Over 15 years of coaching the one topic that comes up in every coaching partnership is how to manage all that a person needs and wants to fit into their schedule. Expert time management skills, according to the International Student Guide to the United States of America, is a practice and value regarded highly among Americans, “Americans take pride in making the best use of their time. In the business world, ‘time is money.’” I explore time management with every client as it’s the key to intentional actions and accountability to reach goals.
Whether we like it or not, we cannot change how much time we have. The only thing we can do is manage how we choose to use our time.
The first step in using your time optimally is to fully understand how you’re currently spending it. I encourage my clients to start by tracking how they are spending their time. Using a simple spread sheet, word document, or a variety of apps can help capture how you are spending every minute of the day.
The second step is to analyze what types of activities comprise your day. While there are many ways to do this, one is to assign grades to each item on your list. I use the following grading system because it provides a good top-level view and breakdown of time.
A – High Priority
B – Medium priority
C– Low priority
W – Waste of time
It is also important to evaluate the list in terms of your professional and personal goals. Julie Morgenstern, Time Management from the Inside Out, suggests thinking of organizing your time and tasks much like you would organize your closet with containers. For instance, you have a container for professional development, a container for project or goal A, project or goal B, a container for networking and so on. She cautions on having too many containers, rather, she suggests using just five or six large containers. If you use more than that you won’t take the time to keep it organized as the containers become too specific and too cumbersome to swiftly keep systematized. And in keeping with the idea that you can only work on one to three goals effectively, only pull out one or two containers at at time.
Next, make a realistic plan of attack. Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, featured in the Forbes article How Successful People Approach their Work, says it is important to hold planning sessions with yourself. She recommends having a planning session at least once a week — or a big one weekly and then smaller ones as projects get finished. She also suggests planning over different time frames. “For instance,” she says, “at the end of the year, you could plan your goals for the year, and then, in your weekly planning sessions, make sure you are steadily working toward those goals.”
Finally, it is important when implementing your new plan for brilliance that you take into account your natural personality traits. For those of you whose personality traits are less discipline driven and more inspiration driven, planning your time for brilliance might take some concentrated effort (for more information on personality traits go to:JaneSchuette.com). Those with a more inspiration-driven nature due to the adaptable, flexible, spontaneous traits, tend to mix play and work, therefore often miscalculating how long it takes to accomplish tasks. Breaking them down into doable and reward-able chunks can be key.
An accountability partner works wonderful if you fall into the inspiration-driven category. In coaching, I caution against drilling out natural creative tendencies just to become a task driven human doing versus a fully alive, human being. The goal is to work with your personality and values to accomplish optimal time management that brings out the natural brilliance of you!