“Give yourself a gift: the present moment.” – Marcus Aurelius
There are at least three ways to “hear” the title: It’s Your Time.
It’s your turn to shine or to focus on yourself. It’s your time, enjoy it.
You own it, like “It’s your coat” or “It’s your money”. It’s your time, so spend it wisely.
Death is imminent. It’s your time. Your time is up.
Which version did you “hear” in your head? I suppose there is a psychological basis to your answer, but I’m not going to offer one here. Instead, I will take the approach that all three are valid. It’s your time.
My Grandpa Clem lived to be 92 years old. Growing up, we would visit him in the UP of Michigan every couple of years and every time he saw us, I was a little bit older and so was he. Grandpa was famous for saying, “Time marches on, Andge”. I always thought he meant that we kept getting older (and that was true), but the broader truth was that time is relentlessly ticking away. We can’t slow it down, speed it up, stop it, or save it for later. We have all we need but it never seems to be enough. Once we have used it, it is gone forever. You cannot manage time. It is unstoppable.
My Grandpa’s simple wisdom fell flat with the younger me, but I understand it better now. This, from a man that was a medic on the battlefields of France in 1918. The horror he must have seen as a 20 year old. I suspect he put a different value on his “time” after that experience. The heavy truth is that all of us are finite, and my Grandpa was right, “time marches on.”
The Problem
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” – Marcus Aurelius
Time is not our problem, we are. Since time is unmanageable, the real culprit is our lack of self-management. Let me ask you a question. Think about the 24 hours of your typical Monday and ask yourself, how much of your time do you actually control? If your answer is less than 24 hours, than we have some work to do. If your answer was “all of it,” than you can help us with the following thought leadership.
Let’s consider ten categories of self-mastery or areas were time can slip away from us: Attitude, Interruptions, Goals, Prioritizing, Analysis, Planning, Scheduling, Meetings, Delegation, and Procrastination.
Before we dive in, I have a confession to make. I struggle with self-management.
For example, I’m supposed to write a book this year about the Finnish philosophy of SISU. The goal of this work is to encourage and inspire you to stay focused, determined and optimistic. It is currently just an outline and some notes. Oh, the irony. It is turning into a self-help guide, for me! You see, the more time I have to accomplish something, the less efficient I become. I have a tendency to procrastinate. It is stressful and that stress is completely self-inflicted. It’s embarrassing. I know better. Yet, I still struggle.
I share this vulnerability with you, to let you off the hook. I may be the “expert”, but we are in this together, doing the best we can (and it’s mostly working). We all struggle to stay focused and productive at times. We can get overwhelmed by the volume of work, distracted by the urgent and provocative, or worn out by the stress of high expectations and over-achieving. Procrastination is my area of struggle. Read on for the other nine. Oh, I promise I will get around to writing the book. SISU does help. It’s fueling me right now.
My Top Ten Solutions
10 Self-Management Shifts to Take Back Your Day and Own Your Life
Our Attitude
Who owns the 24 hours in your day? If it isn’t yours, then who’s time is it?
I’d like you to stop feeling like a victim of someone else’s demands. It’s your time, remember? I’m giving you permission to own it and I’m asking you to change your attitude about it. If the 24 hours in your day truly belongs to you, then you must make better decisions about how you spend it. You can’t blame your boss, your spouse, your team for making you “late” or being the reason you can’t do something. Recognize that you are choosing (albeit passively sometimes) to work late or miss an event or veg on the couch. Own your decisions and inefficiencies. If you really own your time, you can say “no” or “not now” to some tasks. It’s just hard to do that sometimes. It is your time, so spend it wisely.
Expect Interruptions
We have normalized distraction and interruptions. People will check in at odd times during the day, just to chat. It’s sometimes important, but often about a game or social plan, or blah, blah, blah. We all get the random text messages, or “call me”, often in the middle of a zoom call. I’ve gone looking for a fresh cup of coffee and an hour later, I get back to my emails with no coffee in hand and a fresh load of laundry in the washer (I work from home). If I had a better manager…(I’m self-employed, remember).
I know that I’m not alone. Our society struggles with attention and focus. We are bombarded with interruptions. We just have to manage them better.
Start with your phone; silence your notifications, be deliberate about your responses to text messages, schedule your phone calls. Manage the device, don’t let it manage you. When people interrupt your day, don’t be mean, but also don’t be passive. Let them know when it isn’t a good time to chat and when it is. Be very available but have clear boundaries. Don’t let people steal your time without a reason or value.
Limit the amount of time you spend with social media. It is designed to hijack your attention and pilfer your time. Finally, leave some space in your day for interruptions. Resist the urge to pack your day so full that you don’t have any open space. It’s a fallacy that you will be more productive. Leaving some time to buffer the unexpected will make you more effective, not less.
A note about social media: It’s not about self-discipline, but dopamine. Our biochemistry is working against us. It’s possible to become over stimulated on dopamine. Instagram, TikTok, X, and other social media providers are just a new type of dealer. The tech companies have conspired to keep us thirsty for more. They are really good at engineering very attractive and distracting brain candy to keep us supplied with the dopamine we have come to crave. These types of interruptions are not good for us. It is ruining our brains.
Neuroscience tells us that dopamine overstimulation has short and long term consequences. Here are some articles about it:
“People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time – even when hard at work.” – Marcus Aurelius
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there and you will waste a lot of time on the way. Having goals will help you prioritize and invest your time and attention more effectively. Identify some goals for your physical / health, opportunities, work / financial, emotional / mental, relationships / social. This is the POWER dashboard I’ve referenced before.
