Step

Perform a Time and Emotion Study

Money can’t buy me love and it can’t buy more time either. Now that you have a closet full of goals, you may be wondering how you’ll find time to do everything on your list. As I keep emphasizing, a strategic plan for your life requires being mindful about what you want to achieve in your heart of hearts and deliberately using your limited resources (time, money, energy, and attention) to get the results you want. For most of us, time is in especially short supply. No matter how wealthy you may be, you get the same twenty-four-hour days as everyone else, so you will need to manage this essential resource as carefully as possible.

In this step of the planning process, you will look at:

Diagnosis: Match Your Doings to Your Desires

You will start by conducting what I call a time and emotion study. It’s as simple as taking a hard look at your calendar to see how you are currently investing your time compared to what you’d be doing if you were living in perfect harmony with the goals and priorities you just identified. Your emotions also give you valuable information about how well your actions are aligned with your mission, vision, and values, so you will pay attention to how you feel about what you see on your schedule.

This straightforward exercise will give you a great idea of what’s working well for you and it will show you what you’re doing that’s robbing you of joy or standing in the way of your goals. Warning: your first look may be disheartening if you’ve fallen into some counterproductive habits. Remember that essential to fixing any problem is recognizing that it exists in the first place. Be gentle with yourself and view this as an opportunity to reclaim any time you are not using optimally and redirect it toward more worthy pursuits. While your calendar may feel like your enemy at the beginning of this step, you will turn it into a critical tool that serves your higher purpose in the end. So just be curious and see what possibilities present themselves. This simple exercise normally takes less than thirty minutes to complete, and many people I know have found several hours they could free up each week: not a bad return on investment.

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How Do You Feel About Your Calendar?

It’s about this time in my workshops that the business planning process gets very real for some people, especially those who tend to be more task-oriented. That’s because the earlier steps were all about getting clear and about what you want and setting some goals to help you get it. At this point, people start to see very concretely how what they do day to day is either helping or hindering their progress. Some discover they are on the right track. They may need only minor tweaks to their schedules to be able to attend to everything they value. Others, not so much. If you feel a groan of your own rising in your throat, fear not. You are now going to look at why you do the things you do and how you can make some needed adjustments so your actions are more in harmony with your goals. Remember, this is not about passing judgment or berating yourself if you’ve made some subpar choices in the past. Consider this a simple diagnostic exercise that will lead you to some effective treatments. Here are some common discoveries people made during this exercise and what they did about them.

Scale Tilts Hard Toward the Left

It is quite common for professionals, particularly those who are raising young children, to see lots of activities in the career and family sections and precious little in community and mind/body/spirit. The daily demands placed on us by our families and employers often consume every waking moment. The first thing to give is often our own self-care—sufficient sleep, exercise, and leisure time. Yet neglecting our health in favor of investing more time in other areas can paradoxically lead us to be less effective in these pursuits. It’s hard to be attentive in a meeting if you aren’t feeling your best, for one example.

When Regina, the IT project manager who set some new goals in the last chapter, reviewed her calendar, it revealed what she already knew. She put all of her time into work and family and paid the price with her rising weight and falling spirits. While she liked her work and cherished her husband and young child, she was less and less able to enjoy them. Failing to get enough sleep day after day, she tried to boost her flagging energy with coffee and sweets. Not only did she not lose the weight she’d put on during her pregnancy, she’d gained another thirty pounds in the eighteen months since her daughter was born.

She was not surprised when her calendar revealed that she spent no time exercising and relied on fast food dinners far too often to be healthy. Her husband worked later hours and when he wasn’t home for dinner, she grabbed whatever she could for dinner and ate while watching whatever was on television. She was embarrassed to realize when she filled out her calendar how many full evenings she spent snacking and zoning out in front of the TV until she finally dragged herself to bed. It was easy to see why she’d put on so much weight. She was just so tired at the end of the day there was no energy left for anything else.

However, she was especially troubled by the realization that she was teaching her daughter some very bad habits. She resolved in that moment to add exercise to her schedule and to do some of it with her daughter. She joined the gym at her company and planned to spend her lunch hour working out three days a week. By taking walks with her daughter on the days she didn’t get to the gym, she was able to meet her goal of exercising daily without compromising family time. In fact, she was happy to be modeling healthy behavior for her daughter.

