Chapter 17
Setting Your Habits for Time Management Success
IN THIS CHAPTER
Looking at your strengths and goals
Creating a system to manage your time
Minimizing the disruptions from calls and other distractions
Fighting the urge to procrastinate
Becoming adept at making big decisions
Time is the great equalizer, as everyone has the same amount in a day. No matter who you are, where you live, and what you do, you clock the same 24-hour cycle as the next person. One person may be wealthier than another, but that doesn’t earn him a minute more than the poorest people on the planet.
If that simple fact seems a bit discouraging, think of it this way: You may not have the power to get yourself more time, but you do have the power to make the most of it. You can take your 365 days a year, seven days a week, and 1,440 minutes in a day and invest them in such a way that you reap a return that fulfills your life and attracts the success you dream of.
That’s what this chapter is about: taking control of how you spend your time to make sure you’re using it how you really want to. Anyone who does that is a success. You really are in control of your time, even though you don’t always feel like it; even if you have a job that demands overtime; even if you have kids who keep you in the carpool loop; even if you have dreams and goals that involve developing new skills or furthering your education.
All in all, discovering how to manage your time well is part mental restructuring and part creating a system. Effective time management requires a little introspection, some good habits and organizational skills, and more than a few logistical and tactical tools. But all are achievable for anyone who desires to be more successful.
Getting to Know Yourself
The better you understand yourself — your strengths, weaknesses, goals, values, and motivations — the easier it is to manage your time effectively. In this section, you look at your strengths and goals, think about how much your time is worth, and observe personal energy and behavior patterns that affect your focus throughout the day.
Assessing your strengths and weaknesses
As a young man, I thought I was good — okay, I admit it, I thought I was great — at a much larger group of skills, tasks, and jobs than I do today. In fact, the older I get, the more I realize the list of what I’m not good at dwarfs the list of things I am good at. Being consciously competent at those few, however, gets me a lot further than being unconsciously incompetent, as I once was. Despite my poor academic record in high school, as a young adult, I was a quick study at what I needed to do to be as successful in life as I wanted to be. At some point, I saw the light and realized I needed to face up to what I had to do to get where I wanted to go.
First, I took stock of my assets: I tallied up my strengths, skills, and even my weaknesses. And I identified things I needed to work on and things I needed to leverage. That’s when I realized that although some people were smarter, were more educated, had more money, and knew more influential people than I did, I had the same amount of time as anyone else. And if I wanted to get ahead, it was up to me to harness my time and invest it in such a way to get a greater return. My willingness to invest more time to gain the edge helped equalize the playing field for me and help me achieve the success I enjoy today.
Chances are that by this point in your life, you’ve discovered some skills that you come to naturally or perhaps have worked hard to acquire. Maybe you’re a master negotiator or a whiz with numbers. You may be a good writer, or you may have a silver tongue. Whatever your strengths, developing the handful that brings you the most return on your efforts, propelling you forward to attain your goals, is a more productive course of action than trying to be the best at everything. For most people, these strengths typically number no more than a half-dozen.
In addition to pinpointing your strengths, you need to identify the areas where your skills are lackluster. Then figure out which tasks are essential for meeting the goals you want to accomplish and build those skills. Invest time in honing and maintaining your strengths and improve the weaknesses that you need to overcome to reach your goals.
To be successful, you need to be selective.
Naming goals to give you direction
You know how it is: When you’re working toward something, keeping your focus is much easier. A woman may want to lose weight, for example, but perhaps she struggles to stick to a diet or exercise plan. But if her son’s wedding is looming three months away on her calendar, she may be more inspired to stay on track, cutting back on second helpings and getting in workouts.
Your goals can serve as inspiration in adopting good time-management skills. After all, managing your time isn’t really a benefit in and of itself, but managing your time so that you can spend more of it doing what’s important to you is — whether you’re saving for a retirement of travel and adventure or buying the house in the perfect neighborhood.
Using your aspirations to fire up your time management success means you have to identify your goals and keep them in the front of your mind. Pinning down what’s most important to you may require some soul searching. Write down your goals — all of them — and follow these guidelines:
- Cast a wide net. Go for the big goals, such as joining the Peace Corps, as well as the not-so-big ones, such as getting an energy-efficient car next year.
