Tag Archives: “time management”

Why you choose not to manage time better.

31 Thursday Oct 2019

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What is your attitude to ‘Time Management’?

When I ask that question, I am not referring to how you ‘see’ time management as a method, or technique, or as a great big pile of ‘new stuff to learn’. In my book I cover that in a chapter entitled ‘Why NOT Time Management’.

No, what I intend to address here is more about your attitude towards the things that have an effect on how they manage their time or, more specifically, whether you want to (learn to) manage your time.

Another question is “Why is it people don’t think they need to, or even can manage their time?” – rather than “Why they don’t want to?”

The truth is, everyone needs to manage their time better, but many just don’t want to be told that. The suggestion that they need instruction in time management openly implies that they possess an inability to do what in their minds ‘should come naturally’ and they don’t like that. They are happy to be trained in their job, how to cook, or how to drive a car, but to many people time management is seen as an innate skill, even an instinct, and “I won’t / don’t need to be told how to do that!”

Your ability – or inability – to manage your time is affected by a plethora of circumstances, but if we were to identify specific situations where people find time management challenging, we would discover that they all come under one or more of five headings.

  1. Some of them are outside your control and you accept that;
  2. Some are controllable, but you simply won’t try because you think they can’t be controlled;
  3. Some aren’t controllable, but you mistakenly try, anyway, and your failure teaches you to stop trying at all;
  4. Some are within your ability to control them, and you know it, but nevertheless you don’t even try;
  5. But most of all you love the ones you think you can control, and you are controlling them.

The objective of my book is to increase the number you can and do control (bring 2 and 4 under 5); to manage your attitude and response to the ones you can’t (improve your understanding of 1 and 3); and to stop wasting your time trying to control the impossible.

I encourage you to think about that, deeply. I firmly believe what you are about to read applies to everything in your life. There are two reasons for this.

First of all, we don’t live compartmental lives any more, thanks to the smartphone, but we nevertheless still insist on thinking that we do. But the main reason I think it applies across the work/personal divide is because of the choices we make.

We choose our work – we apply for a job, fill out the form, complete silly answers to odd questions, maybe do a presentation, certainly undergo the ordeal of an interview, and then we get it. And then the job changes, things happen we didn’t expect, systems change, people change, laws and practices change, the work gets harder and more prolific, we aren’t retrained and we get fed up with what we used to love.

Everything in our lives – what we do, how we get what we have, how we behave – can have time management principles applied to it if we are to be at our most effective. And as personal time management can be affected by many criteria, it means our whole lives are affected by the same criteria.

What are those criteria, then?

  • Expectation – we have duties but we also make personal commitments which give rise to expectations in others, just as we expect others to do what we require of them.
  • Communication and miscommunication – how and what we communicate affects our ability to perform, just as it affects others’ ability to perform for us.
  • Interruptions (phone people) – the immediacy of the mobile phone has inadvertently enabled people to think it’s okay to interrupt other peoples’ conversations.
  • Priorities – we have priorities, those around us have priorities, and no-one thinks that everything being a priority means that nothing is a priority.
  • New systems, protocols and procedures – when you change a system, the training and changes to the old system have a time impact that is rarely taken into account.
  • Expanding responsibilities – the more you take on, imposed or elective, requires improved ability to manage everything.
  • Lack of practical training – a lot of what people need to know is now just ‘expected’. For example, is your ability use a computer now just assumed?
  • Lack of meaningful support – other peoples’ busy-ness means that they aren’t available to help as much as they used to be.
  • Values misalignment – what you think is important and requires passion, may not be approached in the same way by someone whose interests and focus lie elsewhere.
  • Unexpected responsibilities – surprise, you have a new role (no training, support, extra time or money available, sorry).

The challenge is not that these things shouldn’t happen. It is that they are facts of life. A lot of what we think is an annoying obstacle to our lovely and peaceful existence is, in fact, perfectly normal, and it is our response to it rather than the event itself that causes our stress. We think we can’t manage things, but the truth is, as indicated in the first paragraphs of this section, we choose not to manage things when we could, or we fail to learn how to manage things because we don’t want to or don’t know how to.

Proactivity and Time Management Methods are the answer. Or an effective part of it, anyway.

Go learn.

Is a To-Do List on Your To-Do List?

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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Everyone who has ever worked in any capacity knows how a To-Do List works.

