Enough Time

What does that mean? I’m completely obsessed with “time management”.

Having enough time is a unique concept. Managing time is kind of a crazy idea. We can’t control or even manipulate the number of hours, minutes, or seconds in a single day. It’s a finite, limited concept-24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. That’s it. And yet, I got into a micro-management conversation about handling my own schedule with a friend of mine recently.

My thought was I need to schedule 30 minutes between events on my calendar rather than continue to try and manage the back-to-back pace that I schedule on a daily basis. My friend said, “Well I think when you can figure out why you put your life together at this “over-committed” pace you’ll naturally allow yourself more time in the day.” That response, although I know how smart it is, really irritated me at the time. In my solution driven-fix it-brain, I needed a new behavior that allowed me to get it all done and have a little more peace of mind (thus the 30 minute idea).

The reality is, that from a time management point of view I am too optimistic about all the things that I can get done in a single day. Many of you have that same thing too. I talk with you and you tell me how pressed you are each day to get everything done. My team works with sales-people on a weekly basis. They are required make no less than 3 outbound-calls either in person or on the phone to perspective new clients every hour, each day. That’s more than 100 calls a week. This 100 call a week system works, and it works very well. However, at time folks struggle meeting the goal. Why? It always comes back to having enough time.

Returning to the “friend” conversation, my optimism and stubbornness about finding a solution had my smart friend take our talk to a place that made a little more practical sense to me and compared the idea of “budgeting my time” to the same way I budget money. I immediately locked on to that comparison. I’m much better at budgeting money than I am time. Of course I did have the “aha” moment of wait… I can save and make more money but that’s not so with time. When I think about money, I have an abundance mentality. With time it feels like a scarce resource.

I don’t like the “scarcity” attitude. It doesn’t work for me. So what I decided about my time budget is that I want to make the most of it. I get that. However, I need to get a new definition of what the most is. If you know me well or even a little bit, you know I am a bit of a workaholic. So I spend a lot of time working. In redefining “getting the most for my time” I know that my relationships with friends, fun with my family, and even a quiet minute or two for myself need to have a larger allocation in that time budget. Oh and I need to balance the time I spend with our clients and training my own staff. And I must sell stuff to stay in business, work out, read, write and have pamper time. Sheesh… “ENOUGH”.

Ok, so it’s not like budgeting… its more about the reserve. For instance I’m much more comfortable when I have a certain amount of financial cushion in my bank account. I rarely give myself much cushion with time. I’m aware there’s very little in reserve. It made me wonder if I think that “reserve” time as wasted time?

Maybe if I think of it as cushion time rather than reserve time, that would work better in my brain. I know how to do that. I leave extremely early for the airport to eliminate any stress of being late or missing a flight. That creates a ton of calm and peace and I don’t feel like that’s wasted time. I plan to make phone calls, return emails, and sometimes just relax and read a good book.

Ok… I really like the thought of cushion time. That’s how I got to the 30 minutes between appointments. I’m not some super hero trying to save the world by proving I can do more things in a single day than humanly possible. I know that I don’t get extra points for having a bazillion things on my calendar. And I’m realizing that I probably can’t live a full and rich life if I keep doing it just like I’ve been doing it. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?

Here’s what I know for sure. I’m going to get the most out of every day. That’s a given. And I’m going to build in some cushion so I can have some reserve for you and for me.

Here’s what came out of my final thoughts on the subject…

The big question is/was … how much reserve do I need? What if I got real stubborn about only working 8 hours a day and taking one full day off? Book everything on the calendar. Declare the day off every week. Create a 30 min cushion between scheduled appointments. And get serious about determining the end of my workday (EOD) and fanatically get committed to NDP-Next Day Planning.

If I do that then I have a balance that includes sleep, work, and play! Sounds like an awesome plan.

8 hours of work

8 hours of play and personal

8 hours of sleep

It forced me to make a list of the “fun” things I like to do: What’s your list look like? Do you have any advice about how nutty this plan looks?