Time Management Strategies Webinar
(Source:
Video Topics:
[0:03:08.1]The Insanity Test
[0:09:45.1] Top 3 Time Management Mistakes
[0:13:49.9] How to fix them
[0:21:52.3] New philosophy of TiMe management
[0:31:09.5] New website design
[0:48:06.8] 5 personal focused insights
JOHN: Hi! This is John Arnold and I want to welcome you to today's webinar. Allyson and I are really excited about this one because we've been working on a special report where we're trying to nail down how to overcome the Top 3 time management mistakes that we see people most often make. And I think we've hit on some solutions that you're gonna find really helpful. If this webinar's gonna be really helpful for you, if you ever find yourself in that situation where your To-Do list just seems to be getting longer and longer instead of shortening up and disappearing or if you find yourself longing for time to be with your kids or spouse, time to maybe work out and get in better shape or even just some time to kick back and relax and have some leisure for a change. So if you're feeling any of those things, you're likely falling in to 3 really common mistakes that we see people make. Now, the good news is this: We've been there and done that and we have some really practical tools to help you get out of that place of wondering how you're ever going to get it all done. In fact, I think by being in this webinar you're gonna be a little surprised to find that getting it all done isn't really the answer to your problem. So with that said, Allyson, how are you today? And welcome to the webinar as well.
ALLYSON: Thanks, John. I am so excited to be here. It's been a bit since we've been able to be live and this Google hangout technology is new to us so it's gonna be a lot of fun to see exactly what goes on. But there are a couple of things that our listeners will need. One of them is an ink pen and the other is some paper. So you might, as you're just beginning to listen to this, begin to pull those things out because we're gonna be doing a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. There was a point that as we began to do The 7 Minute Life that we really thought that it was all about time management and we wanted to help people with their time management strategies. Well, John, I would say that the old 7 Minute Life and the new 7 Minute Life are radically different. While we still think it's important to plan and execute, we also are finding out that we can't manage time. There will always be 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and there's nothing that we can do to make that any different. So we believe that there is something new coming and it's a new philosophy of The 7 Minute Life and we call it the Philosophy of Time Strategies. But before we get into that, John, I think you have kind of an interesting test that you might be able to share with us and so, my question is John, are you insanely busy?
JOHN: I used to be. I'm getting better at not being insanely busy. And we mean something very specific by that when we say, "Are you insanely busy?" And I have a little test that we have.
[0:03:08.1] Allyson and I have dubbed "The Insanity Test". For you to be able to answer this question about whether you're insanely busy or not. And what I would like you to do is if you do have a pencil and paper, go ahead and you can write as I'm speaking. Start to make a To-Do list of everything you know that you have to get done today. What is it that you're looking at in the next 24 hours that has to get completed? Maybe you have to pick up groceries or shuttle kids to things after school. Perhaps at work you have a report to finish, maybe you have phone calls that need to be completed. You may have some research or customer orders you need to process. Just anything and everything you got at work and home that you need to do in the next 24 hours. Start making a list of that and if you don't have a paper and pencil in front of you, you can kind of mentally begin to make that list. I'm sure you were as I was speaking. And I want to ask you a really critical question that came out of a conversation Allyson and I were having one day. And that is, that list that's in front of you, what if you waved a magic wand and suddenly you were able to get every single item done on that list? How much better would your life be? Would it actually move the needle forward in where your life is right now? Would you be healthier? Would you be happier? Would you have deeper relationships with your family members? Would you work in a better environment? What would be the result if you got all of that done? Now, the first time I applied this to one of my To-Do lists, it was a bit of a heart-sickening moment because I found that while I might get a lot of things done, the quality of my life, the joy that I had out of living necessarily wouldn't be that much greater. That really what I would do is just remove a lot of stressors of unfinished tasks. And that's why we're going through such a big shift here at 7 Minutes in terms of wanting to help people understand and realize that before you do anything, you have to know the right things and how to find the right things to put on your list. Otherwise, what you're doing is insane. You've probably heard that old definition of insanity as doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result. And if you're loading your To-Do list everyday with the same items and you're expecting that your life's going to be better than it is now and it's not getting there that's what we're talking about being insanely busy, doing the same kind of activity, scurrying to get more of that activity done when it's not going to yield the result that you really want. So do you want to add anything to that, Allyson, or do you want to take it from here?
ALLYSON: Yeah, I want to just move forward with that because we're about to go in to the outline of what we're gonna cover. And as I'm looking at this slide of the outline, I think it all begins with each one of us stepping back for a moment and taking the Insanity Test that you just offered. You know, it's interesting. I'm sure that almost everyone here has some sort of To-Do list that they write somewhere. It has to be somewhere. And in the past, I think what The 7 Minute Life was about is it was about helping people do more and it was even about helping people do more more efficiently. The problem that we had is we never quite got to the root of the problem which is that "I was hanging on to the wrong list. My To-Do list was insanely busy but it was not bringing me any more in alignment with what my purpose, what my priorities were or bringing a life of meaning to me." So I think the one big takeaway that I'm realizing, John, is that we really need to start at the core foundation of, Do we have the right list? And I'd like your comment before we move into the outline.
JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm running, too, that's what I'm seeing with other folks as well. And one of the things that we're gonna find as we're going through our webinar today is that that pushes some pretty difficult choices on us. That means whenever we choose to focus on one thing, we're gonna have to let go of focusing on some otheer things. And I actually found myself a lot times of pushing my way through that list because it gave me a mild sense of accomplishment. I could get to the end of the day and go, "Oh, I did this, this and this." But the problem was having that accomplishment wasn't necessarily meaningful and adding to the joy and quality of life. So what I would add to that is we're going to... you're going to find out that this is not an either/or but a both/and because we do want to continue to help people be more effective. We want to help you get through whatever's on your list more effectively. No doubt about that. But we want to kind of back things up and do a lot of front-end work to make sure that you're focusing on the things that matter most to you. Otherwise, all we're going to do is make you more effective at being busier not necessarily being more accomplished in the things that matter most to you.
ALLYSON: That's excellent. So here's where we're going, John. We're gonna talk about the Top 3 time management mistakes and how to fix them. Then we're gonna move quickly into the new philosophy of TiME management and you're seeing it correctly that it is spelled capital T, lower case I, capital M, capital E and I'll be explaining that. Then I'm gonna share just 5 what I call personal insights or 5 personal focus points. Then I'm gonna give away the one big takeaway that has absolutely revolutionized how I look at time strategies and then I'm gonna ask John to share the single most important action step. We're only going to be asking you to do one thing for yourself at the end of this program. So with that, I'm gonna move right on into it. John, I'm gonna ask you to go through the Top 3 time management mistakes, if you will.
[0:09:45.1] JOHN: Yeah, sure.The very first one which you see on this slide of the screen is lacking focus and this can come out in a lot of ways. You'll know if you're lacking focus if you find yourself living reactively. That's kind of the by-product of not knowing what your focus is. If nothing's important, if nothing is outlined as being a high priority for you then everything's important and you just find yourself reacting and responding to anything in your path. I'll give you a good example and I have had this happen before. Go into work, decide I'm gonna check my email before I do anything else. Pop open my email, there's a few things that I purge out of what's in there then I get grabbed by maybe something a friend has sent me and it sends me to a little video and I watch that video for a moment and that grabs me and goes to another video. Well, I realize I can't spend my time on that. I go back to processing email and about that time my phone rings and I take the call and somebody asks me to do something and then I'm looking for a file and so on and so on. Before you know it, it's nearly lunch, I look up, it's 11, 11:30 and I realize I have not even touched anything that I intended to do when I came through the door. And it's all been shoved back into the latter part of the day. That's what lacking focus will do to you and that's how you can kind of recognize when you're in that place because you are constantly living reactively to whatever is before [0:11:22.1 unclear] and we'll give in the solution for that one but that's the number one- is lacking focus. And you can't be productive, you cannot be productive if you're trying to focus on 10 things at once. So you've gotta have focus.
The second one is disorganization. That can be either internal or external. We can have a really muddled world on the inside if you have a lot of unfinished tasks and you don't have a clear sense of priority then your mind would be very scattered and disorganized. And your external environment can be extremely disorganized. Look around your office. I loved Allyson yesterday, we were talking and she's made the comment, every file laying on your desk is a decision not made yet. And if you have a cluttered office, you're probably living in a lot of disorganization. So that's the second one.
And then lastly, the third thing, doing too much. And almost- oh, I can't tell you- it's epidemic. I was gonna say almost everybody know it is epidemic how many people find themselves saying, "I'm doing too much." You know, if you ever found yourself saying the words, "Well, I just need to know how to say No better." Alright. You're probably over committed in doing too much. If you're unable to keep commitments, if you're perpetually late to things, if you constantly have to reschedule with people or you're never getting through your list, you're probably doing too much.
So those are the three biggies. Lacking focus, disorganization and doing too much. Alright. So you want me to go ahead and jump into talking about how to correct them, Allyson?
ALLYSON: I do. I think that's why people have tuned in today.
JOHN: Yeah, I could do a cliff-hanger. I could say, "Okay, that's about it. We'll talk to you next week."
ALLYSON: But I think that people won't be surprised what the answer is but I think they will be surprised at how you're going to offer some examples around this. So, John, as we've said from the beginning. We believe in only one way to correct these three top mistakes and here it is. Here's how we believe you should correct them.