- Think big. Don’t rein in your dreams because they seem unrealistic.
- Be as descriptive as possible. Instead of “build my dream house,” flesh it out: Where is this house? How big? What features does it have? What does it look like? When do you want to move in?
- Don’t limit goals to a single category. Think about goals for your career, your personal life, your social situation, your financial status, and any other facet of life that’s important to you.
The process of goal-seeking can be a fun and energizing experience, and it’s one you can explore at length in Chapter 5. You also see how your current time use can affect the forecast for your future.
Assigning your time a monetary worth to guide your priorities
Most people think about the value of their time as it relates to on-the-job activity. The fast-food worker knows he earns a minimum wage per hour. The freelance artist advertises a per-hour rate. The massage therapist charges for his services in half-hour and hour increments. But to be truly aware of the value of your time, you need to carry this concept into your personal life as well. The value of time in your personal life is at least as valuable as your work lifetime. In some cases, personal time is priceless.
One of the most important points to remember is that it’s okay not to get everything done. What’s critical is making sure that the important things are getting done. By assigning value to your time and using the skills you acquire from these next two chapters, you can clearly identify what’s important and make conscious, wise choices. For example, if you need to save another $200 per month because you want to start an account for your children’s college education, you may determine that putting in an extra shift at work may not be worth the loss of time with your family, even at time-and-a-half pay.
Identifying your rhythm to get in the zone
Athletes talk about being in the zone, a place where positive results seem to stick like a magnet. Well, I’m here to tell you that the zone isn’t some magical place where wishes come true. Anybody can get there, without a lucky token or fairy dust. What it takes is focus, singular focus.
If you know your rhythms — when you’re most on, what times of day you’re best equipped to undertake certain tasks — you can perform your most important activities when you’re in the zone. Everyone works at a unique pace, and recognizing that rhythm is one of the most valuable personal discoveries you can make. Some of the aspects you need to explore include the following:
- How many hours can you work at a high level each day?
- What’s your most productive time of the day?
- How many weeks can you work at high intensity without a break?
- How long of a break do you need so you can come back focused and intense?
Following a System
Effective time management requires more than good intent and self-knowledge. If intent was enough, everyone would be wealthy and healthy. We would all achieve financial independence and have rock-hard abs. To keep your time under careful control, you need a framework. In your arsenal of time-management ammunition, you want to stock organizational skills, technology that helps keep you on track, and planning tools that help you keep the reins on your time, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, and so forth.
Establishing a solid system you can replicate is a key to succeeding in managing your time. Systems, standards, strategies, and rules protect your time and allow you to use it to your best advantage. These skills are applicable whether you’re the company CEO, a salesperson, a midlevel manager, an executive, or an administrative assistant. No matter your work or your work environment, time management is of universal value.
Scheduling your time and creating a routine
Sticking to a time-scheduling system can’t guarantee the return of your long-lost vacation days, but by regularly tracking your meetings, appointments, and obligations, you reduce your odds of double-booking and scheduling appointments too close. And by planning ahead, you make sure to make time for all the important things first.
For years, I’ve followed the time-blocking system, which I detail in Chapter 19. The system ensures that you put your priorities first (starting with routines and then moving to individual tasks/activities) before scheduling in commitments and activities of lesser importance.
Such time-management techniques are just as applicable to the other spheres of your life. There’s a reason why I advise you to plug in your personal commitments first when filling in your time-blocking schedule: Your personal time is worthy of protection, and you can further enhance that time by applying time-management principles.
Organizing your surroundings
A good system of time management requires order and organization. Creating order in your world saves time wasted searching for stuff, from important phone numbers to your shoes. But even more, physical order creates mental order and helps you perform more efficiently.
Yes, your workspace should be clean and orderly, with papers and folders arranged in some sort of sequence that makes items easy and quick to find. Your desk should be cleared off, providing space to work. Your important tools — phone, computer, tablet — ought to be within reach. And your Google calendar, or day planner, of course, should be at your fingertips. You might say, “Who uses a written day planner anymore?” The truth is, for many, a more technological approach to time management lowers productivity. Don’t feel, to organize your time, that you have to use technology.
