Have you ever had the experience where you get up in the morning and feel heavy with the anticipation of all the things you know that need to get done for the day, and you already feel defeated? Yes? Me too!
Well on these days, it is possible to have more control over the outcome than you think and here are my favourite strategies for transforming that hideous nightmare day into a day of apparently magical mystery outcomes where everything that’s really important gets handled.
The answer is to address the top time-wasters.
1. Mindset
Mindset eats ‘busy’ for breakfast. When I am coaching business owners in productivity and time management, I introduce an exercise to expand their awareness of the power of their thoughts. In part 1 of the exercise, I ask them to send me a quick text every time they have a thought along the lines of “I’m running out of time”, “I’ll never get that done today” and “How am I going to fit it all in?”. Without fail, the individual is amazed at the frequency of those thoughts, and what an impact the thoughts have on their energy level and mental clarity for the day.
Part 2 of the exercise is to replace that thought each time, with something along the lines of “I will do that know”, or “We’ve got time” or “One thing at a time”. Energy and clarity returns and we are more likely to find a way or find a shortcut that we hadn’t previously thought of.
2. Shortcuts
When you go looking, shortcuts are everywhere. The first place to go is to ask for help. We could ask an expert in our team or network to either take on the task, or to give us a shortcut we didn’t know about. There might be an App for it, or an instructional video that could save us hours.
Taking a few minutes to breath and think will often give rise to a new idea that will solve the problem immediately, rather than finding ourselves continuously putting the task off because it seems too hard, only to find the problem grows bigger.
3. Procrastination Buster
We all procrastinate about something to some degree some days, depending on our personal strengths and weakness and it is a major source of time wasting.
Awareness is the key here. Once you become aware of your procrastination and the negative impact it is having on your energy level and business results, try reorganising your schedule for the day. If possible, place this task at the top of the ‘To Do’ list and give it your undivided attention. If you know the task is so large and time consuming it will not be completed in your allotted time slot today, create a goal to break the task down into parts, and at the very least determine the next step by the end of your time period. Make sure you schedule action for that next step into your diary.