[0:13:49.9] JOHN: Right. You got to prioritize, organize, and simplify. Right? If you're lacking focus, the problem is you don't know your priorities. You don't know what your core values are, you don't know your purpose clearly, you don't know what your goals are. So if you want to get rid of your lack of focus, you have to get absolutely crystal clear on what your priorities are and we have a lot of tools. For those of you who are new to The 7 Minute Life, you can look in the Fan area of our website and there's a lot of tools in there or if you use The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner, particularly the tools that help you nail down your [0:14:35.7 no audio] management and your goals, those are really prioritizing pieces and they're kind of the filter for making sure that you have focus. I had just an eye-opening experience of this early on when I was struggling with the idea of I need to say No more often. And I was over-committing. I'm a pastor, I get asked to do all kinds of things just by being in that role and at the time of my life where I was extremely over-committed doing something every evening, I realized one day that my family needed to be one of my highest priorities if not the highest priority. And I remember the day when I gave myself permission to tell people when they ask me to do something, "No. I have another commitment that evening. I can't do it." Well, that commitment that I had was to be at home and spend time with my family. I didn't have a plan for what we were going to do. I just knew that if I was going to get that time, I had to start making it a priority. And I would put it in that language to people. I would say, "I'm sorry, I would love to come Thursday night but I have another commitment." And that commitment was to be with my family and that was just important or more important than what I was being asked to do. So that's just one real concrete example of being able to... once you identify that priority, having a way to create kind of a filter for what you say Yes and No to. Do you want to add anything to that Allyson before we move on to disorganization?
ALLYSON: No, I just want you to keep on going.
JOHN: Okay. Yeah, I know we gotta be quick on time here. Now, in terms of disorganization there are a lot of different tools that we could put before you but the one that I want to lift up to you in terms of organizing, the first step to organizing is having some form of written daily plan of action steps that you're going to take. What is your written daily plan and in order to have that daily plan, I want to give you through really quick keys for what that plan should be when you write it out. First off, the first of it is actually write it out. Have a written plan so that you have an agenda for your day. I mean if you go into your day whether it's at home or at work without a written plan, it's a lot like entering a business meeting with no agenda for the meeting. And I suspect there's a lot of people on this call who have done that. They've sat in a meeting where they showed up and nobody had a written agenda and it wandered all over the place and it was limitedly fruitful. Well, your day is no different. You need a written action plan. You want to start the day with that action plan in hand. I know what I'm gonna do before I get in the office door. Because if you don't have that action plan in hand ahead of time, other things are gonna nose in and shove your priorities to the back of the day and you're going to find that they quickly get squeezed out of the picture. And then lastly, when you look at those action steps that are on your daily plan, make sure that the things that are at the top of the list you can clearly say, "This is a step that moves me forward in my values, my purpose or my goals. It moves me forward in my values, my purpose or my goals." So, written action plan. One you start with in your hand and something that comes out of your values, purpose and goals. So I'm gonna leave it there and get us moving onto mistake number 3 and that is doing too much as I said a moment ago. The answer to that obviously is we have to simplify. And we have to begin to weed some things out so that we can have time for the things that really matter the most. And I'm gonna very rapidly tell you five ways I weed things off my list. The first is I pass things off. If I can delegate or outsource or ask a favor or trade with someone or whatever I could do to get a low priority task off my hands and into someone else's hands, I do it. Now, I don't want you to feel guilty like you're doing them a disservice. I look for people who really take great joy in the things Idont like to do, you know? And it becomes a favor for them. There are a lot of things I don't want on my list that somebody else would love to do. Find those people and pass it off. Ask for help. Maybe you can't get rid of a task completely but adding hands to a task can expedite it off your list quickly. Some tasks just need to be pruned. That's number 3. Prune 'em. Some tasks are just time drains. Like habitually checking Facebook or channel surfing on television late at night. Only you will know the activities that you can prune. But you might need to cut some things out. Along those same lines, I would say quit some commitments. I have been on a lot of non-profit boards. I've been the president of boards and almost every board I've served on, there's been somebody on that board who didn't want to be there. Because they over-commit it. And it's actually usually been a relief to them and the organization when they finally said, "Hey, I've bitten off more than I can chew. I want to step down." It's better to step down than to allow that position to be filled with someone who can't do it justice. And last but not least, you can renegotiate some commitments. There are things that I've said yes to that weren't quite what I thought they would be when I said yes to them. And I've had to go back and [0:21:04.0 no audio] can't do this monthly but I can do it once a quarter or I can't do this weekly but I can do it every other week. It's okay to go back in and renegotiate. Just let people know that you didn't understand the size of the commitment when you start it, you're unable to do that but you would like to help. What's a good compromise? So those were: Pass it off, ask for help, prune, quit, or renegotiate. Those are some quick easy ways to simplify if you're doing too much.