Time Management

700,000 is all you’ve got!

The average Australian only has 700,000 hours in his/her life, assuming he/she lives until they are 80, 200,000 of which you spend asleep.  Take off the number of hours (157,000) that you live in childhood until you're 18 years old and all you have left is less than half  - 340,000 to be exact! By the time you are 40 years old you only have 150,000 hours left.

So are you working a 50, 60, 70 hour week and can’t reduce it to 35 hours?

Why?

We have put men on the moon, we can transplant hearts so I am sure we can reduce the hours we work to increase the hours we want to do other things we enjoy in life.

Ray Prince, an author on time management, said he was amazed geographers have not heard of the place that many people talk about. It is the utopia we call ‘someday’.

So how do you clawback hours that you need, to do what you want in life someday?

Well by using office files to clear your mind!

Clear your mind

It is often not the lack of time that is the problem it is because things are in our minds. 

Remember - Clarity is power.  It allows you to identify what is a priority in life.

So to clear your mind and stop that internal chattering that exhausts you, you need to:

• Clarify what your task is;
• Decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress towards completing the task.
• Once you have decided on all the actions you need to take you need to keep reminders in a system you can regularly, easily review and trust.

Until you do this your mind can’t rest and cannot give up its job trying to remember all the things you want to remember. No wonder you feel exhausted.

So how to go about clearing your mind, obtain clarity and claw back more time for yourself?

Well here are the steps.

STEP ONE - PICK A DAY

Put one day aside, preferably at the weekend. Have 5 manila folders, a large box and a large waste bin.

STEP TWO - COLLECT

Decide which area of your life you want to clear from your mind first.  This might be your home, your garage or your office.  In the following example, which can be applied to other locations in your life, we will take an office as an example.

Think and write down on single sheets of paper everything that you think you have to do, whether it is work-related, personal or a dream.  Place these sheets of paper in the large box.

Add to these things articles you haven't read, memos from colleagues, letters you have not answered, ideas and new projects, current project task lists, e-mails not actioned etc.

STEP THREE – EMPTY THE BOX

Label the five manila files as follows:

• Incubate
• Reference
• Delegate
• Do it now
• Defer

Turned the box upside down

Place the item in to one of these five files or better still the sixth file

• Throwaway (Waste bin) and you must not put the item back in the box.

Once you have been through the whole box place the Reference file and Incubate file on one side to file.

STEP FOUR – ACTION

You will then be left with three very full files.

Delegate

For those in the Delegate file if this action will take longer than two minutes to do yourself and you can delegate it then attach that person's name to the front of the item and pass it to them.

If it will take less than two minutes to do yourself, place the item in the Do it Now file.

Do It Now

For those in the Do It Now file assess whether those actions can take less than two minutes.  If so do them now or if it needs to be a working day put it in your diary now  together with the amount of time you will need to action all those items first thing on the next working day.

Two minute actions would be such things as make a call, reply to an e-mail.

Defer file

Some of the things in this file will be your projects. Projects can be:

• engaging new staff;
• booking a holiday:
• upgrading computer equipment
• writing a business plan.

The projects should also include your Someday Projects which may include books you would like to read, courses you would like to take and also your Personal projects such as holidays, or organising a party. Prepare an action list for each project. To manage these action lists you will need to decide on a reminder system you can trust whether it is a calendar, diary or electronic organiser. They need to be in a format that you can review on a daily basis. The way I do this is:

• Put as many items as I can in my calendar on specific days and allocate time to concentrate on that task.

• I have a Today List that is an appointment in my calendar at seven o'clock in the morning to remind me to look at this list first thing each day.  At the end of the day I move the Today List appointment to the next morning after I have deleted all items successfully completed.

• My 7.30am appointment is labelled Project List.  Within this appointment is a complete list of all the items that I need to do to complete each project that I am working on.  Again it is moved forward to the following day at the end of each working day.

STEP FIVE – REVIEW

• Review your Today List and Action Lists daily. Diarise days and times including personal items in the time you have available in a week leaving time for emergencies.

• Review your Project list as often as needed to keep it in the timeframe allowed for the project

• Reviewing your Someday List monthly.

HOWEVER REMEMBER ALWAYS!

“Accept the fact that you will never get to the bottom of your to-do lists, in a lifetime.  When you die your in tray will still be full.  Think instead of your lists as cogs in the wheel of life.  They are circles of lists that fit together that turn to keep life moving along.  The systems to keep thoese cogs working smoothly need to be maintained or they will literally clog up.”

ALSO REMEMBER!

Time is mother nature's way of preventing everything happening at once. So start using the time you have left, which could be as little as 150,000 hours or less, effectively by starting with Clearing Your Mind !