  • You start by dutifully making a detailed list of the things you want to have achieved by the end of whatever period applies. Easy bit.
  • You then start by doing the easiest ones on the list – the ones that take no physical or mental effort. Those 2-minute tasks which, once ticked off on the list, make that list look as though you’ve been really busy, even though you really haven’t.
  • Then, as you inevitably find yourself doing something that ‘comes to mind’ or is additionally and annoyingly tasked to you as the day goes along, you add it to the list after you completed it and you simultaneously cross it off, adding to that impression of effectiveness and making you feel grrreeeaaat.
  • At the end of the day you smile smugly as you look at all those crossed off items and think ‘Haven’t I been good?’ Then you look at the items that remain uncompleted and think, ‘No, not really. I haven’t done the big’
  • You also add tomorrow’s to-dos and realise that for all that apparent busy-ness and dedicated productivity, the list has got longer, not shorter!

‘Twas ever thus, and any time management book worth its salt will tell you that.

Nevertheless, I am happy to suggest that while this is the fashion in which To-Do Lists are routinely executed, they still remain a core practice for most of us and, despite my evident criticism of the usual way in which they are utilised, they can be an excellent way of achieving stuff. But obviously not if they are used in the fashion I have just described.

Effective time management through list-making can be effective. It just takes some higher level of thinking and disciplined application. (But not too much discipline.)

So why do to-do lists work? Science.

I pride myself on a good memory, or more precisely a good working memory. Which does not mean I never forget anything, I assure you. If I can’t remember ‘a fact’, I know how to use my memory to rediscover the fact I seek. In my mind’s eye, I believe that the reason I can do this is the same reason that a properly formulated To-Do List works. And uninteresting as it may initially sound when I finish this sentence, it is all down to science.

Psychologists seem to be agreed on the ability of the human sub-conscious to ascertain what the conscious mind has at some time considered to be important, and then remind the brain when something is happening that relates to that. Here is an idiot’s guide to how that works.

Have you ever been in the enviable position to buy the car you really wanted?

I have. In 2005 I was able to buy a black Toyota MR2, a reliably Japanese Ferrari look-alike which was just fast enough to be quick but frugal enough to be affordable. I saw it the morning I bought it, and if you were to ask me even now I would swear to you that prior to that morning I had only seen red, blue and white ones. It took a while to organise a visit to the vendor, to test-drive it, haggle on a price and pay the cash over. Then I had to insure it to drive it home, and the whole process between see and drive home took about 6 hours. Then I went for a 5-mile run.

And on a 2 mile stretch of road I saw three, yes THREE black Toyota MR2s.

Years later I decided I wanted a Ford Mondeo ST, and I wanted it so much that months before I got it, I could spot an ST out of the corner of my eye 400 yards away. I would not see any other model – only STs and their distinctive wheel design. From miles away.

That is how the mind works. It is called the Reticular Activating System and it is the mind’s way of telling you what you told it, was important. It used to be used to avoid sharp teeth and other dangers, but now it shows you cars. Or books, or jewellery, or clothes or shoes. “You want it?” says the brain. “Here it is.”

Let’s transfer this new knowledge to the simple To-Do List.

When you write something on your list you do so because in some way you have decided it is important enough to make a note about it. This has two effects.

As you wrote it, you further anchored it in your mind. At the same time, you also transferred responsibility for its completion from your mind onto the piece of paper or digital device. What happened next is an indication of how effectively your mind works! Either you remembered to do it simply because you noted it, or you remembered to do it because you looked at the list. I would suggest that if you consciously abandoned responsibility to your List, your successful completion of the task is directly related to your frequency of referral to that List. If you unconsciously abandoned that responsibility, your success is related to how important the task was to your subconscious – unless you look at the list anyway.

Either way, having the list was important the moment you made it. It is important to have made the list because you made the action important in your head when you wrote it, which may not have happened if you hadn’t made the list. Or it is important because you have the list as a tangible reminder.

No list = no subconscious or conscious support for getting things done. Your memory can’t be jogged unless there is something done, or created, that does that.

Next time you write a to-do list, bear all that in mind and it will improve the effectiveness of that list – and your own.

A Productivity Poser for you.

28 Monday Oct 2019

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Stakeholder.

There’s a word we all understand. Defined, I might say it means anyone who has a financial or emotional interest in the success of a particular entity, be it organisational, community or even family. Anyone, therefore, who has a stake in the entity’s wellbeing.