Regina was so motivated to improve her eating and exercise habits that she decided it was worth it to let her daughter eat a little later two evenings a week so they could go for a walk before they settled down for the evening. They also walked both days on weekends and Regina was surprised how much she enjoyed her exercise regime. Her daughter enjoyed being outside, and evenings were much more peaceful when they returned. Regina was also happily amazed that she had much more energy when she walked in the evenings. When she wasn’t so tired, it was easier to make the effort to cook something healthy for dinner. As the pounds slowly dropped, she felt better and better. Eventually, she felt well enough in the evenings to do more than collapse in front of the TV. These small changes required very little tweaking to her calendar. Small changes created a huge shift in her health and mood. She felt more equipped to start preparing for some of her longer-term goals.

With their schedules somewhat out of sync during the week, Regina and her husband had to make a special effort to spend time together on the weekends. She had set an immediate goal of having a date night every other Saturday. To her delight, her husband suggested they go out every Saturday. She felt that her improved moods made her better company, so he was more excited about spending time with her. She was even more thrilled when her niece agreed to babysit every week.

Regina was able to accomplish her community goals at church on the weekends. She reported back to me that she’s been able to maintain and even improve on her new habits for the past several years and has just started a part-time MBA program and takes classes two evenings a week. She credits her improved eating and exercise habits for making that possible. And those big changes required only a slight shift on her schedule.

Not Having Such a Wonderful Time, Wish I Were Here

Thelma had a tougher challenge when she looked at her calendar next to her goals and priorities. She was nowhere to be found in either place. She had focused a great deal of effort on her career and she was thriving at work. It wasn’t until she was discussing her goals and strategies in her Business of Life workshop that she realized just how absent she had been from her own priorities, let alone her agenda. She spent virtually no time attending to her personal needs that included exercise and some kind of spiritual practice.

She was seeking input from the class on her goal to stop yelling at her husband and son so much. She yearned to enjoy their family time, but found that what little they had was often filled with tension and discord. The men in her life continuously dropped their socks on the living room floor and left their clothes all over the house despite her constant (loud) requests that they put their things away. Her classmates were not impressed with her proposed strategy—rather than continuing to scold her husband and son, going forward, she intended to bite her tongue every time she saw the offending laundry and just pick it up and put it away. They told Thelma that not only would she have some nasty teeth marks, keeping her mouth shut would lead to simmering resentment that was likely to come to a boil over time. Her colleagues pointed out that her proposed approach would only continue to train her husband and son that it was okay with her that they disregarded her feelings and were as slovenly as they pleased.

What was so obvious to everyone else was a revelation to Thelma, who was used to being a highly regarded and effective leader at work. She was truly stunned to confront what she tolerated at home. One more look at her goals and calendar confirmed that she needed to make herself a priority.

Thelma’s calendar revealed that she spent at least an hour each day on housework. Despite the fact that she had a husband and two able-bodied teens in the house, she carried most of this responsibility on her own shoulders. She put a load of wash in before work and dried and folded it in the evenings. It was no wonder that she was so angry with her husband and son when they dropped their socks on the floor even as she folded the laundry. Now that she confronted the reality of her situation while she discussed its implications with her classmates, she was even angrier with herself for letting it go on for so long. She also faced up to the fact that all her yelling wasn’t changing their behavior. There had to be a better approach.

She had been intrigued and somewhat disquieted by the discussion in class about the importance of being present and decided to set some goals to cultivate awareness in that area. She realized she didn’t feel as connected to her kids, especially her son, as she’d like to be. Upon reflection, she thought she could make more of an effort to focus on him, his schoolwork, his social life, and just having some fun with him. It would lighten the mood around the house and maybe open up an opportunity to talk about some things that mattered to her. She thought she’d have more success getting through to him if she could talk to him calmly when she wasn’t angrily picking up his socks.

Thelma had long been frustrated by the time she felt was wasted in meetings and commuting, but it wasn’t until she did her time and emotion study that she made a serious effort to make some changes. And those shifts were profound.