Using time-saving technology
Organization extends beyond your work area: Not only should your laptop or tablet be nearby, but the files, documents, and contact information on them should be ordered for quick access. If you are in any type of business, you must use a customer relationship management software, or CRM for short. The vast majority of businesses use Outlook or Google Drive or Excel for customer lists. A CRM, like Salesforce, Hubspot, or Goldmine, can be invaluable to organize and correspond to clients efficiently. A CRM stores your address list, tracks your correspondence, and contains your calendar and upcoming appointments.
But that’s just the beginning. Today’s teleconferencing and videoconferencing equipment means you can hold weekly meetings with your colleagues who live on the other side of the globe without anyone having to turn in a travel expense report. The use of Webex, GoToMeeting, or Zoom can be a game-changer for communicating within a company as well as making video connections with clients and prospects.
Overcoming Time-Management Obstacles
Anyone can conquer time management, but it’s not always easy. If your experience is anything like mine, sometimes your days feel like a video game, where you’re in constant threat of being gobbled up on your course to the finish line. But instead of cartoon threats, your obstacles are your own shortcomings (poor communication skills, procrastination, and the inability to make wise and quick decisions), time-wasting coworkers and bosses, phone and people interruptions, and unproductive meetings.
Communicating effectively
Communicating effectively is one of the best ways to maximize your time. One of the biggest time-wasters on company time is, no surprise, talking with coworkers. But what may be a surprise is that the abuse isn’t a function of weekend catch-up discussions that take place at the water cooler or the gossip circle at the copy machine. Rather, it’s the banter at the weekly staff status reports, the drawn-out updates of projects that never seem to conclude, and the sales presentations that get off-track. It’s all the meetings that could be as brief as ten minutes but somehow take an hour or more. At your disposal, however, is an amazing weapon for taming these misbehaving encounters: your words. With a few deft remarks, you have the power to bring these meetings to a productive close.
The biggest challenge in communicating effectively is selecting the communication channel. We have a much broader band of communication methods at our disposal today. Roll back the clock 30 years. Our methods of communication were mail, phone, and face-to-face. There were only three potential choices, so it was easier to at least select the right delivery vehicle. In our world today, we still have those three, plus we have text, e-mail, instant message, and social media posts (think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn). We also have video e-mail, video message, Skype video, and FaceTime.
I would first evaluate the purpose of the communication: information, connection, or persuasion. Those three categories can help you select the delivery method. If I am just trying to convey information, I can use any method I choose. Any e-mail, or even snail mail, can create information flow and do it efficiently. I likely would not need a face-to-face meeting to deliver information. The information could also be conveyed electronically via text or instant message. If I am trying to connect with someone, then speed and the ability for a back-and-forth short dialogue could be used. For example, a text or instant message would be better suited. I could even use video e-mail to create connection. While a video e-mail isn’t dialogue, the recipient can see me personally, and it shows me to be a very caring person. This is an especially useful tool for communicating someone you haven’t met yet.
Being persuasive requires the most effective communication. If I am trying to persuade people to my point of view, I need to be talking with them over Skype or FaceTime, having an online meeting, or be face-to-face with them. Ever try to convince your teenager of something via text? It doesn’t work well. If you could see them rolling their eyes when they read your text, you could respond accordingly, but you can’t.
Circumventing interruptions
Interruptions creep into your workday in all sorts of insidious manners. Think of the pesky coworker stepping into your office with “Got a sec?” Plus you have interruptions in the form of unproductive meetings, phone calls, hall conversations that drift into your office and distract you, and even the “you’ve got mail” icon that creeps onto the lower corner of your computer monitor.
Additionally, most poor time managers interrupt themselves by trying to do too much at once. Study after study supports that multitasking isn’t the most effective work style. The constant stops and starts disrupt a project, requiring startup time each time you turn back to the task.
Scheduling time offline
Used effectively, the telephone, text, social media, instant message, and e-mail can enhance performance, increase productivity, boost profitability, and expedite career growth. But there’s a flipside: Because modern communication allows for easier interruptions, it creates a greater loss of production, performance, profitability, and advancement than ever before. And to a certain extent, e-mail has taken many people hostage. Do you feel compelled to open all e-mail immediately? Do you jump on to the next e-mail even before you’ve responded to or resolved the previous e-mail? Just as with cellphones, the fact that you can be reached easily and at any time seems to dictate that you must be available to anyone — all the time.
