Permanently Eliminate the Words, “I Don’t Have Enough Time.”
“Where did the day go?” “I need more hours in a day!” “I’m meeting myself coming and going!” “I just want time to do the things I want to do!!!” If you’re like most people, you can relate whole-heartedly to at least one of those statements. Why? Because too many of us have arranged our world (unknowingly of course) to be one where our time controls us rather than where we control our time. The good news is you can change that. Here’s how…
Time management (or the lack thereof) has a HUGE impact on our lives, our health and especially our success. If we’re crunched for time, we feel rushed and stressed out. Then we make poor choices about eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising and even spending, not to mention the suffering felt by family and friends when we don’t share quality time with them or the damage we do to our businesses when we take out our stress on our team. The result in both of those cases is VERY costly. One results in hurting our personal relationships and one results in lack of production. All because of the stress we feel due to being rushed or ‘out of time’. Did you know stress can even cause your body to hold onto belly fat!? But when we invest our time in activities that are truly moving us towards our goals, the benefits are amazing.
I own multiple companies, one is a fitness facility and one provides systems to help gyms have the success we’ve had. We own a vitamin, herb and natural foods store and I speak globally, write and record training products, produce TV shows, publish a magazine and do interviews regularly. We own 3 homes, my husband and I have 5 children and 5 grandchildren. I get what it means to be busy! This information has helped me and my team. Now it’s your turn.
The ability to gain 1-3 hours of productive time each day can translate into 7-21 hours a week, 30-90 hours a month, and 360-1,180 hours a year. You can gain up to 27 weeks by consistently using effective time management techniques! This can be work time, time for investing in your growth, time relaxing or time spent with loved ones. You have to know what’s important to you in order to determine how you would invest any newfound free time you might uncover as you start to get very focused on achieving your goals. What will you do with the time when you learn how find 3 more hours every day?
Looking at your priorities and values is the best way to determine how to begin to manage your time. These priorities are often birthed out of necessity, related to family or club obligations, or having to overcome a major challenge or setback. The priorities may be based on a goal you want to achieve that will propel you forward or may stem from wanting to create as much richness and fullness in your life as possible.
Nearly everyone feels short on time and stressed out. But successful people have learned the secrets of time management and figured out how to invest their time for a good return, rather than spend it away. They know what’s really happening when we think we’re managing our time, and they have eliminated the worn-out feeling of not having enough time. Maybe most importantly, they know how to say “NO” to low-priority activities that put their goals on hold.
Here are 4 questions that will begin help you find more time immediately. These successful folks have asked themselves hard questions like:
- “How do I waste time?”
- “Do I spend enough time on activities that are truly important to me?”
- “What gets in the way of including those activities in my schedule?”
- “How can I stop wasting time and start investing it wisely?”
They have also asked themselves fun, dream-building questions like:
- “What activities could I devote time to that would fulfill me?”
- “How can I make more time for my priorities?”
- “If I had nine more weeks in every year, what would I do with them?”
Anyone can do this. Each of us has 24 hours in a day to work with. So why are some of us achieving our dreams and ambitions with time to spare, while the rest of us are running around in circles just trying to keep up with daily tasks?
The movie 50 First Dates teaches us a valuable lesson about that. In the movie, Adam Sandler’s character falls for a woman who has severe amnesia and can only remember 24 hours at a time. Every day he comes up with new ways to meet and talk with her, always like it’s the first time, with the objective of getting her to fall in love with him all over again. But eventually he discovers a way to explain to her about their relationship and fit all the memories they’ve shared together into one day. Now, that’s effective time management!
The valuable lesson in the movie is that each of us lives one 24-hour day at a time, and we need to make decisions that move us closer to having the life we want to have and being the person we want to be. You must schedule your priorities to get done first because they are the most important activities you can take to achieve your goals, but without letting your daily tasks fall by the wayside.
Many of us deal with distractions while we’re trying to get work done. One of the greatest distractions is ‘multitasking’. We are taught that multitasking is a way of getting two or more things done at once, and sometimes it is, like when we exercise during TV commercials or when we drop off our dry cleaning on the way to a meeting.
We think we’re being efficient when we work on two or more things at once, such as checking email while talking on the phone. But that kind of multitasking is distracting, and leads to spending more time on both tasks than you would spend if you focused on each task individually and without distractions.
Learning when to multitask and when not to, along with employing other efficient work practices, could give you up to two more hours each day. I regularly teach people how delegating saves you time and energy; I share six ways to work smarter and accomplish more in less time and 10 ways to gain two hours in each day. After discovering this valuable info, you’ll be able to develop laser-like focus to get work done faster.
Part of the problem with multitasking is that you can actually end up wasting time switching back and forth from task to task. Did you know that each time you get interrupted, it takes your brain a full 15 minutes to get back into that “groove” you were in before the interruption? If you get interrupted four times in one day, that’s an entire hour wasted! When we figure out how to eliminate time wasters, we exceed beyond our wildest imaginings.
Everyone gets new tasks thrown at them every day and we are tempted to put off important goals in order to get those daily tasks done. The ironic thing is that even though we always seem to be busy, we usually have time for unimportant things like watching TV, talking on the phone for hours, or surfing the Internet.
Highly successful people learn to prioritize their time; stay focused so they get important things done and have more time for the good things in life, like family and recreation. They know the top three time wasters and how to beat them. They have learned why many urgent matters don’t require their time and attention, therefore they stay out of crisis mode.
Get a grip on your schedule by taking inventory of your time with a Time Study. Basically, you record every single task you do, each time you change tasks. You might be surprised to find out how many times an hour you switch tasks, or maybe you’ll be shocked to find out that a specific task takes much longer than you thought. I have a worksheet to help you do a Time Study so please contact info@donnakrech.com if you want that tool.
Lots of different time management tools are available to help you achieve your goals. You can escape the habit of responding only to urgent matters, and discover the key to long-term accomplishments. The way we do this in my company is with Time Chunking. Email me if you want access to a free audio that explains how it works, and I’ll also give you the necessary tools to make Time Chunking work for you! It will help you improve your work habits so you can save time and be more productive.