(Part 1 of Four-part Series)
Four common barriers to you achieving your goals include time, training, tools, and temperament. In Series 1, we will focus on time and specifically, time management. This is the first blog of a four-part Series entitled “Barriers to Achieving your Goals”.
Whether it’s your personal life, career, or business, time management is key. In most instances, your greatest obstacle is going to be finding and making the time in a hectic schedule that seems to have a life of its own. It can be the toughest hurdle that you face on a regular basis. At the end of the day, week, or month, you want to have a real sense of accomplishment, and not just scratch the surface of your to-do-list. You’ve most likely heard the phrase “we all get the same amount of time, 24-hours a day, but it’s what we do with it that counts”. The real acknowledgements in this statement are 1) time is a precious resource and 2) time’s true value, lies in how you spend it.
At some point in your life, or maybe in the recent past, you have been disheartened, because you realized that you’ve spent days in endless meetings, countless conversations, appointments and more recently, Zooms and webinars, as well as other distractions and interruptions. Therefore, time management is not just a good idea, it’s critical to attaining your goals.
Since time management is an indicator of your level of success, I want to caution you about one of its a nemesis’ which is self-sabotaging. You can self-sabotage by procrastinating. Therefore, putting off or not having a time management plan is one of the barriers, you must conquer. With that in mind, let’s consider a popular mindset that some have mistakenly adopted. It’s the idea or should I say, a mindset that believes “I got this”. While time management is important, “I don’t need to make a big deal about it, because I will figure it out later”. It’s a myth that promotes, “I’ll get to it later, because somehow, I will squeeze in the time to get it done”. Of course, you mean well, however, as we know, wanting to, and meaning to, are adversaries to, doing-it-now and taking-action now.
Let’s take a look at 3 ways to tackle time management.
Take these Actions
- Create a Time Audit: How you are currently using your time.
To address the issue of time management, I suggest you start by making a commitment to create your own time audit. Some may ask, what is a time audit and why do I need one? If any of the following statements, is true, you need to utilize a time audit.
- I’m disappointed because there is not enough time in the day for my personal needs and interests
- I feel unproductive regarding the time I’m able to dedicate to my career path
- I experience overwhelm when it comes to building or growing my business
- I continually find myself rescheduling or abandoning my exercise plan
- I don’t have the time I want to spend with loved ones
Auditing helps you to remove the guesswork from time management. It’s an assessment of how you’re spending each day, week, month, and quarter so you can establish a winning schedule for your future.
The main purpose of your time audit is to sync your time intention with your time allocation. It is designed to help you create the right routines and habits, so you are focusing your time on the most important tasks. Time management is all about time alignment. It serves to keep you honest because you are creating a record of where you are truly spending your time.
What to do: Write down your intentions. We will address your level of commitment, later during the course of this Four-part Series. Right now, I want you to write down “How do you want to spend your time?”
2. Identify Free Time: Pinpointing blocks of potential free time you really have, based on your existing schedule.
During this exercise, you will list periods of time that may later be re-allocated or re-assigned. You will examine activities that you could possibly complete in a shorter span of time. Your focus will be on identifying low-return tasks that could be re-allocated to free time. Examine what type of events and tasks that you are allowing to become distractions and time-stealers. Reassign this time to more productive projects.
If currently, you spend 45 minutes, first thing in the morning reading and responding to emails, you could revisit this activity to reduce the time to 20 minutes to be spent categorizing and prioritizing your emails, so you can respond later. Plan to provide, only 5 – 7 minutes responding to the most critical emails with the balance being addressed at a later planned time.
What to do: Look at all your free time or potential free time, examining all areas of your life, personal, spiritual, business, career. This is a no-judgement zone. There is no need to justify why you have been doing what you have been doing, just look with “fresh eyes” at areas in your life, blocks of time and unfruitful periods or distractions that can be reassigned to create winning moments.
3. Create a Plan: Crafting a more realistic action plan to ensure success with achievable wins in your life.
For example, let’s look at exercising. If you want to exercise 30 minutes daily (your intention) but currently you’re not engaged in any exercise routine, (actual allocation), you’ll probably agree, something must change. Your revised plan will need to include time for this new activity.
Also, if you have a goal to increase or change your meditating habits or prayer time, for instance, because you want to spend minimally 30 minutes per day on one or both of these activities, creating a realistic plan is key. Recognizing, if your new goal calls for an increase in your usual schedule or if it’s a new habit, the time must come from somewhere.
The same applies to your career or business. If your goal is to learn a new skill so you can advance your career, time will have to be re-allocated to meet this need. If networking is a necessity to advance your business, your strategy will have to include time dedicated to interacting with others in your industry. If this doesn’t happen, you’re going to continue to experience a misalignment regarding your intentions and allocation of time.
What to do: Set up systems that will enable you to be in control of your schedule and make adjustments to clear space for productive work or personal time. In other words, this will allow you to enjoy more of the things that you value as important. It is an opportunity to replace current non-productive or less productive activities with new ones.
In summary, time management brings order to your schedule. It positions you to spend more time on your most important task, first. You quickly identify when you are working on low-priority tasks to realign there management. You appropriately address situations that could lead to spending time in unproductive endeavors. Ultimately, you will start to engage in successful projects, with built-in efficiency ensuring that you don’t abandon important commitments and responsibilities, but rather effectively organize and implement them.
Lastly, you don’t have to tackle your barriers alone, there are tools that you can incorporate to assist you. I will share more about tools in Part 2 of my Four-part Series on “Barriers to Achieving your Goals”. Stay Tune!