Consider the organisation for which you work. Ask yourself, “Who are the stakeholders?”, and write them all down.

Of course you won’t. You’re busy, as am I.

I would hazard a guess, though, that if you made that list you would, like 80% of the groups I have asked, miss out one or two. One or two important stakeholders.

Go on – try me out. Make that list before you read further and before I provide the answer/s.

Did you read my last-but-one post on team time management? If you did, first of all thank you. Secondly, the answer to the above question may be found in your understanding of that article. If not, no problem because every article on LinkedIn, on my website or anywhere else contains a nugget of information that you may find useful. For me, it was in David Schwartz’s book ‘Think Big’, and that piece of gold was ‘Be a Front Seater’, where he proposed that people who sit at the front get more engaged and more noticed. People who sit at the front also volunteer, get opportunities and (in my case) make money and get a reputation for being authoritative.

People who sit at the back are scared of something. Think about that next time you go on a seminar.

Back to stakeholders. If you did your list of the stakeholders in your organisation – and therefore the people for whom, with whom and as a result of whom you carry out your tasks and therefore manage your time, I bet the ones your missed were

You, and your family.

They are the most important stakeholders in your workplace. They have the biggest stake in the entity’s success, because no entity equals no money (work), no purpose (work, family, service) and no happiness (relationships).

Think about that next time you go to work.

Ask yourself – “Is what I am doing, or is the quality of the work I am doing, serving the stake I have in the success of ‘X’?”

Thinking about this may just improve your attitude, or perhaps even your sense of purpose in doing what you do, which in turn gets noticed when opportunities arise to improve your own lot.

In essence, how well you do your job for the stakeholders that rely on you doing that job requires that you do the best you can with the resources available to you. Including how you use your time.

And your stakeholders include you and yours.

And if that isn’t motivation for you to learn how to manage your time as well as it can be managed, nothing is.

Have a great, productive day. And love to you and your kinfolk.

Team Time Management. Easy.

24 Thursday Oct 2019

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We still use the term ‘time management’ even though we all know you can’t manage it. It’s accepted that we don’t have enough time, but we have all there is, as Alec. R. McKenzie wrote.

The truth is that we don’t manage it – we manage ourselves in the context of time available and the people with and through whom we create results. Which makes it a little bit odd that the average time management book doesn’t really address time management for teams.

My favourite ‘AHA!’ moment was when I discovered, for myself, that everything we do we do with, for, or as a result of someone else. Which means that to all intents and purposes, there is only team time management, not personal time management. We rely on the latter term and methodology because it is easier to learn and easier to apply, whereas team time management is halfway to a nightmare.

Getting other people to fall in with our plans is occasionally the biggest challenge to our own results. So why try?

The simple answer is – we have to, for the reason outlined in ‘;my’ discovery. I repeat – everything we do we do with, for, or as a result of someone else. Everything.

Try and think of anything that doesn’t. And before you think “I’ve got one!”, remember that any infrastructure, equipment, location, tool or other resource is the result of ‘someone else’ either designing, supplying, selling, building or lending you something, or even merely opening the doors to somewhere you’re using to help you achieve your outcome.

They influence your time use.

You may not realise it, but when you make appointments you are already executing on team time management. You have liaised (even if through a computer) with another party to make sure that your combined interests are executed upon at the same time.

But we rarely do that outside an ‘appointment’ system. We turn up for work and make phone calls expecting an immediate response. We even expect immediate responses to emails and texts, which is a societal silliness if ever I saw one. “I plan to MAKE my calls between 0815 and 0900, so all other people must plan to TAKE phone calls in that same period.” But life isn’t like that.

(As an aside, I am also extremely amused when people have 20 minute text conversations that would have taken 30 seconds in a phone call. Do YOU do that?)

The simple truth is that managing teams’ time can be quite hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

Team time management is easiest within a close kit, geographically convenient situation. People can talk and arrange their plan for the day around each other, but that requires one pre-condition.

You have to know what your goals are, as do your colleagues.

Once that is done, planning a day around each others’ needs is easy. If you have no idea, the day is spent changing priorities, interrupting each other, rejigging plans and procrastinating.

Inter-departmental team time management is slightly more complicated but, looked at logically, not much. Again, the pre-requisite is having a knowledge of what our department’s objectives are, but then designing a communications strategy whereby a time and method is created which allows the separate units to help each other in achieving those objectives. Police call them daily briefings, hold them at a certain time of day (usually), and hold them about 30 minutes after the start of the day to allow attendees to identify their objectives for the day so that they can communicate them to those other people/teams/resources.