Thelma’s staff worked in a few different locations. Once she established strong relationships, she held more of their regular meetings by phone, saving precious travel time in between. She also reduced the time she allotted to most meetings to thirty minutes rather than the hour she’d defaulted to in the past more out of habit than necessity. She also started to schedule conferences she could conduct by phone or remote meeting software at the beginning and end of the workday so she could participate from home. That allowed her to commute outside of rush hour, saving as much as ninety minutes in travel time and avoiding maddening frustration. As important, she was able to see her son off to school in the mornings and be home earlier in the evenings. A special bonus—she found she was much more patient and able to focus her full attention on him when she wasn’t so worn out and stressed by her commute.

Now that she was close to home some mornings, she could get up early, go to a six a.m. yoga class (for exercise and meditation, a nice “twofer”) and be back home to see her kids before starting her meetings. She has found that her days are more pleasant and productive when they start off that way.

By making these small shifts, her mornings and evenings went much more smoothly and efficiently. She got more done in less time and created precious space to think and plan. And she did so just in time since, little did she know, her home life was about to hit the fan. We’ll see what happened and what she did about it later in the book.

We Just Keep Adding to the List

Bruce is the mid-level manager who, along with his wife, had a vision that included having a third child. This busy two-career couple couldn’t see how they could possibly make time for more offspring. Until, that is, Bruce made an important discovery when reviewing his time and emotion study. Bruce and Mara had worked long hours for years as they established their careers and were quite satisfied with their progress. Bruce’s calendar revealed some inertia and a pattern of working extraordinarily long hours that persisted longer than was necessary. He and Mara had agreed when they were newly married that they would work hard and advance professionally before having kids. They had their children right on schedule, but they’d forgotten an important part of their plan.

They’d never scaled back their work hours, though their careers were long past the point when they needed to put in extra hours to prove themselves on the job. Like many professionals, they excelled at adding new activities to their calendars but were remiss in removing old ones that no longer served an important purpose. Bruce knew in the early years of his management career that he would have to put in a lot of “face time” to establish his credibility, reputation, and relationships. That goal was accomplished years ago, but he had not made any adjustments to reflect his evolving status. As he reviewed his time and emotion study, he realized he no longer needed to serve on so many committees. And since he worked with surgeons, most of those meetings were held before and after normal business hours. Using a critical eye to determine which meetings were still necessary for him to attend, he determined that he could step down from three working groups. Doing so would free up two evenings and one morning a week.

After Bruce stepped down from those extra committees, he was able to have dinner with his family four nights a week. On the morning that was freed up, Bruce stayed home and made breakfast for the kids. He also skipped the gym that day so Mara could get in a workout for herself. Each week, Bruce whipped up French toast with a surprise topping and the kids took bets on what it would be. Thursday’s breakfast turned into a much-anticipated ritual. Bruce also realized that, over time, he could adjust his work schedule further and start going into the office later most mornings.

What are you doing just because it hasn’t occurred to you that it’s no longer important for you to be doing it? For me, that was getting my eight-year-old son his milk every time he wanted a drink. For some reason, I hadn’t noticed he’d long since been able to reach the milk and glasses just as well as I could. At some point, our children can switch from being a cost center to a revenue center and they can actually be some help around the house. We just have to remember to ask them.

I’ve Left Joy off My Agenda

Using our time well is essential to our sense of well-being. Feeling fulfilled requires putting our talents and passions to good use. As Aristotle said some 2,300 years ago, “we can’t be truly happy unless and until we apply the fruits of our personal self-development to meeting the needs of others.”²

Danielle, the fashion buyer who’d been stuck in a career she hated for twenty years, saw an opportunity to add more fun to her schedule immediately, even while she took time to find a new career direction. She’d set a goal of taking a cooking class because she enjoyed being in the kitchen so much. She also loved cooking for her husband, delighting him with artistically presented delicacies, so she set a goal of doing that at least once a week. She got such a boost from his obvious enjoyment of her cooking that she ended up preparing elaborate meals even more frequently. Between the delicious cuisine and the special time she had with her husband, every dinner felt like a celebration.

Get to the Heart of the Matter

If you find yourself relating to any of these dilemmas or have identified some other patterns of your own, there is plenty you can do about it. Take another look at your calendar and consider the following:

Allow yourself to be present with whatever is happening. Aim for understanding why you’re in this situation and try not to judge yourself harshly.