When you stop to open each and every e-mail as soon as it arrives or answer the phone every time it rings, you are, in essence, multitasking, trying to perform one or more tasks simultaneously. And as I frequently point out, multitasking is just not time-efficient.
To keep your focus, set aside time — daily or several times per week — during which you simply do not take calls, check e-mail, review social media, or allow other interruptions. Such prescheduled segments ensure blocks of concentration, a tactic certain to raise productivity and lower frustration. If you’re concerned about being unavailable for too long of a time, then limit these periods to one or one and a half hours, with time afterward to return messages.
Letting e-mail wait in your inbox
I am a firm believer in working offline. There’s no way I can resist the temptation to check my e-mail every time my computer tells me a message has arrived. During your offline time, turn off your e-mail notice or disconnect from the Internet. Schedule your e-mail time and devote a reasonable time block to take care of it. Then turn your e-mail program off so that you don’t see the you’ve-got-mail icon on your computer until your next scheduled e-mail session.
The toughest decision you may face is whether to check your e-mail first thing in the morning when you fire up your computer. Wait and knock out a few priorities first? Or open it up and relieve the suspense — and possibly get waylaid by some marauding issue you feel compelled to pursue? It’s your choice, so do what works best for you. But by staying offline for the bulk of your workday, you’re likely to stay focused on the tasks at hand and get much more accomplished.
Stopping the ringing in your ears
Give yourself times when you turn off your cellphone. The most brilliant innovation with these amazing devices? You can turn them off! This stops the dinging, pinging, and screen popups that distract all of us. Without missing a message, tweet, or post, you can continue with your conversation, errand, or work without distraction and get back to the phone when you’re through. Of course, you may already protect yourself against uninvited interruptions by limiting whom you give your cell number to. But unless you’re awaiting an urgent call from your kids, your boss, or the state lottery commission, you can likely afford a period of off-time while you attend to important tasks that require your full concentration.
Limiting phone interruptions from loved ones
In some cases, family calls are the primary source of telephone interruptions. Have a frank talk with your family members about when it’s appropriate to call you at work.
If you have young children, you know how they want to tell you all the cool things that happened during the course of their day, well before family dinnertime. You likely expect and welcome these calls. Certainly you want to set opportunities for them to reach you, but it’s good to establish boundaries at the same time. You may, for example, ask your kids to call you and fill you in on their day at a certain time — say, after they get home from school or in the case of preschoolers, after lunchtime. Same goes for your spouse or partner.
Most job environments allow for some personal call time, but few are tolerant of employees who receive calls throughout the day. That type of phone interruption can undermine your productivity, not to mention your career. At work, you really don’t need the kinds of emotional distractions that’ll dramatically affect your performance and productivity for the next 30 minutes, an hour, or even the rest of the day. Calls from family can move your mind to home even though your body is still at the office.
Secondary Defenses: Minimizing Damage When Calls Get Through
If you set up the defense mechanisms and blocking techniques I cover throughout this chapter, you can avoid more than 90 percent of the interruptions that most people experience each day. But no matter the system or strategy you use to protect yourself, telephone interruptions are certain to penetrate your defenses. When this happens, your best strategy is to accept it and go with the flow. Okay, so an interruption slipped past your perimeter: Instead of expending effort to repel the breach, just deal with it. A negative attitude or reaction is likely to cause more damage and waste more time than simply resolving the matter that made its way to you.
The most effective technique to help you adhere to your time management strategy is to plan for the distractions that’ll undoubtedly come. You may use the preemptive strike technique, which allows you to deal with distractions from others on your terms. In this section, you discover a few plans for handling the phone calls that make it through to you.
Delegating the responsibility
When the call penetrates your defenses, attempt to delegate the call to someone who can handle it for you. Inform the caller that you’re booked, buried, under a deadline, committed, or heading into a meeting. Then state that you’re shifting the responsibility for the call as the fastest way to resolve the problem or challenge. Assure the caller that you’re bringing in someone qualified to help.
