Posts Tagged ‘time’

What’s on your to-don’t list today?

A few weeks back, on Facebook, I asked people for their time-management suggestions.  I got a lot of them, and most of them were outstanding.  One in particular, from my old friend Janice Welker, leaped out at me, and set me thinking ever since.  She said that a to-do list was a chance for her to decide on all those things she was not going to do that day, that she used it to remember who was in control of her life.  I thought that was a great concept.

So, in the spirit of that, here is today’s to-don’t list:

1. Don’t stay in bed because you think nobody will care if you’re just a few minutes late.

2. Don’t assume that Jeanette knows you love her, just because you told her last night.

3. Don’t figure that the kids will weed just as hard if you’re not out there with them.

4. Don’t leave the baby for Jeanette to change because you think your work is too important for you to take a couple minutes.

5. Don’t make your body try to do its work on a glass of water and some vitamins.

6. Don’t call later.  There is no “later”.

7. Don’t figure people are smart enough to know what you need without your asking them.

8. Don’t think you can fit everything in that you have to do without taking a couple minutes to plan.

9. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your job is more important than your family.  It’s just louder.

10. Don’t think you’re ever going to get around to going fishing with your Dad unless you put something on the calendar.

11. Don’t think people that need mortgage lending in Utah are going to call you out of the blue, even if you aren’t doing anything to let them know you’re there.

12. Don’t expect blocks of time to magically open up in your calendar so you can take your wife out for ice cream.

13. Don’t get discouraged because two hours of writing only gets 4.7% of your book written.  It’s 4.7% more than you had before you started.

There’s more, but this post was not on the to-do list this morning, which I had better get back to.  What’s on YOUR to-Don’t list today?

I wrote a couple weeks ago about managing time and getting things done.  I have several techniques that I use, with varying levels of success, but of course time still gets away from me and I end up accomplishing less than I otherwise would.  Here’s something from a lawyer friend of mine:

Chris,

Like you, I did not realize how hard it is to "work" for 8 hours a day.  I have to keep track of my time in six minute increments--and they add up fast when I am reading your (entertaining and thought provoking) blog posts or the morning newspaper.  However, it helps me be accountable for how I spend my time each day.  Though obnoxious at times, it is good for me.  I still have a long way to go--it still takes me 10 hours to "work" 8--but I am getting better.

Thanks for keeping me on your email list.  Your writing is always entertaining.  You have a way of explaining life's lessons in a way that connects with a lot of people.

Hope things are well with you and your family.  Please let me know if I can ever do anything to help any of you.

Best,

Brock

Jones Waldo
Brock Worthen
Attorney

My job is not subject to hourly requirements.

This is a fancy way of saying that I can work when I want to, within certain boundaries.  I do have to work, unless there is nothing going on.  I never have to come to work and sit there.  There are no time clocks.  I hate those things, anyway.

Except.

Fact of the matter is that I don’t do that much real work.  I don’t do ANY real work in the old-timer sense, where I have actual physical labor that I perform.  No, I push paper around and rearrange pixels on a computer screen.  Still, the work of connecting people that need money with people that have money pays, so it must have some value.  Problem is, it’s very hard to quantify that work.  Can I do it in 10 minutes a day?  Can I do it in half an hour?  An hour?  Two?  Five?

I didn’t know.  A month ago it became important to me to discover how much time I was really spending working at my mortgage business in any given week.  This is time exclusive of Rotary meetings, exclusive of teaching school, exclusive of Heart-2-Home Board meetings, even exclusive of time I spend at work but surfing the Internet.  So I counted, and I’ve been counting for four weeks.

No, I will not share the results.  They embarrass me.  And I think I came a ways toward discovering one of the reasons that my success has not been as incandescent at it otherwise ought to be.

With all due respect to Tim Ferriss, whom I admire greatly, right now it is important to me personally to put some time into my business.  I want always to make that time more productive, but at the moment all I’m counting IS productive time, so that takes some care of itself.  I made a commitment to a partner that I would work – really do productive work – for at least a certain number of hours a week, even though I don’t strictly have to.  It’s been interesting.

But the reason for this post is that today was a victory.  I was a few hours short coming into this morning, as in, in a normal workday I would not get to my commitment for the week, which would necessitate my working on Saturday, a thing I almost never do (for good reasons).  When the baby got me up at 4:30, instead of going back to bed, I got dressed, went downstairs, and began to work.  Not at all coincidentally, I was able to make progress on some things that have been neglected, things that I believe will allow me to generate more work for myself and more business for the company.  Being a creator, I saw that this was good.

It would never have happened if I hadn’t set a time commitment for myself, and that would never have happened if I hadn’t started measuring what I was actually doing with my time.  It’s only one day.  But this thing might actually work.