Part Two

Emotional time

Time is an emotion. Although we use the clock and calendar to measure time, does this really describe the essence of time? Ever wondered why time goes quickly when you are absorbed and slowly when you are bored?

When you do too much of what you don’t value, you get stressed, (an emotion) if you don’t do what you think you should you do, you may feel guilty, (a feeling). It’s all about your emotional response to what you are doing.

Part Three

Reaction management

It’s our minute-by-minute reactions to stuff that happen, based on our emotions that make an impact on our day. Remember the last time you were late for an important meeting, or for work. What state of mind were you in when you arrived?

Understanding your own emotional reactions to ‘what happens’ each day will be your greatest influence in deciding how to manage your time.

You must learn to separate what actually happens from what you make it mean. If you cannot change the ‘what happened’, change your reaction – the ‘what you make it mean’. The physical and emotional quality of your daily life is based entirely on your emotional reactions to what happens.

Part Four

Attention management

You are now entering a new time zone.

Here, the word ‘should’ does not exist. Everything in this zone is a ‘must’ not a ‘should’. Those who use ‘should’, die of that sad, wasting disease known as ‘I should’ve been’!

There is no more physical time for any of us. People who are successful with time will tell you that you must spend your time focusing on what’s most important at any given moment.

Since what you focus on is simply what you pay attention to, you must become aware of some important distinctions.

You must know the difference between Vital v Urgent.

• The doorbell rings during your weekly family dinner – is it urgent?
• Your boss wants an item now, is that urgent?
• Is faxing over details to client now because that’s what he asked for urgent?

‘Not necessarily’, I hear you say. Yes! It’s all urgent.

Anything that happens right now, in the moment, is urgent. The real skill comes in defining whether it’s important or not and then responding effectively.

Part Five

Making distinctions

Before every task you undertake this week, ask yourself is it:

• Urgent
• Urgent and Important
• Important
• Not urgent and not important

The more often you ask yourself the question, the clearer you’ll be in your own mind. And once you’re clear in your mind, you can decide what action to take.

Action!

Actions of the Week

There is just one action item this week – but it is a vital first step, so please don’t move on until you have completed it.

I want you to keep a time log for at least five consecutive days, so we know exactly where and how you spend your time. Draw up a table using these headings or create your own. Be meticulous in recording everything for at least five days.

For example:

Time	Task/Activity	Time Completed	Comments
9.30	Planning Day	9.45	I know where to focus today

By doing this you will raise your daily awareness of your own emotional reactions; how you make your decisions and the actions you decide to take.

You’ll have the invaluable tools needed for Week 2 when you’ll learn the importance of planning and prioritising.

Part Two

Your Prioritised Action List

1. Make a list

Write down everything you have to do this week, what projects need attention, what targets need to be reached what personal goals are you working towards.

Just get as much on paper as possible.

Use these Powerful Focused Questions to assist you.

• Which of my high priority goals should I work on today?
• Which projects will give the highest return on investment for me?
• Which projects, if not completed, will be the greatest threat to my survival?
• Is there a deadline to work to?
• What does my boss want me to work on?
• What wasn’t completed yesterday that must be done today.
• What do my personal values suggest are most important?

2. Judge each item’s importance

Using:

• A – Vital
• B – Important
• C -Some value
• D – Dump it.

The rule is that only 20% of your list must be A’s (based on the principle that 20% of our productivity produces 80% of the results!)

3. Then judge by urgency

Do I have to do it:

• today?
• this week?
• this month?

And mark it accordingly.

4. Estimate the time each task will take

Be really honest with yourself. Tasks often take much longer that we anticipate, so bigger projects must be broken down into bite-size pieces.

You have a lot of information there. Now lets look at what to do with it.

Part Three

Prioritise!

When you have estimated the time for each task, take these actions:

• slot your A’s for tomorrow into your personal organiser
• slot the remainder of your A’s, B’s and C’s into your organiser on the appropriate dates in for the rest of the week or month.

You are effectively making an appointment with yourself by allocating specific time slots throughout your week or month to complete your projects.

Tomorrow’s list should now contain a mixture of A, B’s and C’s.

A suggestion is to use the lower half of your Action Plan for your personal tasks prioritised in exactly the same way.

Repeat this formula every day!

Finally, be sure to complete all your ‘A’ tasks each day.

Action!

Actions of the Week

Again this week is about monitoring what you do – but this time using priortised lists!

1. Every morning for five days, go through the process described earlier.

2. Commit to getting the A tasks done every day

If you begin to find that there are too many A tasks to complete – review your list carefully.

• Are they really all A’s? Reassign them based on your answers.
• Could some of these tasks be delegated?