Shortening or condensing the conversation
When a call does sneak past the fortress guard, your best defense is to bring that call to a close as quickly as possible. Your focus has been broken, and it’ll require five minutes from the point you wrap up the call to regain your momentum. You want to keep the conversation short so that you can get back in the groove.
Inform the caller upfront how much time you can offer. You may, for example, explain that you’re in the middle of an important project and have only ten minutes available. You can also state that you have an appointment — and if you’ve implemented the time-block schedule (see Chapter 19), you’ve blocked out your day, so your claim is true.
Some people feel uncomfortable about cutting calls short in this way, especially with clients or prospective customers. Giving the caller a time limit feels abrupt, but it doesn’t have to. Here’s one way your speech may go:
I know we can resolve your problem, but I have an appointment in ten minutes that I have to keep. If we can’t resolve the problem to your satisfaction in the ten minutes, then we can set a time to talk later today to finish up.
This approach still gets you off the phone in the allotted time but gives you an out. The customer can also feel better that you’re offering more time. I’ve used this technique for years with high-maintenance clients. Rarely do we need the additional conversation, but they appreciate my offer all the same.
Rebooking discussions for a better time
If now’s a bad time to handle the call, then reschedule. The caller certainly doesn’t know your schedule, and it probably never occurred to the caller that this could be a bad time. Offer a brief explanation — you’re in a meeting, on your way to an appointment, or simply tied up at this time. Then without allowing time for a response, offer two options of when you’re available:
I’m not able to give your situation the full attention it deserves at this moment. Can we schedule a phone meeting for this afternoon after 3:00 or first thing tomorrow morning?
By offering options, you give back some control to the caller. If you’ve been caught without your day planner, give a general time, such as Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon. Then don’t forget to transfer the call appointment to your planner.
Another technique is calling customers back and telling them that they’re so important that you squeezed them into your schedule or that you called them first. This technique is extremely effective when you return a call before the appointed time. If you informed them on voice mail that you’ll be calling them back at 11:00 a.m. and you manage to get your priorities done early and can start calling the high-interruption clients back at 10:30 a.m., they’ll think you walk on water.
Setting expectations
Educating family, friends, and customers about your availability is important. Let everyone know your schedule and the best times to reach you as well as how to leave a message when you can’t be reached. As part of this education, you also want to establish how quickly they can expect a response from you after they leave a message: Within 24 hours? The same business day?
What you’re trying to avoid is the person who calls you back five times that day because you were in meetings. With every call, that person gets more frustrated that you haven’t called her back. Or worse yet, she reaches you on the fifth call before you’re walking into your most important meeting of the day, creating the worst interruption of your life because she unloads on you and ruins your focus.
Creating reasonable expectations is key in good customer relations. Taking 24 hours to return a client’s call may be reasonable — but it won’t seem that way if the client expects to hear from you within an hour.
You can also reinforce wait times through your voice mail message. By leaving your availability and response details as part of your message, callers are more likely to recall and retain. Here’s an example:
You’ve reached Dirk Zeller. I am out of the office today, Tuesday, September second. Please leave a message and I will return your call by end-of-day Wednesday, September third. If you need immediate assistance, please call so-and-so. Until then, make it a great day!
I’ve set the scenario: The caller shouldn’t expect a return call from me today. And in fact, because I’ll be returning to an inbox filled with calls, e-mail, and correspondence, I may not be able to get back until as late as the end of the day. I’ve offered, however, a back-up plan if the situation is more urgent. This should satisfy virtually anyone who calls.
Don’t be tempted to include “If it’s an emergency, call me on my cellphone” unless you’re prepared for lots of interruptions. After all, isn’t interruption exactly what you’re trying to avoid?
Maintaining Your Motivation as You Press Ahead
Everyone has struggled with procrastination, and many still do. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t battle with the temptations of putting off those obligations that seem too big, too hard, or just plain no fun. Recognizing your tendencies is the first step toward recovery. By following the strategies I outline in this chapter, you can make remarkable progress in overcoming the procrastination.
Staying on the right course, however, is a never-ending vigil. The following sections present maintenance tactics that can help.
Keep your expectations realistic
Before you beat yourself up for your woeful procrastinating ways once again, take a look at your schedule and first figure out whether what you’re attempting to accomplish is realistic. Have you accepted an assignment you’re not qualified to take on, or is too much expected of you? Have you committed to an absurd deadline?
