I Can’t Do That!

Time is a limited resource. Golda Meir said: “I must govern the clock, not be governed by it”.

This week as I began a ten day, 8 city trek, I panicked. I found myself making   that list on the plane Tuesday morning. You know that list right, the one where you start detailing all the things that must be done. Usually that list is long and there is this overwhelming feeling about where do you start!

I took a breath and knew that I am the master of getting things done and that there is this wonderful exercise that helps me prioritize. It works like this. You put everything on the list in a single column. Here’s an example:

Once you get the list made, you go back and assign the time it will take for completing each item. Then the real magic for prioritizing happens when you do the following. I wanted to create a little video and show you what I meant rather than tell you in words-but you may have guessed it… I did not have the time!

What you see up above are all of the actual steps to take.  Create the priority by first taking the top item on the list and comparing it to all the other items on the list. So you look at the list and you say, “do I need to write the newsletter more than booking the car for Detroit”. In this case, the newsletter needs to be completed before the car is rented so the newsletter gets the mark. Next, ask yourself, write the newsletter or complete training. Both of those are really important, they both have a Thursday morning deadline, however, I could push the complete training to the weekend if absolutely necessary… so write the newsletter gets the mark. Next you go down to the second thing on the list and repeat the exercise for everything below item number two. Move on to number three-You get the picture?

I’ve completed the list above and it is easy to see the priority of how things have to happen. This list above would be pretty easy and if this would have been my actual Tuesday through Thursday I don’t think I would have panicked. However, the reality is that I had to have a real “come to Jesus” talk with myself and the realistic concept of time.

Initially I thought, piece of cake. I had booked myself out for 54 hours during the next 72. I even jotted down, “I’ve got this” and if you look closely you’ll see that I marked through that bit of encouragement. I realized that by the time the plane landed 11 hours of Tuesday were already gone AND I changed time zones and lost an hour! So now I have 60 hours to complete the 54 hours of stuff I really felt like needed to be done by end of day Thursday. I had calculated 24 hours of rest. So I quickly decided that I could do just fine with 6 or 7 hours of sleep-8 hours of sleep is just not needed under the current circumstances. Ok that was a little ridiculous. I’m negotiating with myself about the amount of time I can sleep!

I figured that any phone calls I needed to make I could make in the car. I have about 12 hours of drive time. That didn’t work so well because if you have T-Mobile and you are driving through the Daniel Boone Forrest in KY you don’t have reliable cell phone service!

On Wednesday night I was delighted to discover at 10:00 pm that I had actually moved back into the central time zone and got that hour back that I lost the day before.  I got up a little earlier Wednesday and Thursday morning and gained a few minutes. I never reached for the TV because there’s NO time for TV-no real loss there. AND I had to add 2 more forgotten hours in to manage exercise because I’m not giving that up!

Here’s my struggle, after about 9:00 pm, I’m as dull as dirt. OK here’s another struggle worse than needing to call it quits after 9:00 pm. I did not count on all the new things that would come up during each day. I’m smarter than that; but I did not take any of the normal or extra day to day things that would come up.

So, here’s the reality. Everything that was scheduled as an appointment, got done. I have exactly 19 hours left. (not really, I can’t stay up until midnight-and I’ll lose that “time zone” hour again today because I move back into the EST).  I’m not discouraged; but I am faced with the fact that some of the things on that list have to move and that I need a new list today with all the new commitments that I’ve made over the last two days.

I guess on of the big lessons here is that in addition to putting things on a perfectly prioritized list… I have to actually transfer those things to my actual calendar and schedule an appointment to get them done. I’m not giving you a picture of my calendar. It would make you throw up.

Listen, I’m looking for suggestions. I’m no time management wizard. I do get a lot of things done. I’m interested in high performance and getting the most out of life. However, I’d like to follow Golda Meir’s words of wisdom and not be governed by the clock. HELP… leave any of your own words of wisdom here-PLEASE!