I often ask groups of leaders to specify one aspect of their role they need to improve, and someone will always say time management. I normally reply that you can’t manage time — that it is impossible to manage something you cannot totally control.

Rather than trying to manage time, manage the priorities that consume your time — those you do have control over. You can choose what to do when and how much time you are going to allocate to completing that priority. So it’s not about managing your time, it’s about managing your priorities.

The greatest skill you can apply in your life, your career and your business is to determine what is important, what is vital and what gives you the highest payoff for the effort expended. Every day you face different priorities. How you manage them determines your progress each day.

You see, if you don’t have any priorities, you will never feel in control, and progress towards your goals will elude you. If you don’t set your own priorities, someone else will set them for you and you will be part of their plan, not yours.

In managing priorities you can be reactive, adaptive or proactive.

When you are reactive you feel like you have little control or even are out of control. You are always responding to a situation or set of circumstances of someone else’s making, which gives you that feeling of always striving but never arriving. If this happens for too long, not only will you feel frustrated, but a sense of hopelessness may also start to creep into your life.

When you are adaptive you feel like you have some control and some flexibility in your life to pursue your own goals and interests. Sometimes you have a plan and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes things go according to plan and sometimes you must adapt to the circumstances thrown at you. You may feel more puzzled than helpless, wondering why you don’t feel in control more often.

When you are proactive you feel like you are ahead of the curve. You are doing tasks and activities today for tomorrow. You confidently make your own decisions. Realistically you know not everything will go according to plan, but generally you feel in control of your life, with the ability to stop, regroup, refocus and re-plan as needed.

So how do you become more proactive in your life? Here are eight ideas for bringing out the best in you.

1 Use the right tools

There are so many great online tools and apps available to help you prioritise your day, tasks and projects. You can use a diary or day planner. A tool I created some time ago is simply an A4 page that is divided into four areas …

• Projects. This area is dedicated to helping you to complete the projects you are working on at home or at work that create real momentum in your life. Note down the tasks relating to these projects, including ideas, strategies or specific goals that you need to focus on either personally or professionally.
• Priorities. These are the tasks that need to be completed first in the roles you play at work or at home. I work on lots of projects for clients and for my business, so this area makes sense for me. You will have a number of priorities for the week ahead. These will often take the form of promises and commitments you have made to colleagues or customers.
• Personal. These tasks relate to your personal goals. If you try to fit them around your busy work schedule, you will always struggle to find time for what is meaningful for your personal life and wellbeing.
  When planning your week it is important that you allocate time to tasks that move you closer to your personal goals.
• Pipeline/People/Processes/Proactive. The fourth area I rename from time to time. One week it could be ‘Pipeline’, which is about completing sales activities and generating more business for my sales pipeline. One week it could be ‘People’, which is about managing and working with my team, coaching and mentoring my people better as a leader.

  Then it could be ‘Processes’, which is about how I can streamline my work or business processes to become more effective and efficient. It could also be ‘Proactive’, which is about working on those long-term tasks that may not show a result in the short term but are vital for the big picture. It’s about allocating time to the proactive work required in your specific role or business. An example of this sheet is below, and you can download a PDF version from www.passionatepeople.com.

2 Set a time limit

A universal rule is that the task will always expand to fit the time. If you have all day to do something, it will take you all day to complete the task. One of your most productive days may well be the last day before you go on holiday. Most likely you come to work with a plan, a focus, and know exactly what needs to be done to ensure you can go on holiday without having to put out fires while you are away. Why? Because you have a deadline! Be specific: ‘I am going to have this part of the project completed by 2 pm today.’

3 Twenty-minute chunks

Twenty minutes of focused attention is better than two hours of distracted attention scattered between a vast number of tasks. Buy yourself an egg timer or use an app on your smartphone and give yourself 20 minutes of uninterrupted time. That means no phone calls, emails or texting, just 100 per cent focus on a single activity or task. Set yourself a goal for the 20 minutes, and then give yourself a reward — five minutes for a coffee or to check those emails or return any calls you have missed. For some people this will be a challenge, as everyone now believes we need to be digitally connected 24/7.

Every goal or project is made up of a series of small steps. Focus on your goal but be clear about your next step. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said …

‘Great acts are made up of small deeds.’

We all marvel at the achievements of some people, yet the greatest achievements can be broken down into a series of little steps applied with tenacity over time. Think of a goal you want to achieve and now think of three small action steps you need to take this month, and one action step you could take in the next three hours, to bring the goal closer.

4 Give yourself time

You need to give yourself time to recharge. One per cent of 24 hours is roughly 15 minutes. You give time to your work, customers, family, friends and community groups — when is there time for you? At the end of the day, when you have nothing left to give? To do everything you want to do, you need time and space for mental maintenance. This is a great time to refocus yourself or just to be still and take some quiet time to meditate. If you are always running on an adrenaline-fuelled high, then when do you give yourself time to stop and recalibrate?

5 Clean out the clutter

Clutter can be one of the core sources of stress and confusion in your life. Have a big cleanout of your desk, office, cupboards, garage and even your wardrobe. Release yourself from the accumulation of stuff. Streamline your life by looking at what you can do to set yourself free from the clutter. Pick a day in the next seven to ten days and pick one area of your life to de-clutter.

6 Save minutes

All too often people are looking to save hours and it is the wrong focus. Look at activities and actions you can take to save minutes. To put this into perspective, saving 10 minutes each day means recovering 60 hours in a year — a full working week to devote to a project, person or program, or to you. Review where you consume time in your life and work. It could be email, paperwork, travelling time or meetings you attend or run. Then decide how to save minutes. Look at what efficiency processes you could create and find out from others what they do to save time in these areas.

7 Tackle the tough task first

Complete the toughest task first and everything else becomes easier. There are always going to be necessary actions and tasks you won’t want to do — tasks that seem especially big and challenging. My suggestion is do them first. If you don’t, over time they seem to become bigger in your mind. Most likely you are thinking about it all day as you work on other tasks, rather than actually doing something about it. In other words, you have given it all of your mental attention but not your physical attention. A funny thing about tackling the toughest task first is it’s never as big as you thought it was!

8 Prioritise

Not all priorities are equal. Generally your priorities will fall into one of three categories: must do, should do and could do, or A, B and C priorities. An A priority must be done today. It is vital, mission critical. Ignore it and you could lose a customer, let down a friend or cost yourself money. It will also reflect poorly on you in your role.

A B priority is important. If you got it done today, you are being proactive. It is not required today, but if you do complete it, you are forward planning and preparing — getting ahead of the curve, so to speak.

A C priority tends to be nice to do, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t get it done today. No-one is relying on it being completed immediately, but a C priority today could become an A priority in three or four days’ time.

It is never about time. It’s about what you do with the time you have. All of us have the same 24-hour daily allocation, so how do some people achieve so much and others so little? The answer lies in how they manage their priorities.