Again, when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your workload, this may be an indicator that you’ll slip into postponement mode. So do whatever you can to get over being overwhelmed. It may require some adjustment in expectations of your boss or coworkers.
Handle the big stuff and delegate the rest
When you find that too many obligations and projects are demanding your attention to the point that you’re putting off making headway on any of them, it’s time to lighten your load.
After you examine your workload and identify what’s really important to your job or your career goals, you know what to attend to first. But instead of putting those smaller or less-important tasks on the back burner, see whether someone else can take over for you.
Prevent clutter overload
Another sign that your procrastinating proclivities may soon raise their ugly head — or already have: Your office or home is cluttered with a confusion of papers and files, your e-mail inbox contains more than a week’s worth of unread mail, and you’ve lost control of your schedule.
You can’t maintain control of your time or stay on top of your obligations if your life has become so disorganized that you can’t keep on top of your work and home. It’s no wonder you’re procrastinating — if you have a project in all that mess, you don’t even know where to start.
You may be overloaded. You may have too many projects at once. At any rate, it’s time to clear your head and your desk. Take a day once a month or even just a few hours to purge, file, respond, and clean up.
Focus on maintaining a healthy balance
Both your work life and your personal life are important to your well-being. Keep an eye on the scale to be sure that these different areas are in balance. If you get weighted down at the office, you lose energy and perspective, and procrastination — both at home and at work — creeps in. If family issues take over, you risk your performance at work. When one aspect of your life gets out of whack, do everything you can to regain balance.
Making Decisions: Just Do It
One of the easiest things to put off is making a decision. Even sidestepping the smallest decisions can lead to giant time-consumption. Think about it: You scroll through your e-mail and save one to ponder and respond to later. You revisit a few times and still can’t bring yourself to a commitment. So you get more e-mail from the sender. To stave off making a decision, you ask a couple of questions, which requires more time and attention. By the time the issue is resolved and put to bed, you may have invested five times more attention than if you’d handled it at once.
Many factors create the confusion and uncertainty that prevents you from making sound but quick decisions. Often, part of the struggle is having too many options. Most people have a tough enough time choosing between pumpkin and apple pie at the Thanksgiving table. But every day, you’re forced to make decisions from choices as abundant as a home-style cafeteria line. Having options is usually a good thing, but too much choice is overwhelming, even paralyzing.
Life is always serving up decisions, and making choices — even wrong ones — is how you grow, mature, and accomplish the things that make life meaningful. Most successful people realize they are going to make wrong decisions frequently. It doesn’t stop them from taking action and deciding. The lack of making a decision is actually still making a decision. If you’re stymied by small decisions, you never have the time and energy to seek out choices that lead to a more enriching and successful life.
In other words, decisiveness is more than a useful tool; it’s a way of living. Indecision, on the other hand, is a way of drifting, simply surrendering to fate.
It’s all too easy to get bogged down weighing and reweighing options in a purgatory of analysis paralysis, but endless second-guessing and falling prey to the tyranny of what-if only bleeds you of energy. Sitting on the fence is inefficient, not to mention uncomfortable. And not deciding? Well, that’s a decision itself — with its own consequences.
Like many important life skills, effective decision-making isn’t taught in school. Most people learn by trial and error and through the experiences of other people. Unfortunately, this approach can leave you floundering in a sea of changing choices. When you begin to feel more confident about making smaller decisions, you find it easier to apply what you’ve discovered to larger challenges. You see that you can break down what seems confusing, or even overwhelming, into a series of smaller steps. Eventually, you’ll be comfortable enough with making decisions that you invite them, because being able to quickly and confidently make decisions gives you power and control over your life.
Looking at the source of most decision-related struggles
Why is making a decision so hard? It usually comes down to fear: fear of making the wrong choice or maybe fear of regret. The more afraid you are of tripping up, the more you torture yourself by evaluating, debating, analyzing, and obsessing over every decision.
Before you begin to work on your decision-making skills, you need to see where the problem lies. Take a moment to ask yourself these big-picture questions:
- What’s one area of your life you’d like to change but have avoided taking action?
