In conducting Time & Task Management workshops for many years less than 5% of participants believe that they have enough time. Still less believe that they have control over their time.
It gets worse. To date, no one has convincingly won my 168 hour challenge. Take the challenge and see how much time you are wasting.
We have 24 x 7 = 168 hours each week. Using traditional work week figures, it means that each week we have 4 shifts plus one 8-hour day each week. The challenge is to assume that you were reporting to a strict supervisor for each shift/day. In that context, justify your effective use and performance on each of the 4 shifts plus your 8-hour part-time engagement.
A quick disclaimer: This is not about being robots and putting in mega working hours. This is about leading a holistic life that is balanced and fulfilling. Indeed, you might decide not to allocate a single hour to work.
For example, you could decide to invest your time resources in rest and relaxation (R&R). But even then could you satisfy your 5 supervisors about your performance on each shift? Would the hours spent with the TV watching you qualify as effective R&R?
The challenge is to justify your effective use of the 4 shifts plus one work day that you are given every single week.
The consistent realization is that we have hours that we can’t account for. We can’t identify where they went and we are unable to allocate them to any category other than – Miscellaneous (more correctly – Missing.)
Yet, time is our most valuable asset. STOP WASTING YOUR TIME!
Reflect for a moment on a recent well spent hour. What if you could add 8 of those each week, year after year?
My promise is that if you dedicate 8 structured hours per week to any endeavour you are going to develop very high levels of proficiency at it. You could achieve almost anything.
Recovering 1 hour per day for more effective use can transform your life. Make a commitment now to identify more effective use for 8 hours each week.
You can break it up. You could do 30 minutes in the morning or at lunch time and another 30 minutes at evening time. Others might prefer to block out chunks of 3 hours twice per week plus 2 one-hour sessions on the weekend. (This is the formal study model).
You can also target different areas and objectives. Devotion early morning, exercise late afternoon, professional development early evening and proper R&R thereafter.
I recommend 8 areas that should be addressed to achieve a balanced and fulfilled life (not in order of importance).
- Family
- Career
- Spiritual
- Social interaction
- Financial stability
- Health
- Personal development
- Leisure
Complete an exercise from my Time & Task Management workshops that invariably brings participants to a fuller appreciation of what is really important to them.
Imagine that there is consensus among doctors that you have six months to live. Get a sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle. Shut out all distractions. Spend the next 10 minutes listing on the left “Things I will do” and on the right “Things I will not do”.
It is amazing how different those lists are from your current reality. Things that dominate your thoughts lose their importance and neglected areas come to the fore: “Will”, “God”, “Travel”, “Relationships” are constants. “Work” heads the list on the right. The truth is in reality we might have less than six months left. Take the time to make the best use of today.
STOP WATCHING YOUR TIME GO DOWN THE DRAIN!
Send your 168 hour challenge to me and complete a very private “Do/Not Do list.”
BOMDAS followers we are at Addition: Brackets|Of|Multiplication|Division|Addition|Subtraction.
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Trevor E S Smith is a Behaviour Modification Coach with the Success with People Academy, Extended DISC/FinxS.
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