You may have noticed that my blog entries have been far and few between over the past few weeks. The reason is that for this period of time I lost control of my own agenda. I’m sure you know what I mean by this statement. It’s when you find yourself being pulled in a million directions and you have a hard time holding on to the reins of the things that matter most to you. The next thing you know all your time is being spent on things that matter to everyone else and you have little time left over to focus on the things you care about.
When you think of the multiple hats we all wear-employee, spouse, parent, partner, friend, sibling, child, community activist-it’s no wonder that we sometimes lose control of our own agenda. All you need is a crisis at work or a sick child or a father in the hospital, and whatever balance you once had suddenly flies out the window.
Over the years I’ve learned a number of tactics to maintain control over my time. Here are my top 5 tricks:
1) Learn to say no and not feel guilty about it. There are unlimited people and organizations that could use your time and attention. I think it’s important to give of yourself to your community, your child’s school, or your favorite charity, but you need to learn how to allocate the amount of time that allows you to preserve time for other things that matter to you.
2) Set your own standards for how quickly you respond to messages. There are people who pride themselves in answering every email within a certain amount of time. That’s not me. There are many days when I need to make a choice between making it home for dinner and staying late to get through all the emails in my in-box. I always choose dinner. When I am gone from this life, no one is going to remember me for the timeliness of my responses to email.
3) Don’t feel like you have to do something just because someone has suggested it. People are always sending me interesting things to read-books, articles, white papers, links. While I appreciate the gestures, I’ve stopped feeling obligated to read everything sent to me. I now pick and choose what to read.
4) Break the habit of one hour meetings. Everyone schedules meetings for an hour even when there isn’t an hour worth of material to cover. Be a trend setter and schedule meetings to be a ½ hour. Challenge other participants to be crisp in their discussion and decision making.
5) Find ways to get other people to do things for you. I was once on a committee that I found dreadfully boring, but I needed to continue attending because it was important that someone represented our department. I decided to ask someone who works for me if they would have any interest in taking over my seat on this committee. She was thrilled to be asked. She saw it as a way to increase her visibility in the organization and an opportunity to get exposure to different departments. This is what you call a win-win!
Let me know what tricks you use to manage your time and agenda. And now that I have mine back, you can count on some more regular blog posts!
