They arrive in work unaware that they are entitled to contracts (where applicable), that the money won’t last for ever and that maintaining a CV is a good idea. They occasionally work with an unfortunate, source-unknown sense of entitlement. We now have courses now where managers are taught how to manage ‘millennials’.

I am a dinosaur, I know, but here’s how to manage any new worker. Learn these lines:

“Do as I say until you can show me you can do it properly, then develop ways to make it better. Show me you are trustworthy, then I can let you have your head. Communicate that you won’t be a liability and cost me, and then I’ll leave you to it.”

Not: “I’m sorry I am asking you to do ‘work’, really I am, but that’s what we are here to do.”

Okay, over-reaction, but the message we need to tell ourselves as much as we need to tell our kids, is that all work is noble, we learn because we don’t know it all, we all get better by doing, and we are treated better if we show respect and earn trust.

Competencies can be learned. Character needs to be instilled – by parents, by peers, by education.

And isn’t it great when a school does that?

Turn Over My New Page

12 Sunday Mar 2017

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Walking my dog along the river is a four-times weekly opportunity to (a) moan about the fact it is supposed to be my son’s dog and (b) listen to audiobooks. Today I was re-listening to David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done, the time management classic which is one practical alternative or support to the deeper time management advice provided by Hobbs and Covey in their classics on the subject.

Today I was caught by a comment by Allen about values. He suggests that our focus on values, far from being a route to happiness as described by others, is in fact fraught with danger. It is fraught because that values-focus reminds us that we have so much ‘work’ to do in order to comply with our values – which in turn diffuses that focus and makes us feel as if we are going nowhere. He suggests, I suppose (try concentrating when your dog demands attention), that we should focus on tasks and thus comply with the values, rather than try to focus on the values themselves.

To paraphrase:

  1. Covey/Hobbs: Focus on the values and create tasks and goals that fulfil them.
  2. Allen: Focus on the tasks and hope/intend that they fulfil our values, and therefore us.

In one sense, while both have merit, neither is complete (and I believe neither of the authors would argue differently) because regardless of our values, we live in an interdependent world which won’t allow us to ‘only’ do the things that comply with our values. We have to do tons of things that we don’t w ant to do, don’t like and would avoid if we could. These things are usually known as ‘work’ in the professional sense and ‘family commitments’ in the personal sense. (“Oh, another parents’ evening – joy….”)

Which takes me back to my 26th Feb blog entry, which in a way leans slightly towards the Allen perspective. If you can’t design your life around your values – and few can – then you are compelled to identify ways in which the values you have, serve the tasks that are imposed. That way, if you have a job you don’t want to do, at least in doing it you can comply with your values of Service, Excellence, Duty, etc. This means fulfilment even though, in the first instance, you would not have thought fulfilment possible.

However, you can only know you are doing that IF you know what your values ARE. I have created a new page in which I have re-created that portion of my book which tells you how to do that. Take an hour this week to identify your personal values. It’s incredibly informative.

I very dare you.

Your Weekly Reminder.

05 Sunday Mar 2017

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All too many time management books make two mistakes. They are mistakes that quite probably result in a surprising amount of wasted time, and they are mistakes that quite possibly cause the first stress-virus injection of the of the day. The mistakes are that they:

  1. Advise that one should plan one’s day at the start of each day.
  2. Almost always focus solely on the achievement of the reader’s personal goals.

Those of us in the know have a different philosophy. We plan at the start of the week. There are a few good reasons for this. To stretch the injection metaphor further, let’s call them inoculations.

Inoculation 1. At the start of the week (or, if you are like me, at the end of the ‘old’ week), you set aside a time and place for the planning process. This means that instead of already being in work and surrounded by pressure, you are in a calm place of your own choosing.

Inoculation 2. You look at your set of written down values, your mission statement, your roles and your goals. This puts you in a frame of mind that invites the establishment not just of direction towards achieving your own goals, but also to reminding yourself that in execution of all your roles, your compliance with your personal mission/values will help you serve others in the achievement of their goals, too. Thus, you plan your week in the context of your whole life – work, family, community, etc. In other words, in a whole life perspective.