Why Am I Doing What I’m Doing?

It’s important to recognize what’s driving your behavior so you can address the source of the problem rather than just the symptoms. Toyota developed a simple approach to root cause analysis that has since become quite popular in health care and other industries: the five whys. I’ve often employed this technique myself when leading large projects. And it also works well with my students and clients. Manufacturing leaders at Toyota found that if they asked the question “Why?” five times, they could get to the root of just about any problem.

Here’s how it worked for one of my coaching clients who had a goal of exercising daily, but was having trouble finding the time to do so:

Why don’t I work out every day?

I don’t have enough time.

Why (don’t I have enough time)?

My commute is taking longer than it used to.

Why (is my commute taking longer than it used to)?

I am driving instead of taking the train. Traffic is lousy.

Why (am I driving instead of taking the train)?

So my car is with me at the end of the day.

Why (do I need my car at the end of the day)?

So I can drive to the gym to exercise.

This gentleman discovered that, ironically, his strategy for exercising was the very thing that was preventing him from doing so. He changed strategies and bought a treadmill and a set of free weights. The clincher was that he convinced his wife that he “needed” a new flat-screen television and a DVR so he could record his favorite sporting events so that he always had something to watch when it was time to exercise. It worked so well that they added an elliptical machine to their home gym and started recording movies so they could work out together while watching something they both enjoyed. Problem solved.

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Is Fear at the Root of Any Misalignment?

Go back to your SWOT analysis. Did you identify with any of the fear-based behavioral patterns described in that chapter? Several ofthese can lead to spending time doing things that divert you from your priorities. Let’s examine how some of these can suck precious time from your days.

• People pleasing: Fear of disappointing others can often lead you to do whatever they ask of you, even when you’d rather not. People with this problem have a very hard time saying “no” to all kinds of requests. If you find yourself volunteering for every extra project at work or bake sale at your church, consider carefully what it is costing you to do so. Ask yourself what would happen if you said no to one request. You might be surprised that often the answer is “very little.”

• Perfectionism: Do you find that you are never satisfied with your work to the point that you continue revising it long after you’ve crossed the point of diminishing returns? Believe me, this is something I can relate to very well. This book is partially a product of that tendency. In fact, there’s a good chance I’ll redraft this very section next time I reread it.

As the famous “they” say, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Many times, good is good enough. Save the extra effort for those initiatives that truly call for excellence. In management circles, we often work by the Pareto Principle, which states that 80 percent of the work on any given project is completed with the first 20 percent of effort. The return on the investment of that last 80 percent is far lower than the initial 20. Consider that tenet next time you’re grinding away on trying to get something “perfect.” I just did.

• Control issues: Controlling people are sure that no one else can do anything as well as they can, so they end up doing most everything themselves. These people often make lousy bosses because they either refuse to delegate anything or they second-guess everything they assign to others. If you fall prey to this belief, once again, consider what it is costing you. Doing things that others can accomplish reasonably well takes you away from other activities—perhaps even those where you really are the best one for the job. If you are a manager, your job is to coach your people so they can learn to be as good as, if not better than, you are at performing their tasks. Try a new approach. See if coaching your staff pays dividends in freed-up time for you to invest elsewhere.

• Procrastination: Despite Mark Twain’s advice, “Never put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well,”³ chronic procrastinators waste a lot of time. And it’s getting easier than ever to procrastinate when, with the stroke of a computer key, you can peek at your e-mail, satisfy even the most frivolous curiosity by looking up the price of sugar in Siberia on the Internet, or play just one more game of. . . . The digital age is shortening our attention spans and along with our attention goes the ability to complete a task efficiently and effectively. Mr. Twain’s wry observation may actually help determine the urgency of a given task and guide us to make a good decision about when to accomplish it. And taking scheduled breaks to clear your mind and refresh yourself may boost productivity. But protracted procrastination can prevent you from achieving a goal. Take an honest look at your calendar—make sure you’ve accurately filled in how you really spend your time. Do you find evidence of chronic procrastination?

Find Some Fixes

Now that you’ve examined what’s driving your behavior, you can address any tendencies that are working against you. The following are a few more time management ideas. In the next chapter, you will learn a whole array of tools you can employ to choose those strategies that optimize your chances for success.