- What’s really holding you back?
- What’s the worst thing that can happen if you decide to take action?
- What are the odds that the worst really will happen?
- Would you be likely to live through — and even learn valuable lessons from — making a mistake?
Armed with the answers to these questions, realize that the fear is probably unfounded — that the worst that can happen is very unlikely. Then decide to take action on your finding today.
Whittling major decisions down to a manageable size
Lucky people make good decisions once in a while. Successful people have a system they consistently use to approach situations that require decisions: a plan of action that works no matter what the circumstances or stress level.
Here’s why: Individual decisions rarely exist in a vacuum. Daily decisions, ranging from how and when you discipline your children to whether to stick to a regular savings plan, have consequences that may reveal themselves only years down the road. The key is to make clear-headed choices today and build on good results instead of haphazardly cleaning mistakes as you go. Use the following five steps to whittle the formidable task of making a decision down to manageable size.
Step 1: Evaluate the gravity of the decision
The key is to approach situations in every facet of your life with a cool head so that you can accurately assess the size and gravity of the situation you’re up against. Following is a list of the larger, more important areas of your life that really deserve some time and effort. Decisions in other areas of your life need not require much time or thought.
Taking care of business: If you’re a business owner, your daily decisions guide the fortunes of your family as well as those of all the employees who rely on you for a regular paycheck and benefits. You have to balance seemingly small decisions (whether to refund a customer’s money) with bigger-picture choices (redirecting the business to take advantage of a potentially lucrative niche market).
Assessing the size of a business decision isn’t always a straightforward process, so look beyond the obvious to possible repercussions. For example, failing to provide a refund to a dissatisfied customer may prompt that person to post a scathing review of your customer service policy on a widely read blog; you may spend months undoing the damage. Redirecting resources to a new niche market, on the other hand, may affect the morale — and productivity — of employees in core business areas.- Furthering your career: Should you decide to take a higher paying job with a longer commute? Hang up your sales hat and study to become a nurse? If you’re changing your job, assess the impact of added travel expenses and less time with your family. A major career change can shake up everything from your budget to your self-image.
- Keeping it in the family: Some of life’s major decisions involve your family: whom you choose to marry, when to have children, where to live. Along with these big decisions come plenty of smaller day-to-day decisions. Who takes the kids to school? Should you take a vacation or renovate your kitchen? Even decisions that don’t seem significant in the moment, such as giving your kids unsupervised use of the computer, can have unexpected repercussions. To further complicate things, you may have to step in to provide assistance or physically care for your aging parents.
- Making sense of your finances: Money isn’t the most important thing in life, yet it’s the lifeblood of so many important goals. Unfortunately (but perhaps not surprisingly), most marital conflict is linked to finances. The choices you make about spending, saving, and investing — individually or as a couple — can spark daily arguments and have serious long-range implications.
- Staying healthy: The good news in this area is that the simplest decisions can have the most profound effects. Deciding to eat a healthy, balanced diet, exercise daily, and take regular breaks from the stress of work can prolong and improve the quality of your life. This alone is good preparation for the more serious, sometimes life-or-death decisions you may have to make if you develop a condition such as diabetes, need surgery, or require tests.
- Building strong relationships: Happy relationships are the foundation of a happy life. If you’re married, in a committed relationship, or devoted to a circle of close friends, the time and care you invest will pay you back a thousandfold. If you’re still looking for a spouse or life partner, the decisions you make about the qualities you want and need in someone else and the qualities and commitment you’re willing to bring to a relationship shape your future for better or worse.
Step 2: Assess the timeframe you have to make the decision
When you’re on a time crunch for making a decision, your struggle in making that decision increases. The key: Give yourself a reasonable deadline, allowing a comfortable but finite amount of time to research and consider your options. In decision-making, you may need to slow down your process, timeframe, and expectations in terms of time and results. You have to be willing to take a few breaths to pause and then decide.
Here are some questions to ask when you’re assessing a reasonable timeframe for making a decision. Let your answers to these questions guide your next steps:
- Is there a shelf date on this decision?
- Will something good happen if you make the decision by a certain date? Will something bad happen if you don’t?
- What’s likely to happen if you make the wrong decision within this timeframe?