Inoculation 3. You don’t only make a list of to-dos. That is a way of creating excuses because you’ll do the easier to-dos rather than the effective to-dos. No, what you do first is you decide what goal- and work-oriented tasks you have (and I include appointments as tasks in this context), and then you decide when, in the next week, you will carry them out. You plan the appointments, of course, but you can also schedule those other important to-dos by day, or even by specific time of a specific day. If you routinely do this at the start of the day, each day, what you tend to have is a mental image of a limited amount of time to decide how you’re going to do ‘EVERYTHING!!!!’

Inoculation 4. As far as is humanly possible, do the things you decided to do, when you decided they’d be done.

Having done all of that, think about the result. You have a schedule that you designed, which tells you when you have decided things will be done. Now, of course stuff will happen to threaten the plan, but you won’t have the stress of juggling everything – in fact, you will probably know how to manage that stuff around your set priorities, because of the plan. You are in control, stuff isn’t.

To break it down into smaller parts, the plan is:

  1. Get settled, then reconnect to what’s important to you.
  2. Look at all of the roles you perform.
  3. Set goals for each of the roles you intend to perform this week.
  4. Schedule those plans.
  5. Execute the plan.

Sometimes, genuine emergencies will arise, and it is then, and only then, that you should plan every day. Plan weekly, adapt (if you have to) daily.

And at the end of a week, have a long hard look at yourself and decide if it all went as well as expected. You’ll usually find that it did.

For more, get this, HERE.

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Values-based Time Management Means Achieving the BEST Goals.

19 Sunday Feb 2017

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“If a goal isn’t connected to a deep ‘why,’ it may be good but it usually isn’t best.” Stephen Covey

I hereby truly and solemnly declare and affirm that I want to run a marathon.

That is a true statement. Deep down I want to be able to say that I ran a marathon, that I did it in less than 4 hours, and here’s my medal on display in the cabinet with my bronze swimming certificate.*

Yes, as far as running a marathon is concerned, I really want to run one. But I am not prepared to make the effort.

The reason I am not prepared to is because such a goal is often a dream that is planted by the achievements of others, by a desire to demonstrate a high level of physical fitness when such a level is not necessary for achievement of any of my other goals, and ultimately by ego – I want to brag about it.

Let me emphasise – they would be MY motives, and if you want to do a marathon for truly personal, deeply emotional reasons you go ahead and do it, and good luck. I am not here to tread on your dreams.

The point I am making is that achieving someone else’s goals, or seeking achievement for reasons of ego, probably won’t result in the deep happiness that comes from achievement pursued for truly personal, deeply impassioned motives. On the other hand, if achieving those goals is a means to a better end and not ends in themselves, the passion for those longer-term outcomes will help you achieve the smaller steps on the road to that greater success, the success you really seek. And let’s face it, you’ll be fitter and better able to enjoy that success (provided you haven’t crocked yourself in the process). And the greater success will be the one that serves your values system.

Seeing the goal as something which serves your values is the essence of values-based time management. Selecting a goal that doesn’t dovetail your values system is futile – you won’t do it, or you will detest every moment spent in striving for it, and UN-happiness is not a normal pursuit, is it? (Masochists excepted.)

I suspect that a 10k running ability is ample for most of us who don’t enjoy sport for sport’s sake. If you can run 6 miles in an hour and have a sensible diet you’ll be fit enough for most professions. If you want to get fit enough to achieve your other goals, decide on a sensible level of fitness, pursue that, and spend the rest of the time on the actual objective.

Spend as much of your time as you can on getting the result you seek, and a sensible-but-lesser proportion of time on the ‘side-issues’ that serve that objective. Plan your time so that you maximise the likelihood of achieving the (your) Main Thing, without spending too much time on achieving side-goals that will serve the greater objective but aren’t goals in themselves.

It’s a fine balancing act and using a suitable, personal planning system will help. In that, you put your Mission and Goals to the fore, and plan to spend as much of your time not on ‘shoulds’ or ‘coulds’, but on MUSTS. The other two can be fitted in around them.

And be careful that those ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ don’t become excuses for procrastination! (Next week’s subject.)

*I don’t have one of those, either. I am not a fish and if I am going two miles on water, I know people with boats.

 

For more on Values-Based Time Management, go here, or go to the Books page on this site

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The Forgotten Skill.