Tame the Electronic Beast

By far, the single thing that robs my clients, colleagues, and kids of precious time are the never-ending, ever-growing options for distracting ourselves with computer games, e-mail, texting, social media, podcasts, and on and on. The information age has many of us feeling like we are hopelessly behind in our knowledge because no human being can possibly keep up with the constant barrage of really cool stuff coming our way. And I mean that sincerely. There is great information to be consumed. There are awesome games to be played. There’s nothing wrong with much of what’s out there. It’s the sheer amount that is constantly and readily available to us that threatens our productivity.

These distractions impact more than just how much we get done. Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, found that the IQ of workers who tried to juggle phone, texts, and e-mail messages fell by ten points, which is equivalent to missing a whole night’s sleep and more than twice the decline seen after smoking marijuana.⁴

The lure is seductive, so we need to impose some discipline. Here are some techniques that have helped my clients.

• Be mindful about your electronics use: Make deliberate decisions about how much time you will allocate to these activities. This may sound simplistic, but having a plan puts you in control of how you use your time and makes you less likely to get swept away for too long.

• Schedule breaks: Big projects like writing a book, for instance, require long stretches of intense concentration that can be very difficult to sustain. It’s easy to convince yourself that you “need” to take a quick look at your e-mail just to keep up. The problem is that quick peek often turns into an hour or more and it breaks your focus. One way to deal with this is to divide your work time into chunks that are punctuated with refreshing breaks. It’s good to get up and move around. There is evidence that students perform better at school when bouts of physical activity are sprinkled throughout the day. Schedule time to look at e-mail, play a game, or surf the web, and discipline yourself to limit your break to the allotted time. It may help to know another respite is only ninety minutes away.

• Beat your e-mail addiction: Are you, like many of my clients, addicted to e-mail? Do you drop whatever you’re doing the instant you hear the ping announcing yet another not-so-special delivery? I was on a wilderness hike out West with a friend who stopped every few minutes to pull his smartphone out of his pocket to see what juicy nugget just arrived. Really? I’m not sure which is worse—that or the fact that nearly 40 percent of people admit to using their smartphones in the bathroom.

If your e-mail habit is distracting you, here is some advice:

Put First Things First

Be mindful that your calendar reflects your priorities, and make conscious, well-considered choices about what is worthy of your time and attention. Use your mission, vision, and goals as filters that help you decide what you will do. Remember there are some things only you can do. Be sure to reserve time for the most essential items. For everything else, apply the “three D’s” and ask yourself what can be:

• Ditched: Does each task need to be done? Ask yourself what would happen if it wasn’t completed. If there isn’t a serious consequence, consider dropping it from your list.

• Delegated: Okay, so it has to be done, but does it have to be done by you? Is there someone else who could handle this task?

• Delayed: How urgent is this task? When is the most appropriate time to tackle it, considering everything else on your list?

Put Last Things off the List

Many of us live by our to-do lists, but few of us have mastered the “not-to-do” list. This is not the same as not getting to something on the to-do list. This is about deliberately choosing not to do something that will not yield much value. If you have lots of red on your calendar, this may be an especially fruitful exercise for you. Ask yourself why you are doing things that have limited utility and consider eliminating them.

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Remember that one reason for creating a business plan for your life is to be present and get the full value from whatever it is you choose to do. Trying to cram too much activity into a crowded schedule is not a great recipe for staying in the moment. So do give careful consideration to using the not-to-do list as another way to avoid letting unimportant things creep onto your calendar.

Once you’ve convinced yourself that everything on your calendar deserves its place, you will want to be sure you’re as efficient as possible. There are many excellent books on time management that offer detailed approaches to improving productivity. David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, ⁶ offers a thoughtful system that you may want to consider reviewing.

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When your actions are guided by your core beliefs and you’re focused on priorities that you’ve chosen consciously, you’ll feel balanced. Purposeful. Joyful. And you’ll keep heading steadily in the direction of fulfilling your vision. Hopefully you now have that wonderful sense of order and possibility that comes from cleaning all the old junk out of your closet. With room to breathe, you can contemplate how best to invest your newfound time to achieve your goals. In the next step, you will develop some strategies to do just that.