3. Check your diary every day for your ‘appointments’ with yourself.

Recategorise these if necessary – they may have become A’s by now! Keep these appointments – they are made with someone you value and whose judgement you trust!

4. Ask yourself each day, ‘Which were my best-spent hours today’?

Write down why they were the best spent hours and what made them so effective.

Congratulations, you are now creating a success strategy that will make you master of your time and give you more Time to Live! Over the next few weeks you’ll learn how to deal with interruptions and time wasters, find the right balance, create communication and set goals. See you next week!

Part Two

Check your balance

Are there some areas which get high scores, others with which you are less satisfied?

Bear in mind that it will probably be different if you repeat this exercise tomorrow. Balance is a continuous process. Fulfillment lives at having scores of 8 and 9 across the board, most of the time. To be always at 10 is not the goal. Sustainability is.

For example if your health is at 10 but you live on lettuce and exercise obsessively, ask yourself, ‘is this sustainable?’. Only you know.

But the worst rating of all is not 1 – it’s 5!

Five is neither painful enough to convince you to act nor pleasurable enough for you to want to keep the status quo. If you have this score in any area, ask yourself now ‘what’s it like to live at a 5‘? Listen to your answer.

I’m pretty sure you’ve said something like, ‘boring, frustrating, neither really good or truly bad’.

Five is mediocre and who wants a mediocre life?

Part Three

Why is balance important?

Because, when you experience imbalance, a few things can happen.

Let me give you a more physical example. Just read through these instructions:

Make sure you are in a safe space. Stand up and stretch your arms out wide. In the same position stand on tiptoes. Now stand on tiptoe on one leg.

What happened? Did you lose your balance? Did you try to over-compensate by grabbing on to someone or leaning on something? What did you do to stay balanced?

In life, when we are out of balance (which, by the way, is just another way of saying stressed) in certain areas, we often regain balance by grabbing on to some one else to tell our troubles to, or overeating, alcohol, cigarettes, depression, drugs, sleep or TV.

We look to quick fixes. We must regain balance so that we can be in control.

So how can you maintain balance in a sustainable way? The place to look is your values.

Part Four

Check your values

A value is a ‘must have’ in your life.

It’s a fact that when what you do and what you value marries together, you experience your highest level of productivity both at work and in your life. You achieve the balance vital to your achieving success and fulfilment in all you do. Your values act as a compass, which guide you towards your goals.

Values are the solid foundations on which to build your goals. Don’t even begin to set goals at work or at home until you know your values. Don’t build a house on sand; base your goals on your ‘must haves’ in life.

For example, if you value security and you are planning to start a business which will take time to build, you may want to be sure that your value of independence is a high enough priority to keep you going when the going gets tough.

You need to know what you value most in life and also the exact priority order of your values. You’ll then have your own unique set of tools to help you to choose how you live, what work is right for you, and what you are willing/unwilling to compromise on.

If you value environment and work for a company with no such scruples, you’ll be torn between your fundamental values and the carrot of that impending promotion.

Which would you choose?

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Regain some balance

Look at the balance of your life from the list you made earlier, and during this week take one action that will increase the score in one area.

You know what it is – you’ve actually been aware of it for ages. Now is the time for action! Even addressing the balance in just one area will have an impact all the others.

2. Get familiar with your values

What must you have in life for happiness and fulfilment? Is it success, family, relationship, challenge, adventure, security? List your values and then put them in order of priority.

3. Notice when you are not honouring your values

The low ratings on your balance list are your indicator. If you spend your time in places and in ways that are not in alignment with your values, is it any wonder that you never seem to have enough time for the things you really want to do?

4. Repeat your balance assessment

When you have completed actions 1-3 above, go back and repreat the balance exercise. Don’t look at your original answers beforehand, but compare them afterwards.

Looking better?

Do all this and rediscover the balanced and productive person you always have been.

Part Two

Interruptions and unsolicited visitors

Open-plan offices offer little privacy. If you have important work to focus on, how can you avoid interruption?

Remember the 20/80 principle. Only 20% of your tasks each day are vital. How about creating your own sign and writing 20% on it in large numbers?

Tell your colleagues what it means when the sign is on display: it means you are working on something of real importance and should not be interrupted.

Don’t abuse the sign and I can almost guarantee you’ll get left alone and others will follow suit!

Quality communication

Using the word ‘No’ can be challenging. People attach their personal meanings to the word ‘No’. They make it mean that they are unhelpful, not a team player, perhaps aggressive. They think promotion depends on them never saying ‘No’.

The fear of saying ‘No’, however we justify it, actually means that we say ‘Yes’ too often.