- What are the consequences of postponing the decision? Can you (and your family) live with that?
Step 3: Narrow your options down to two
Having too many choices is confusing. The more options you have, the harder it is to commit to just one. Research indicates that you’ll be happier with your decision if you choose from a smaller number of options.
The fastest and best decision-makers are people who align their decisions with their personal or business goals, as having this foundation simplifies things by narrowing your focus. Identifying your goals, vision, core values, and core purpose in life is an important first step. (I help you get them on paper in Chapter 5.) Then check to see which of your options doesn't align with your goals and cross them off the list.
To do a preliminary evaluation of your options, you need to do a limited amount of research. Give yourself a time limit for researching possibilities (perhaps only an hour online, a half-hour making phone calls, or a half day to visit stores). Then, based on your cursory research, decide which two options best align with those goals, priorities, and values. Matching options to priorities can be a bit tricky if each option addresses more than one goal — you have to decide which options meet your most important goals. I often find it helpful to apply the following filters:
- Impose a price range to narrow down the choices.
- Establish some basic criteria to whittle down the possibilities (open-toed or sling-back shoes; Asian restaurants on the east side of town; job opportunities in major West Coast cities).
Step 4: Check in with the reliable wisdom of your gut
Your body is a very powerful partner in decision-making, whether or not you act on what it tells you. So before you invest lots of time researching a particular course of action, stop thinking and take note of what you feel deep inside: What does intuition tell you?
Somewhere in the vicinity of their stomachs, many people detect a distinct discomfort about certain decisions they’re considering — hence the term gut feeling. You don’t have to have full-blown indigestion to know you’re not feeling good about a decision. And believe me, all the positive data in the world probably won’t change your gut feeling about the outcome. The best decisions both make sense logically and feel good in your gut.
Step 5: Determine the most efficient way to get your desired result
Take a close look at what you’re trying to achieve, quantifying (where possible) what your decision will cost in terms of time, effort, and resources — both short-term and long-term. Then look at your desired end result to see which path is the best way for you to get there.
Success is subjective. What I may deem important or how I measure the cost of a result is unique to me. You have to do what’s right for you.
- How will you know when you’ve achieved a level of success that satisfies you?
- How much time will this take? Is the amount of time and money you’ll have to invest worth the result?
- What would a satisfactory outcome be? What would an outstanding result be for you?
- What are you willing to do to achieve the satisfactory level?
- Can you tangibly or quantifiably measure the results? How would you accomplish that?
You can certainly use a pros and cons list to help refine the direct route to your desired result. As you make your list, rate your priorities on a scale of 1 to 10 to give each response some weight.
Keeping Motivation High
Like most goals, mastering your time-management skills isn’t something that happens overnight.
Throughout the process of working to improve the way you manage your time, you’ll occasionally encounter points where you start feeling disappointed, wondering whether your efforts are paying off. Whenever you hit those lows — and you will — remember to give yourself credit for every step you make in the right direction.
One great way to stay motivated is to link incentive to inducement: In other words, reward yourself. For example, if you complete certain actions that tie to your goals, give yourself Friday afternoon off. Or savor an evening on the couch with a good movie or dinner at a favorite restaurant. Do whatever serves as an enticing reward.
Take motivation to the next level by involving others in the reward. Let your spouse know that an evening out awaits if you fulfill your week’s goals before deadline. Tell the kids that if you spend the next couple of evenings at the office, you can all head for the amusement park on Saturday. I guarantee this strategy is a surefire way to supercharge your motivation.
As you work through this difficult but worthy bout of self-improvement, keep your mind on the positive side and remember two simple truths:
- You’re human.
- Work always expands to fill the time you allow for it.
No matter how productive I am, whether I have just a couple things to accomplish or a sky-high pile on my desk, and whether I leave work on time or stay late, there’s always something that doesn’t get done. So I don’t get hung up on those things I don’t accomplish. Instead, I just keep my eyes on the goal, prioritize accordingly, delegate what I can, and protect my boundaries carefully so that I take on only as much as I know I can handle while still remaining satisfied with all parts of my life.
When you start to get frustrated about the never-ending flow of work that comes your way, remind yourself that you’re blessed with more opportunities than time — and that’s not a bad place to be.