22 Sunday Jan 2017

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I tweeted a while ago through @3ResolutonsGuy that after you decide upon your purpose, the rest is just well-executed time management and active communication. I have also discovered, with the help and guidance of several highly educated, qualified and wise mentors that ‘time management’, while a perfectly understandable marketing cliché, is better termed ‘self-leadership’. Communication, if you like, comes under the separate heading ‘interpersonal leadership’.

Having said that I prefer the term self-leadership, however, I find myself reluctant to use it because of something else I have observed. And what I have observed is that the proliferation of genuinely great self-help books, having raised the bar in the personal development field, seem to have inadvertently left the science of time management behind.

Some might disagree, but in my view while digitising communication was supposed to make life better, it actually seems to have hampered our ability to communicate using correct grammar, in considered and polite tones, and after deep thought. It even hampers speech. I am heartily sick of asking people why we are conversing text by text, or email by email, when simply speaking on the telephone would take a lot less time, clarify understanding and speed up completion upon what is under discussion.

In the same vein, while the new world of instant communication should have increased our ability to produce, I find people are no longer being taught, properly, how to manage the massive increase in expectations that the new world demands. They have the digital tools to manage time, but not the education that would enable better use of those tools.

Proof? Do you, like my many colleagues in a hugely digital policing world, keep a separate paper to-do list and diary? Yes? If so, you haven’t been taught how to manage time properly. You may think you are, but you’re under-utilising the potential of a proper, disciplined and systematic approach. And don’t think having a digital diary and to-do list makes you any more effective – you may just be digitally ineffective. You may be cutting edge, but just as lost. (See iPads…..)

Another thing I have noticed is that ‘managers’ and ‘executives’ get (some, occasional) time management training while the front-line staff, the ones doing the work and managing the multiple tasks and challenges, do not. How considered is that?

Hence the change of focus for this site. It’s going to be more about productivity and self-management than about self-leadership because most of us now know where we are going, but cannot manage, as well as we could, how we are going to get there. Including me.

I am going to start exploring time management issues, and invite you to read along and see if something I say improves your lot, and whether your alternative perspectives can improve my own. It won’t just be about method. There’ll be philosophy, theory and observational comedy as well.

Follow me on http://threeresolutionsguy.com or @3ResolutionsGuy and let’s see where we end up.

Where HAS the year gone?

08 Sunday Jan 2017

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In a blink of an eye, just over 1/52nd of 2017 has passed by, and we’re already back into the post-holiday routine. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the work that built up while we were in the pre-holidays procrastination period has hit us broadside on – all the stuff people put off ‘because it’s Christmas’ still needs to be done, but now it needs to be done alongside all the new work that has arisen as it always does, and always will.

How much of the stress we associate with the amount of work we have to do is wholly the result of our unwillingness to manage our time – or more accurately, ourselves? I’d argue that one of the major factors in our workload woes is our own resistance to doing things at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way, and to the appropriate standard. To a large extent, all three of those factors are within our Circle of Influence, but many of us – the time-strugglers – are unwilling to buy the book, do the course or just take the time to learn how to manage ourselves and our time to best effect. And it is in ‘post-break’ moments that this situation becomes more stark.

One big mistake is putting off the unrelished 5-minute-but-really-important task. Maybe a telephone call, maybe writing a letter or filling out a form. It’ll be a tedious, hateful job that should take 5 minutes, but because it’s tedious and hateful we keep putting it off. Then it suddenly becomes urgent, or worse it doesn’t get done until it’s too late, and we suffer the stress that urgency or potential disciplinary proceedings that ensue.

And it was all our own fault.

You can’t manage time, but you can maximise the time you have, and one simple strategy is to Do It Now! The time management experts all agree – a short task needs to be done as it arises (wherever possible), because doing so opens up available time for the more important stuff to be done properly. It clears space in your head, and it is an inoculation against the stress caused by procrastination.

Of course, Do It Now is not the cure for all time management ills, but I can state two things from my experience of applying the time management methods repeated in my book Effective Time and Life Management, available from Amazon Kindle HERE.

First, doing the quick things now keeps a desk and a brain clean, tidy, and available for creative thinking, planning and execution. Second, having created that time through applying the Do It Now philosophy and by creating and executing on properly scheduled priorities, life is less stressful and much more productive. Not just in work, but where leisure time becomes available because the work is done. And by planning that as well, life can be great.

Buy a book – preferably mine but there are others listed on this site – and apply what is contained therein.