You only have so much time in your time bank. If you say ‘Yes’ to working late, you are saying ‘No’ to social life. Look to your values. This is so important to understand, because not using this simple word is a major contributor of stress and illness. At the very least, it leaves you feeling overwhelmed.

There are, of course, ways of saying no. ‘I can’t do it now, but I can do it later/tomorrow/next year’, or ‘I have the annual report and the budget, does this work take priority?’

The more you use the ‘No’ muscle, the more control you will have over your time.

Part Three

Meetings

While online meetings are becoming more common (and can save considerable time), the approach you take to meetings is the same whether they are live or virtual.

• Plan in advance and stick to the agenda
• Start and finish on time
• Only attend if you have to- would a summary from someone afterwards be enough?
• Hold live meetings standing up – they tend to end quickly!
• If the meeting runs overtime or you are no longer needed, speak up! Ask to be excused.

What about the telephone?

Remember we talked about ‘urgent v important’. When the phone rings, it’s urgent but not necessarily important. Unless it’s your job to answer the phone or company policy insists you do, the phone can be managed.

• Use your voice mail message as your personal assistant. If you have an important task, decide how much time you need to concentrate and leave a message letting callers know when you will next check your calls. You may only need an hour. Most people can wait an hour.
• If your calls really need to be answered, ask if you can divert them to someone else for a hour. You can return the favour another time.
• Put your mobile phone on silent as often as you can.
• Plan your outgoing calls and have any information you may need to hand in advance
• Determine a time limit for calls in advance, and keep your watch by the phone.
• Tell the person you are calling your time limit “I’ve got ten minutes, let’s get going on this!”

Be imaginative in fighting the Time Thieves. Keep asking yourself, ‘what else can I do?’ rather than focusing on what you can’t do.

Part Four

Emails

Emails are an extremely useful tool for time management but can also be a huge distraction.Don’t let them rule your day – and they easily can!

Here are some suggestions:

• Set specific times each day when you check messages. Let senders know your routine. Unless you are expecting something urgent, don’t even look at your inbox outside of these times.
• Keep emails short. Use one main point per message
• Don’t send joke messages
• Keep emails professional
• Create subject files, filters, labels and so on (if you don’t know how, find out). Delete or archive emails regularly. There’s nothing more distracting than a cluttered in-box
• Always reply to emails within 24 hours

Voice mail

• Leave precise messages.
• State your name, the reason for your call and suggest a call back time.
• Schedule a time each day to receive and return calls.

Online Messaging

Twiiter, Facebook, internal company messaging systems – these have all become more popular means of communicating in recent times.

Here is the truth: Most text messaging is a waste of time.

Don’ t have them constantly open, they will distract you. If they absolutely need to be checked regularly because of the nature of your work, open them once an hour, spend no more then five minutes dealing with anything that’s come in, then close them again.

Part Five

Delegation

Delegation is about asking for help. Working with others offers the opportunity to delegate. A good delegator knows how to create the ‘buy in’ from their staff, their colleagues and their bosses by asking in the right way:

A person must know why the job is being delegated; what must be achieved and when it must be finished. You must then reclarify so the person you are delegating to understands what needs to be done

Delegating gives you a chance to show how much you trust those on your team and it frees up your time to do what you do best.

Self-imposed distractions

Your aim should always be to have a clean desk at the end of the day. Only keep on your desk the equipment for daily use and one task you are working on. Every time you raise your head and notice other work cluttering your desk (shouting, ‘do me, do me!’), you will experience a 5% distraction rate. This can add up to 45 minutes of wasted time each day costing you, and your company, money.

Be selective with your reading. We live in a world of information overload. Open your mail by the bin, keeping only the essential papers. Date them, file, them or pass them on.

Business magazines or articles must be filed and a date and time scheduled for reading. Paper breeds paper. Be ruthless, your time is at stake!

Consistent focused daily planning and personal organisation is the key to great time management. You know your weak spots from your time log. Keep building those muscles and regain control of your time. Be ready for unsolicited visits by having a stock phrase to handle them. Once again, use your own imagination, keep the Time Thieves at bay and make more time to live.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Identify your time management problems
2. Create your strategies, from the above suggestions, to control interruptions
3. Improve your personal organisation
4. Avoid procrastination – decide and take action
5. Know when to ask for help and do it with dignity and respect

Keep up with your actions, because in Week 5 we’ll be focussing on how you can create powerful goals and achieve sustainable success.

See you next time!

Part Two

How to set your goals

Your goals may come to you quickly or you may need some inspiration. Think of how you rated areas of your life in Part 3 because this will give you information about areas of focus that might benefit you.

The first step to creating your goals is to plan them. There are 3 things you need to define clearly when setting a goal:

• What you want – the specific outcome you want to achieve
• Why you want it – what achieving this outcome would give you
• What specific actions must be taken to make it happen.

