Who isn’t time challenged these days? Who doesn’t want more hours in a day? Who among us ends each day with a completed “To-Do” list? For those who we work with, the new “normal” is having more work than time allows and an increased sense of overwhelm that often zaps energy and leads to frustration and exhaustion. What we want it a “quick-fix” solution to this challenge and no one yet has come up with it so we’re going to take a stab at it.
What we do know is that there is no “quick-fix” because the solution isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” product or service that you can buy. So many companies have tried to provide a single solution, like the Day-Timer system or the Franklin Planner, proclaiming if you just follow their system, you’ll be more productive and feel more in control. There is no product or service that will make you “feel” more in control because feeling in control is the by-product of the choices you make every moment of the day.
The only things we really have control over are the choices we make and if we operate on automatic and are not making conscious choices about how we spend our time, then we feel “out of control.” Increasing our awareness about “how” we are spending our time is the first step. Keeping track of where you are spending your time for a 5-10 day period is often enlightening to our clients. Patterns emerge that reveal answers to what is keeping you from feeling in control. Often interruptions can be minimized by asking others to hold all their questions until a certain time each day when you’ll check in with them; emails can be checked at the top of every hour versus looked at when they arrive; and “fires” can be examines to see if additional training or delegation is needed to empower employees to take more initiative or act more independently.
At the end of the day, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution because we each are different and the “fix” has to be customized to fit our own work style, personality, behaviors and attitudes, needs and wants. Don’t be fooled looking for a solution outside of yourself. Take time to look within, track how you are spending your time, and then make decisions on how you want to spend your time and our bet is you’ll start feeling in control more and more each day.
If you’d like to get started tracking your time, we offer a very simple form to help you do it with some instructions. Send us an email at info@transforminc.com and we’ll get it right out to you.