One thing is essential, however.

Once the teams have had that meeting and designed their day, leave them the hell alone to get on with it.

Otherwise you completely undermine the effectiveness of the process, the morale and involvement of the team members, and the ultimate success of the plan.

In conclusion, then – plan your tie with an awareness that there are people absent that your plans will have an effect upon; then involve those others in a spirit of co-operation, utilising a systematic approach for the necessary communication required.

Already doing that? Look again at your system and see if it can be improved – involve the other teams in that conversation, try the results for a month and then have an inter-team review of what’s working and what isn’t.

That will ‘save’ time. Hionest.

“I don’t need time management training!” Liar.

21 Monday Oct 2019

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“Happiness may well consist primarily of an attitude towards time.” Robert Grudin

Here’s an interesting observation.

When coaching took over the world of personal development, time management as a science got lost. In a world where people already had trouble getting through all that had to be done, the ‘New Order’ promoted by Anthony Robbins, Jack Canfield et al moved our focus from just getting by to ‘coming through on our dreams’.  But in all the training programmes that I, myself, sought and got authority to facilitate, I realised they’d accidentally removed focus from an important element of success.

In all my courses, only one actively taught how to manage time in a systematic fashion.

Now, don’t misunderstand me – the Robbins and Canfield training is marvellous stuff. But what I discovered was that having all these wonderful new philosophies on getting ahead wasn’t supported (adequately) by teaching people how to manage their lives in order to execute on those dreams.

The best analogy I can think of in the moment is trying to build an IKEA bookcase and not being handed the little octagonal bar tool to get the bolts tightened. The objective looks wonderful, but there’s an essential tool missing and without it I will struggle to achieve my goal.

None of us – even the Bransons and Gateses – lives in a bubble where everything we do is controlled, influenced or achieved solely by us as an individual. We live our lives in a framework of things we want to do, things we have to do, things other people would like us to do and things that society demands we do. And not all of those things can be done when it suits us or because it suits us. In other words, we have to do what we want to do when time and circumstances allow.

We have to manage our time – or, to be more accurate (as time cannot be managed), we have to manage ourselves in the context of time. We have to do what we can when there is a suitable opportunity to do it. While we can influence the amount of time we make available to do our wants, we still have an enormous amount of musts that have to be fitted into our finite timescales, as well.

A lot of people have said to me, “I don’t want to do time management training, I want to be spontaneous.”

I’m sure your boss would love to hear that. Turn up when you like, do what you want – that’s the way to run a business.

The truth is that training people into development of a system for managing their time does two things:

  • It gets the musts done at the appropriate time; and
  • It allows for the fun stuff to be done, too.

Just go with me, here. If you have system whereby you identify the must-dos, list them in order of importance, then do them in that order from the moment you walk into work until they are done, what’s left?

Fun stuff.

Okay, that ideal may happen so rarely as to be hard to envisage and it may depend upon your place in any hierarchy, but the principle of doing what must be done as soon as possible so as to allow the fun stuff to be done sooner, is valid. And without a systematic approach for doing that, it is unlikely to happen.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how often you feel overwhelmed because you ‘haven’t got time’ to do the new thing that just came in? And then you do it anyway, and the world keeps turning.

Then ask how they managed to land on the moon in 9 years from when Kennedy said they would.

Can you imagine the boss at NASA saying, “We haven’t got time. We have to do all this paperwork and get the kids to school and then fetch them and do the shopping.”

No. They did all that AND got Neil Armstrong up there. They managed what needed to be managed within the context of time and the availability and expertise of staff – and still got the kids sorted. Although in those days their wives probably didn’t have jobs (which now doubles the need for time management application).

Plan. Organise. Execute.

It is the only way.

And once you realise you CAN do what needs to be done as well as what you WANT to do, THEN you will find ‘happy’.

Ask Grudin.

Covey/Hobbs Vs GTD – a War not Worth Waging.

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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Some of you will have no idea what that title means, so that’s as good a reason as any to READ THIS BLOG, is it not? 😊

The title refers to what may, on first glance, be conflicting time management methodologies. GTD is ‘Getting Things Done’, explained in the excellent book of the same name by David Allen. (Make sure you buy the 21st Century update.)

