We are all given 86,400 seconds every day, what did you do with them?
Let me ask you some questions and you can ponder on your responses. - You have a task to do that should take you half and hour. However, one hour later you are still working on the task. Why?
- You leave your desk, quickly, to collect something from the printer and you return to 25 minutes later. Where have you been and what have you been doing in that time?
- Do you monitor the time at your desk or do you look up and suddenly discover that the whole morning is gone and you have not achieved anything?
- Do you get home at night with the feeling of “I rushed around all day, but I have no real outcomes to show for it”?
- How often do you have people sitting at your desk that are uninvited and then won’t leave?
- Do you attend meetings that have no agenda, where people are unprepared and where, in the end, you were not really needed?
- Do you attend meetings where two or more people have the same information but there are other areas of the meeting that have no information and so you need to re-schedule?
- How often do you take on ‘someone else’s’ monkey” because you think you are helping or it is actually easier for you to just do it yourself?
I could go on and on but I suspect that the questions above may have already engaged you and you have become very aware of what you do or do not do with your time during the day.
So where do all these behaviours come from?
We all assume time to be something.
Let us explore what we assume time to be. Below is a questionnaire. Read the statements and simply tick ‘TRUE’ or ‘FALSE’ based on how you see the statement. - Most people are overworked because of the nature of their job.
- Your job is unique and not subject to repetitive time patterns.
- Higher level people with more authority usually make better decisions.
- Further delay will probably enable you to improve the quality of your decisions.
- Managing time better is essentially a matter of reducing the time spent on various activities.
- Your job deals with people, and since all people are important, you cannot establish priorities.
- Delegating will probably free a great deal of your time and relieve you of some of responsibility.
- Finding ‘quiet time’ is usually impossible, especially in small offices.
- Most people can solve their time problems by working harder.
- Most of the ordinary day-to –day activities do not need to be planned, and most people could not plan for them anyway.
- It is not always possible to work on the basis of priorities.
- Finding the problem is easy; it is finding the solution that is difficult.
- A good way to reduce wasted time is to look for short cuts
- Most people know how they spend their time and can easily identify how they procrastinate.
- It is not necessary to write out your objectives.
Now for the results!
All the answers are FALSE!
This may come as a surprise and I can hear a lot of questions and disagreements happening right now. For more information about why the answers are false, read my full article here or at www.mindleapsa.co.za, under articles. |