A Goal needs to have a specific measurable result, so it is written in a certain way. It always has an Action, a specific Measure and it is Time Dated. For example:

• Increase income by 30% by December 2002
• Earn promotion by December 2002
• Buy a house in Florida by July 2003

Test your goals

Before committing to a goal, ask yourself, ‘Is this goal in alignment with my personal values?’ If it is, great! If not, dump it!

Any goal, which is not built on a foundation of your own values, is not achievable. Your goals must reflect what you must have in your life, be it success, achievement, peace, security or adventure.

These are the keys to goal making. This formula must become your mantra each time you set a goal.

You are in total control of your goals for the future. You already have the qualities it takes to succeed. Self-responsibility brought you to this programme and self-responsibility will lead you to achieve your goals.

Whatever you do today will take you towards those goals for tomorrow.

Part Three

Make your goals achievable

It’s important to remember when working with goals that the goal itself is just a bus stop or landmark to use as you move forward in life. Goals are a way of measuring progress and evaluating the effectiveness of your actions.

Think of moving towards your goal as a jouney. There is where you are now, where you want to be and the gap in-between. The gap has three bus stops.

• The first stop is called Immediate. It’s what you can do on a daily basis to take you closer to the next stop.
• By the Intermediate stop, you are at least half-way, if not more, towards your goal.
• By the last stop, called Long term, you have arrived at your destination and can celebrate your achievements.

If you do not reach your goal by the time limit you’ve set yourself, or seem to be stuck at a stop along the way, it’s an opportunity to look and see:

• If you are truly committed to that goal
  It’s fine if you’re not. It was your goal in the first place!
• If the actions that you have been taking are appropriate
  There’s no point driving south to Bournemouth if you are in London and trying to get to Birmingham!

It is also important to set goals that are compelling and will help you stretch and grow.

Think big!

Your goals need to be more than just a glorified ‘to do list’. Why not set exciting, challenging goals and welcome the occasional failure that inevitably accompanies this kind of courageous striving.

Part Four

Part Five

Action!

Actions of the Week

Set at least one long term goal for yourself this week. Remember, think big!

1. Work out the time scale for your goal

‘Long term’ can be anything from 1-5 years or even longer. You decide.

2. Plan the journey

Once you decide on your ultimate goal, work out where you will need to be and what you will need to achieve by the ‘intermediate’ – half way stop.

3. Plan immediate action

Decide what actions need to be taken a daily basis that would take you towards your goal. Create an Action List specifically that you can begin using from tomorrow. As you plan your day, include an action from your goal list and start doing what it takes to live your dreams!

Week 6 is the finale to the programme. Join me then to discover how to maintain the momentum to make more ‘Time to Live’

Part Two

Step 3

Make sure you live each day in alignment with your values and those of your company. Every time you feel upset, out of control or stressed, look to see which of your values is not being honoured and choose to take the actions necessary to rehonour them.

Nothing will take you ‘out of time’ quicker than being ‘out of sync’ with your values. Minutes turn into hours and whole days get wasted. Get back in alignment and live consciously in each moment!

Step 4

Keep to your Daily Action Plan, the one you learnt how to do in Week 2. In almost every lesson over the past six weeks I have reiterated the importance of planning.

Take that time each morning to assess your day and plan to get the results you want. Do your vitally important A’s every day. This is a total cure for procrastination – it gets the most important jobs done, leaving your more Time to Live!

Part Three

Step 5

Don’t assume lack of communication is someone else’s fault. Take control by listening, clarifying and feeding back what’s been said. Don’t waste time having to redo tasks because you did not fully understand what someone else meant. Be responsible around communication!

Step 6

The ultimate success formula is to repeat what works. When you last got it right what steps did you take? What formula did you follow?

Examine exactly what you did to achieve success, whether it was on a particular project, task, to get promotion or even pass your driving test. Ask yourself, ‘What did I do? Who was I being?’. Inspect your method for achieving results and repeat them. Do this in every task you undertake and you’ll see yourself succeed over and over again.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Set your intention for the day
2. Decide what attitude is needed
3. Live in alignment with your values
4. Communicate responsibly
5. REPEAT WHAT WORKS!

Congratulations! You’ve completed the course! By now, you’ll know that having more Time to Live means living consciously every minute of every day.

Remember, there is no luck in life. One explanation of luck is ‘when preparedness meets opportunity’. Preparedness in any part of your life will set you up for your opportunity to show the world who you really are.

People who are prepared plan for the future and are prepared for success. Do what it takes to make the time to be who you really are and make more Time to Live this wonderful life!