GTD is a list-based system. (Now it gets complicated.) The idea is to collect all your unfinished business, including ‘projects’ which Allen defines as anything that requires more than one step to complete. Having done that, you go through the list and complete all 2-minute jobs. Then you are left with a list of things which you can (usually) only do in a certain place, at a certain time, with a certain person, etc. For example, some of the things may be tasks you can only do ‘At Computer’ so they would then be listed on a list entitled ‘At Computer’. Or ‘At Shops’ for shopping, or ‘In London’, and so on. Time- and day-specific tasks – and ONLY those – go on a calendar (diary page). The lists should have on them only ‘next actions’, the things you have to do next to get the projects done.

That really is an idiot’s guide, and Allen’s system has a lot of thought/psychology and method behind it which this little blog can’t cover.

The Covey/Hobbs system is values/mission-based, and further sub-categorised into Roles. Your mission dictates your activities, which are carried out through the roles you perform in life. For example, I am a trainer, investigator, driving coach, speakers club president, company director unconnected to those other roles, and family bod. You create your goals in role-context, then plan execution of bits of your goals into your planner as priorities. (I’ve explained this before and it’s explained fully in my FREE BOOK.)

Zealots in either case would argue for their preferred option. GTD-philes would argue that lists equate to freedom while Covey/Hobbs is restrictive. Covey/Hobbs would argue their way supports a sense of meaning and peace, while GTD is ‘just’ about productivity, and productivity is not as important as meaning. Deeper analysis would identify further objections to the opposing philosophy, and more supporting evidence for the preferred way. Who has time?

I have a different outlook. I think the GTD Way of collecting all your incompletes, doing the resulting 2-minute jobs and planning the others is an excellent way to get control, while the Covey/Hobbs method is an excellent way of keeping control once you have got it.

My evidence?

People have asked me how I manage so many responsibilities (job, home, family, IAM, IPI, Cardiff Speakers Club,) and my answer is that I can do this because of my mastery of the Covey/Hobbs method, but if I was to take on those responsibilities all at once I would start with GTD until I got things compartmentalised.

I feel this way because both GTD and Covey/Hobbs promote

  • planning at the start of a week,
  • scheduling the things that can or could be done at a particular time (your priorities, which can include your personal priorities),
  • then making lists of the things that need to be done but which have no appointed time.

Both require knowing the end result in advance and deciding what to do about it next. Overthinking it may identify one as requiring ‘task-to-objective’ thinking while the other would be seen as having an ‘objective-to-task’ perspective but in all practicality, they end up being the same process, which is asking “What I gotta do to get what I wanna get?” and then planning to do that action, somewhere.

GTD would have you put them on separate lists, whereas Covey/Hobbs would have you actually plan them into a day. Both philosophies advocate carrying the system with you. GTD would say separate lists obviate re-writing that which is not done, while the alternative is to rewrite unfinished tasks in the next day’s list. (Which takes seconds, or even less if you’re a digi-planner. Oh, the time saved……)

And that, lorries and gelatines, is the only difference. Which is hardly a difference over which one should declare war.

As always, my advice would be to master your preferred method and leave the other well alone, because there is a tendency to try and do both at the same time and when you do that your head gets cluttered – which defeats the objective of either style.

Pick one. Master it. And reap the rewards.

 

Oh, and unlike all those GTD examples of people who get an e-mail a minute (and I have never, ever met one), I get about 10 a day. Makes life a tad easier.

“That’ll do.” Er, no it won’t.

07 Sunday Jan 2018

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In a piece about the American education system and the perception that it was mediocre, Dr Bruce Lockerbie wrote a piece explaining why he thought that this wasn’t so. He listed the students that were taught by teachers who were assisted by support staff assisted by manufacturers, writers and editors who were assisted by policy- and law-makers and money. Each flea had a smaller flea, as they say. Each of those supporters were, or were the responsibility of, individuals. He concluded:

“Schools aren’t mediocre, but some of us who are administrators or teachers, and our students, have been half-hearted about our management, our teaching, their learning. You see, mediocrity is first a personal trait, a personal concession to less than our best, an individual lethargic resignation that says, “I guess good enough is good enough.” Soon, mediocrity metastasises throughout the body politic, causing the nation to be at risk; but always remember – mediocrity begins with ME!”

In the main, we all want to do a great job. We want our performance to be above reproach and our results to reflect the effort we put into our work, our relationships, our very lives. So why is it that we eventually resign ourselves to being and doing less than we are capable of?