Goals will help you make the appropriate trade-offs in order to be “successful.” If you want to get in shape and lose 10 pounds, you will need to carve out some time to work out and eat right. How much time will you invest and what are you willing to give up to achieve it? It won’t be “free.” Then, once you’ve lost the weight, how will you invest the time next? Goals help you get a better return for the time you are investing.
Prioritize
It is all about balancing between what is important (your contribution) versus what is urgent (your attention). Take a look at the graphic. Stop wasting your time on the “not important” things. Pay attention to what you are “reacting” to and where you go to “escape”. Manage yourself better in these quadrants.
We have already discussed interruptions and social media. Just because it appears to be urgent, does not mean that it is important. On the other hand, prioritize the important things. The pareto rule (80/20 rule) may apply here: 20 percent of your time produces 80 percent of your results. Put time and attention into “quality” or you will pay the price by having to live in “crisis”. For example, a good safety plan takes time to develop (quality), but it prevents incidents and injuries (crisis). We live in crisis too much and it is often self-inflicted.
Do Some Self Analysis
How are you spending your time? Take a page from the industrial engineers and keep a time log for a couple of weeks. Analyze where you are spending your time. I promise you, it will be surprising and helpful. Calculate the percentages and assess whether it is appropriate, healthy or sustainable. It will give you the data you need to make some changes, effectively “buying” time for the things that are most important to you (sleep being one of them).
Make a Plan
Most of us have a calendar of some sort, on our phones and computers, but very few of us make a daily or weekly plan. A plan assumes or expects a certain outcome. For example, “by the end of the week, I want to accomplish the following…” Without a written plan, its just an idea. I like to suggest a weekly plan. You have plans for your projects (usually a two-week lookahead), and it works. Do the same for yourself. Make a list of the tasks you want to accomplish and include the resources needed to make it happen. Identify the limitations and risks that might prevent you from achieving your goals and work to prevent them. At the end of the week, see what you have accomplished and make a new plan for the next one.
Put It Into a Schedule (add it to your calendar)
What’s the difference between an unwritten plan and a schedule; intention vs commitment. When you put something into your calendar, it becomes something real and you become accountable for it. You can say you want to work out every day, but when you add it to my calendar and block out the time, it’s more likely to happen. It is harder to ignore an appointment. Also, when you allocate time to something on your calendar, you can make better decisions and trade-offs, when there is a conflict. Time does have more “value” when it’s in your calendar.
Make Meetings Meaningful
Many meetings are a complete waste of time. Shame on you for hosting or attending such a thing. Meetings are expensive (you are paying people to attend after all). Make sure your meetings are valuable.
First, determine the purpose for the meeting. What are you hoping to achieve by gathering a group of people together. Next, make a plan for your meeting. How much time do you need? What does the agenda look like? Where will it be hosted? Will there be snacks? Who needs to attend?
Then, invite the right participants. Be clear about why you are inviting them. Tell them what they need to do or know to be prepared to participate. Please don’t invite people that aren’t necessary.
Finally, make sure to provide a summary of the meeting in the form of meeting minutes or even an ai summary (they are quite good, with a bit of editing). Please do hold the participants accountable for the commitments and decisions that they made during the meeting.
Delegate For Development
There are a lot of things you could delegate, but don’t. Mostly because you don’t have the time. You are too busy doing the work. That’s a slippery slope, though. You cannot be promoted without developing your next tier. Your company cannot scale or grow if you don’t develop your people. Delegation is a leadership skill and it’s necessary and encouraged in all of the great companies. Here is a simple model to help you delegate more effectively. Prepare for your next delegation by being clear about the responsibility, authority and accountability.
Responsibility refers to the assignment itself and the intended results, set clear expectations and you should avoid prescribing to the employee HOW the assignment should be completed.
What should you delegate: fact-finding assignments, making day-to-day minor decisions, anything your employees are expected to do when you are not there, jobs that can develop employees in other areas for potential promotion, answering routine questions; make the employees think for themselves, and routine clerical duties (e.g.; filing, counting, sorting, routine reports)
What you should not delegate: a job no one else is qualified to do, personnel issue such as hiring, firing or disciplinary matters, assignments from your boss that he expects you to do personally, an emergency or short-term task where there is not time to explain, morale problems, and jobs critical to your goals or team goals
Authority refers to the appropriate power given to the individual or group including the right to act and make decisions. It is very important to communicate boundaries and decision-making criteria. Here are some authority levels:
Get the facts, I’ll decide. (Lowest Authority)
Suggest alternatives, I’ll decide.
Decide, wait for my approval.
Decide, act unless I say no.
Act, report results.
Act, report if unsuccessful.
Act, reporting not needed. (Highest Authority)
Accountability refers to the fact that the relevant individual must “answer” for his/her/their actions and decisions along with the rewards or penalties that accompany those actions or decisions. Accountability requires a result. Be clear about what that result should be when you delegate the task. Then schedule some time to ensure that the result will be delivered. Remember, even though you delegated the task, you are still ultimately accountable for the result.
Avoid Procrastination
We procrastinate because we don’t know where to start. Sometimes the task seems overwhelming so we put it off. Some of us like the time pressure because it gives us energy and helps us focus. There is better in us. We could produce a better product if we didn’t procrastinate. How? By just getting started sooner. It sounds so simple, because it is. Getting started, put the job into perspective. What makes you successful? Taking on a difficult task, an unpleasant task, or making a tough decision. Don’t put it off, take it on!
Some Final Words
“Concentrate every minute like a (human) – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.” – Marcus Aurelius
Your success will depend upon how well you manage yourself and your attention. If you manage yourself well, you can MAKE time for everything that is important to you. Remember, it’s your turn to shine, enjoy it. You own it, 24 hours every day belongs to you, spend it wisely. Finally, don’t put off the things that matter most.
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” – Marcus Aurelius
