Time – waiting in the wings. It doesn’t matter how wealthy or poor you are, where you come from, how old you are or how much education you’ve had, every human being shares the same amount of time. And time passes at the same rate unless of course you happen to be travelling close to the speed of light. Time travellers apart, how we utilise time is a common and crucial subject for a coaching session.
Brought to the basic components there are only three things we can do to have more time constructively available for us and our businesses. We can choose to:
1. Do what we do more effectively.
2. Do less.
3. Delegate.
Sounds simple put like this, doesn’t it? However, in order to put these into practice we also need to prioritise. Years ago, I learned about a helpful tool for assessing priorities. It’s another one of those management training quadrants – how they love those quadrants!
Quadrant one is where all urgent and important tasks end up if we haven’t dealt with them before they become overwhelming, so the aim is to keep things out of this quadrant if at all possible. (It’s the fire-fighting box familiar to all small, business owners.)
Quadrant two is a particular favourite of mine and involves important activities that are not urgent. Spending time with a business coach is one such activity, spending time with loved ones and switching off the phone is another: it’s the place to take stock, revitalise and develop our plans.
Quadrant three involves other people’s agendas cutting across our own – urgent appeals for assistance or cold calls eating up our time – which are not at all important to us. A few gentle assertive communication tips can release time for more profitable pursuits.
Quadrant four is the clutter of little things that we have niggling away at the back of our minds and at the end of our to-do lists. Neither important nor urgent, they can simply be scrapped and the great thing is that no-one notices. So if work is getting on top of you, set aside some time for quadrant two activity and watch yourself become one of those people who always has time for the important things in life.
