Hi there
It is often said, “the key is not in spending time but in investing it.” A lot of us use both spend and invest interchangeably with time, having them to mean the same thing. Well, spending time and investing time are two different things; think of time here as money. When you spend money, you use money to acquire things and when you invest money you put your money to work and get returns back. So just like money, when you spend time, you have expended time doing something which may not necessarily be meaningful or productive but when you invest time, you have put in those moments into something meaningful and productive.
Investing time is not necessarily in the hours spent but it is in the focus, attention, and quality of the outcome of whatever the time has been expended on. With the holidays making us to work from home, we might be focused starring at tasks while our minds wander into other matters or distractions and after hours, we discover that we haven’t done so much. It is often easy to confuse being tired as been productive; well, let me burst your bubble: being tired doesn’t equate been productive. You could have been productive without being tired and be tired without being productive. It doesn’t mean that you cannot be tired after a long time of attention to produce excellent result; the point here is, they shouldn’t be mistaken as one and the same.
A friend once told me this, “it is better to have 60% of your tasks done outstandingly than have all tasks done in varying percentages and nothing excellent to show.” Time management in being productive is key and for effective time management, knowing what important, urgent and significant plays a huge role in determining what to pay more attention to matters. Paul J Meyer once said. “productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort.”
Effective time management has been devised and discussed in many settings by many professionals who have studied on the topic in depth. Personally, I find the study by Rory Vaden very interesting and would share that briefing below. Rory opines that there is no such thing as time management, there is only self-management. He says, “time continues on, regardless of what we do, so all we can do is decide what we will be spending our time doing or not doing for that day.”
Going by Rory’s research, tasks and activities can be prioritized by the focus funnel which he developed by selection processed of:
- Elimination: Ask yourself, can this be eliminated? Is it important, urgent and significant? Can I live without it? Bear in mind that anything you say no to today creates more time for you.
- Automation: Can it be automated? Once a process is automated, you can multitask, thereby creating room to have more things accomplished.
- Delegation: Can I get someone else to do this task? Remember, leadership is not always getting things done right. It is about getting things done through people.
- Concentration: must this task be done now? Procrastinate on purpose if the task is important and significant but not urgent.
Conclusively, the shorter way to do many things, is doing one thing at a time. Effective self-management will definitely lead to effective time management. Investing time in garnering knowing is great gain and that is why you should be a part of our Standardization webinar coming up on the 22nd of May, 2021. This webinar is free but registration is mandatory to be a part. You can visit www.21search.ng/webinar to register. Enjoy the holiday.
Until I come your way again, stay safe, work smart and not just hard.
Love,
Lizzy.