And don’t say you haven’t got time. Read a book one Saturday instead of going to the pub. You’ll probably spend less and will definitely learn something that can improve your lot 24/7.

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Go on – I very dare you. HERE.

Purpose or Process? I know which I need to know first – and better.

09 Sunday Oct 2016

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“Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” Stephen R Covey

Are your working practices dictated in a seemingly endless collection of Codes of Practice, Memoranda of Understanding, Process Documents and Manuals of Guidance? Unless you are the employer rather than the employee, or you work alone, I’d gamble that they are.

I would also expect that many of those procedural guidelines are based on best practices, born of years of experience and the making and discovery of errors. They are created out of a desire to do and be better, or to prevent ‘worse’.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency among managers to look upon these documents as The Holy Bible, compliance with which is expected and deviation from which must be punished.

And the funny thing is that they were created to replace the earlier practices that had equally been the Bible until found to be wrong or incomplete. In other words, for some, the fact that errors can be made in all manner of ways and circumstances, including compliance with current practice, does not stop them absolutely insisting on compliance.

Practices change with discovery, experience and greater learning. Remember that, boss.

On the other hand, and looking at Covey’s quote (above), Principles never change. The purpose behind a Manual of Guidance, which is usually clearly stated on page 1, gets lost in the millions of procedural absolutes that follow. Which is stupid.

Clayton Christensen describes how someone goes to a shop to buy a ½” drill bit. The sales staff discuss whether the client wants a steel one, tungsten tipped, twist-bit or step-bit, brad-point or spade, Forstner or Auger, or Installer.

The client says, “I want to make a ½-inch hole.”

That’s the difference between a practice document, and the ‘job to be done’ stated on Page 1. That’s the simplicity on the far side of complexity – the purpose of the work.

When you know what the job is, the Manual contains guidance and practices that will help get that job done. But life and learning may just provide you with some new information that might make the job get done quicker and better.

And, ironically, it also helps to create the next ‘Holy Bible’……..

Having a change of approach, but not a change of philosophy.

10 Saturday Sep 2016

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“Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect. People want things to be better.” Esther Dyson
Epiphany. Defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a moment of sudden realisation or insight”, and as a religious festival which isn’t quite what I’m looking to emulate. I have been conscious for some time that the terms that Stephen Covey used to describe The Three Resolutions, while profound and appropriate for their time and for his particular approach, may not be the best terms to use in the 21st Century. To an audience of those who need instant understanding and a willingness to participate in what is being communicated, expressions such as ‘self-denial’ and ‘noble purpose’ smack of a monastic approach to life, and that isn’t what The Three Resolutions website is supposed to be.

As from today, while I continue to use The Three Resolutions as my website address (‘cos I paid again for it last week), the tag line is no longer that sourced from Covey. Henceforth the tag line will be a little fresher. Now, it is:

Resolution, Refinement, Results.

If you’ve read my book (now unpublished while I completely review it with this new focus in mind), or the earliest posts when the 3R concept was first put on line, you will be aware that I consider that the 3Rs are a progressive approach to getting results, insofar as self-discipline leads to character and competence leads to serving in a way that benefits us all. That hasn’t changed, only the way I am going to describe it from now on.

Coincidentally, the three words I have now chosen mean the same ‘things’, and happen to fit the 3R logo.*

But make no mistake, the approach is the same –

  • decide what you need to do or stop doing, in order to
  • become the person you want to be with the skills you need to have, all with the objective to
  • ethically go out and make things happen that serves all concerned.

Up the Pyramid of Principled Productivity, so to speak. (Must write that one down. Oh, so I have…)

My focus is now going to be on that review and rewrite, so please watch my @3ResolutionsGuy Twitter feed for interim updates and things develop.

Personal Update Bit

One of my philosophies on life is that service to others does not necessarily have to involve self-sacrifice. It can also include doing something you love doing, in a way that others also benefit. This week I passed my Institute of Advanced Motorists ‘National Observer’ Qualification which will allow me greater opportunities to engage others in enjoying their driving while doing it better, safer and for the particularly adept, faster (but within legal limits, I stress).

And there is absolutely NOTHING in the 3R concept that disallows preening once in a while.

*(That took AGES to work out, finding words that meant discipline, character/competence and service, but which started with the letter R. I have new respect for advertisers……)