Continuing with our consideration of everyday concepts in metaphorical terms, time can be seen as a familiar animal in the domestic scene: the beloved and sometimes feared dog. We can’t stop dogs from barking; Similarly, we cannot prevent time from passing, no matter what we are doing or not. But we can tame that dog and make him our best friend. Or we can allow it to get hungrier, fiercer, and fiercer until it becomes a formidable foe.
As the ancient Greeks assured us, we need “moderation in all things.” Yes, time puts considerable pressure on us to get things done, especially in a busy workplace and / or a home full of children. The challenges, from the daily demands, of employees or family members, of technological developments, of social obligations, of the global environment driven by competition, are enormous. The past no longer offers the comfort of a precedent, not in today’s changing climate.
Just as companies have come to see themselves as highly responsive, evolving, integrated systems, individuals are also expected to integrate various elements; respond easily, clearly and quickly; continually evolve as learners, leaders, and responsible adults. If we cannot adapt when time calls for a change of direction, time will be wasted and projects may be doomed. The wise and timely use of agility and resilience reveals survival tools for the climate in which most of us live.
Agility is a way to save time. Choosing to be agile is just one of the options before us, regarding how we spend our life time. Simply put, if you choose to continue doing time-wasting things, you are voluntarily relegating to the trash the moments in life that you will never get back: unproductive moments, idle moments, moments that add little or nothing to the quality of your life and your life. job.
Get inspired by the words of management guru Peter Drucker: “Everything takes time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place over time and is time consuming. Yet most people take this for granted. unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender and loving care of time. ” Promise to save time like effective executives do. Identify your time wasters and commit to finding cures for these causes of minutes, hours, years, and lives lost.
While the top five time wasters below relate to the workplace, they extend to our personal and professional lives. Implement the cures, and then with the time you’ve saved, spend it profitably with your loved ones, including yourself.
Wasting time: causes and cures
1. Firefighting
Think about the work that is required of you both in the short term and in the long term. Then plan a schedule for your next work day.
two. Interruptions
Although you can choose not to be as assertive as Napoleon, who promised, “You can ask me for anything you want … except time,” you will have to find the words to keep you working when others try to interrupt. Your first task in this category is to create (and promise to use) five sentences to subvert the interruptions. Your second task is to read the following list aloud to yourself at the beginning of each workday.
1. I am disciplined enough to simply list all the people and things that can take my time instead of stopping my work to tend to those people and things.
2. I am interested enough to examine the list at the end of each day (for at least a week) to find out what kinds of interruptions are hampering my accomplishments.
3. I am tactful enough to warn my co-workers about times when they cannot interrupt me.
4. I am realistic enough to know that I am able to eliminate some of the distractions that currently plague me.
5. I’m professional enough to get on with all the distractions that I temporarily put aside to take a toll on a complicated project.
3. Poor planning
Are your strategic plans useless? They are, according to futurist John Naisbitt, if they were written without a strategic vision in mind. While your plans may not be strategic in terms of your organization’s vision, they should reflect your personal improvement goals. These are just a few of the questions to consider when planning to improve your use of time and improve your contribution to the organization.
√ What am I doing and doing well?
√ What am I doing and what am I not doing well?
√ What measures will measure my success?
√ What evidence do I have that I am thinking globally (organizationally) and acting
locally (applying general themes to my own spheres of operation and influence).
√ What am I not doing that I should be doing?
√ Which of my products will have the greatest impact on the departmental or organizational mission?
√ What do our clients want / need / deserve / expect?
√ What mistakes have people in comparable positions made recently?
√ How would you define the realities we face?
√ What combinations / alliances could optimize the time spent on planning and
Effort invested in the final implementation of the plans made?
Incorporate the answers to any of the three questions above into a plan to improve productivity or make better use of your organization’s time.
Four. Perfectionism
It is as true on the macrocosmic level (Franklin Delano Roosevelt points out that perfectionism can obstruct the paths to international peace) as it is on the microcosmic level (an obsessive need to have everything exactly right): the need to be perfect can make you poor. time manager.
Ideally, you will refer to the answers to the following questions whenever you are tempted to put all of your time and energy into a project:
1. Which of your assignments require absolute perfection?
2. For which of your assignments could excellence replace perfectionism?
3. What assignments are you good enough for?
4. What are the negatives associated with perfectionism?
5. Inability to say “No”“
Good communications involve both the content and the context of a message. It is possible, for example, to profess your ignorance and at the same time sound intelligent. It is also possible to fire someone and ask them to thank you, instead of reacting violently. And it’s entirely possible to say “no” to a request and sound polite while doing it.