We make excuses.

In fairness, those excuses can be quite valid, to some extent. We try hard, bash our heads repeatedly against rules, regulations, other peoples’ objections, obstructions and obfuscation and City Hall, and eventually we are beaten into thinking “I guess good enough is good enough.”*

Occasionally, the availability of time and materiel impact on our efforts and we do the best we can with the time and resources available – which I consider a valid ‘good enough’ – but now feel guilty that we couldn’t do better. In my own line of work, our effectiveness in terms of client service is often frustrated by the clients themselves, who kick off a process and then step back and absolve themselves of further responsibility despite an explicit need for their further involvement.

Sometimes, however, even as we say them silently to ourselves, we know that the excuse we are making is exactly that – a statement designed to excuse a temporary unwillingness to put a piece of ourselves into something which may increase our workload. Sometimes it is because we know that we are metaphorically digging a hole with the sole intention of merely filling it again. We see no conceivable result at the end of our toil, just the toil itself.

I don’t have ‘the’ answer, and I am certainly guilty of having such thoughts from time to time. But I do have ‘an’ answer.

Stephen Covey opined that ‘the enemy of the best is the good’.  Therefore, my advice to you and to me is to just try harder to make the effort to be better than mediocre. It may seem pointless in the moment to strive for a particular outcome, but that striving is a way of learning to do it better, faster, and even cheaper next time. It serves creation of our own system, which in turn can help create a standard that others can follow, to the benefit of all. That’s all Three Resolutions in action.

Why do you think software keeps developing? It’s because someone has discovered, possibly through frustration, that there is a better or more complete way to achieve a digital outcome.

My advice, dear reader, is – don’t be mediocre, be the best you can be all of the time. Or at least try. Even if you don’t quite hit perfection you’ll be a lot closer than you were. And a lot better than ‘good enough’.

A LOT better.

 

*The funny thing is that those people who browbeat and have their own sense of ‘good enough’ for their work expect you to maintain an excellent performance to which they sweetly avoid committing when it comes to their own roles.

Attendance is optional, productivity is not.

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

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Larry Winget, American motivator-with-attitude, says in the introduction to his book, “It’s Called Work for a Reason!”,

“Bye honey, I’m off to work!”

Oh, bull! You aren’t going to work at all. You are going to the place that isn’t home, where you have to dress a little better than you do around the house. You are going to a place that is full of other people who also just lied to their significant others. You are all liars – you AND those people you say you work with. You say you are co-workers, when the truth is you’re only co-goers.”

I admit I chuckled a bit at that. I am in an envious position where I can manage my workload and, getting it done quickly with (slightly imperfect) time management expertise, I have more down time than most. I try to do an excellent job, but am most challenged when I, like you, are trying to do an excellent job when another expectation-of-an-excellent-job rolls up, closely followed by more. It’s hardly surprising that we want a quiet 10 minutes to prepare for more work.

But Larry does have a point. We are paid to do more than turn up, we are (as my first employer actually told us on an induction course) to put in a good hard day and go home pleasantly tired. Unfortunately, the world has changed and that is now harder to do.

I’m not talking about back-breaking manual labour, even though that is ever-so-slightly less back-breaking than even it was.

The world has changed in that our ability to focus on ‘work’ has been severely compromised by our inability to focus properly on anything! Mobile phones pinging, bleeping, ringing or just being in view mean we MUST check them several times an hour – even if only to see why we HAVEN’T heard a ping or a bleep or a ring. Downtime also excuses a quick Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/WhatsApp session, doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is why we are now providing courses on ‘How to manage millennials’, a concept that confirms surrender to the ‘me’ generation, rather than suggesting, firmly but politely, that they are being paid to benefit the employer, they CAN be replaced if they don’t work hard enough, and the sun does NOT shine out of their baby-smooth bottoms.

You are paid to work, to produce.

Now, a slight counter-proposition, too. If you are not paid ‘just to be there’ as I suggest, then IF your productivity is good/excellent, IF your standards are high, and IF you can be seen to be a worker, THEN liberties can be given and taken.  I recall an amusing story about a CEO who wanted a manager to have a word with an employee who turned up at 8AM, but went home at 12 noon and played golf all afternoon. After some enquiry, the manager told the CEO, “He’s the most productive employee you have! Get him to teach everyone else how to do that and we’ll be rolling in it!”

Work is measured by RESULTS, not merely PRESENCE. But if you can produce the first through maximising the use of the latter without burning out, your job will be safe. Wherever you work.

 

I’m using a WIG. Or Four.

26 Sunday Nov 2017

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Hello. I’m back.

I went away because I was a bit tired of espousing personal development philosophy while manifestly failing to come up to my own standards. Furthermore, as a direct consequence of said lack of integrity and the physiology that resulted, I felt bloody terrible. I had (still have) a dodgy knee, but carrying 42 lbs of spare weight wasn’t helping. All that weight was on my front, which probably didn’t help with the back. I was constantly tired when I woke up in the morning, and I was motivated only by virtue of the fact that I would do things only if they were on my prioritised action list in my planner. I could simply avoid doing things by not putting them onto the list. I needed space.

I booked some time off from work, and set myself only four WIGs – wildly important goals – for the 18 days available.

  1. Stick to a diet that had worked in the past.
  2. Go to the gym on every free day (i.e. those when I did NOT have whole days dedicated to other events – which only amounted to 2, anyway).
  3. Finish the edit of Police Time Management so that I can sell it through my professional body’s website.
  4. Clear and organise my attic.

Might not seem much but I had various events, meetings and other commitments to fill my time. Those 4 were the specific outcomes or strategies I chose that would address many of the physical and mental blockages that were causing my malaise.

How did it went?

  1. The diet I chose is known as the Natural Hygiene Diet (look it up). In a nutshell, only have EITHER a protein OR a carbohydrate ‘main’ accompanied by vegetables or salad, and avoid (as far as is reasonable) heavy sauces and other taste bombs. Eat lightly, and use fruit as your treats. It’s Slimming World without the sins. I also ate only four slices of bread the whole time. My only variance was a bit of a treat after a day-long conference and drive home, where I indulged in a sandwich snack and some sweeties.
  2. I surprised myself, here. I went to the gym every day but the two days when I had all-day commitments, sat on a static cycle for 45 minutes (and pedalled!), pushed some weight and did some gut-stressing leg raises. I even took my kit to an overnight halt before the aforementioned conference and did it in the hotel gym.
  3. I finished the edit far quicker than I thought and it will soon be available for purchase either on its own or as a freebie on an investigator’s course.
  4. This was a challenge because of an unexpected obstacle known as ‘other people’. I found it easy to sort out ‘my’ stuff – chuck, charity, colleagues, keep. Other people – predominantly ‘review, keep, put back’. And their proclivity for finding other things to do which could be done better/at other times/not at all, but seemed to pop up just when I was climbing the attic ladder.

How did I feel? Much to my surprise, by day 12 I felt physically much fitter, lighter, and more disposed to movement. On the final, 18th day, I weighed myself and I had lost 11.15lbs.

The attic is tidier and, most important, I can get at anything I need at short notice. (And I found some stuff I’d been looking for, for months!)

Success!

But why? Why did it work now and not before?

Anthony Robbins often says that when we change, it is for one of two reasons – inspiration, or desperation. The 100-Day Challenge, which I manifestly failed to execute, was born of the former, while the success of this moment was clearly, unequivocally and sadly founded on the latter.

I have said before that the principles (of successful living) work if you work the principles. The principles I worked this last 3 weeks were:

  1. WIGS. I set only four Wildly Important Goals, around which any other things were organised.
  2. Time Management. I recognised that I was sitting around ‘saving time’ and not ‘using time’, so deciding to use the gym at a specific time every day (4pm) was better than leaving it to ‘IF I have time’.
  3. Sensible eating. I realised that when I have been stuffing my face it has never, ever been because I am hungry. It is because I am bored. And I realised that seconds after a meal was completed, the ‘event’ was over and my mind and body had already forgotten. So why go to that effort? Just eat sensibly and feel just as ‘forgetful’, but healthier!
  4. I learned to cook omelettes, scrambled eggs and poached eggs. Thanks, Delia. Masterchef beckons.

One sobering event. Early on, I was at the gym when I met a friend I have known over 20 years, and I mentioned I was on leave and intended to use it daily. On day 11 I met him same place (and time) and he said, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

What does that say about me? What have I been communicating over the years, at least in terms of my physical state? Evidently, I have been saying, “Here I am again, this week’s fad. It won’t last.”

No more.

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

13 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Character and Competence, Time Management

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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.