6 Time Management Skills That Will Change Your Life.

You don't manage time; you manage yourself.

Although you wish for more hours in a day, you can only create better hours.

In my experience as an executive coach and trainer, the ultimate objective of effective time management is to create the unhurried life. It's still focused on creating progress towards your goals but with a calm, enthusiastic, content headspace. It's being able to experience your days, not merely get through them and live for the weekend.

Here are six skills to master to feel like you own your days, not that they own you.

Master Choice Management.

What separates a productive day from an average day? You have the same allocation of time, but the micro-choices you make throughout the day determine whether you decide on the most important use of your time in the moment.

When you choose to put the easy tasks above the challenging ones because you feel a sense of achievement, what does that cost you? Sure, you may have ticked something off your to-do list, but the consequence of this choice will trigger unnecessary stress, worrying and anxiety.

Never mind the cost of being behind schedule and probably inconveniencing other people involved.

When it comes to decision-making, ask yourself – what is the best use of my time in this moment? Use these strategies from author Greg McKeown to guide you to make better choices:

 Invest in things that matter.

1.       Make a shortlist of things into which you are currently investing your time and energy.

2.       Rearrange the list in order of importance.

3.       Stop investing in some of the tasks at the bottom of your list.

4.       Use the saved time and energy to invest in the items at the top of your list.

Become a better editor in your life.

1.       Look at your schedule for tomorrow.

2.       Find one thing you can cut or condense.

3.       Use the extra time you gain on something essential.

When you can replace managing your time with managing your choices, you will begin to create more space in the day to work on the things that truly matter.

By taking ownership and being in control of your choices, you are empowered to live by design rather than default.

Master Energy Management.

Time management is energy management. You can have a perfectly planned calendar, but without energy, you won't make progress on your goals or be able to show up for others. You need to know your energy sources and drainers to decide how to spend your time effectively and what to say no to.

You'll notice that energy isn't just physical; it's also mental alertness and positive emotions that contribute to productivity and high performance.

Conduct an energy audit to identify how to structure your day to maximise your energy:

·       What people, places and habits fill you with energy?

·       What people, places and habits drain you of energy?

·       What are you tolerating?

·       What times of day are you energised or drained of energy?

·       When in the month or year are you energised or drained of energy?

·       What do you take on that you should leave to others?

·       Do you ever carry over any negative energy from one activity to the next?

·       Do you ever feel depleted but still plough into your next activity without a break, even though you know you should take a breather?

When you see a clear pattern, add more things that fill your tank and eliminate the ones that cause energy leaks.

The ultimate question to master your energy is how can I optimise my time for improved energy?

Master Anxiety Management.

Your productivity is proportional to the mindset you bring to the task. The more anxious you are, the less likely you are to attend to the task with your best energy, focus, and enthusiasm.

When I say anxiety, I mean those continuous lopping thoughts of how I am going to get it all done. Anxiety is an emotion, and it's data to inform you that you are either too future-focused or you are trying to control your external environment and that includes people around you.

How does this relate to time management?

I coach high performers, and when I examine their time management habits, they often overload themselves with unnecessary tasks to maintain a sense of control over everything.

They sit in meetings that don't require them to, but it provides a sense of knowing and control of what is happening. Or they are perfectionists and fear failure, meaning they would rather take on other people's work to ensure it gets done – because 'no one can do it as well as they can'.

Notice your anxiety and your degree to want to control. When you can let this go and place trust in your team to do what they're meant to, you can be freed up to focus on the most important things that move the needle.

Consider where you have been spending most of your time, and identify one weekly meeting you can step back from and one task you can delegate.

Begin to see delegation as a permanent solution. If you continue to take away work from your team, they may feel there is no growth for them, and you could lose some excellent people. As Daniel Pink shares in his brilliant TED Talk – The Science of Motivation, people need autonomy, mastery and purpose to thrive.

You need to let go of control to thrive.

Master Environment Management.

Mastering your time is not a discipline flaw but a design flaw.

To create better hours, you need to be the architect of your environment, not the victim of it. Author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, provides great insight into rethinking your environment to set you up for success.

If you want to introduce the habit of reading, manage the environment by leaving a book on your pillow. If you want to start a morning mindfulness practice, leave the mat out with the app ready.

Consider the physical environment where you work: What does the space encourage? What does it optimise for? How is it designed? Do you need to create a new space? If you work on your bed, you are giving yourself mixed signals about using the space.

If you want to journal, consider dedicating a specific chair or corner of your room to this habit.

How can you design your environment to minimise distractions and encourage productivity?

Now consider your digital environment:

·       What apps continually distract you?

·       If they are placed on the home screen, consider moving them further back.

·       What apps do you need to delete completely and only have on a laptop?

·       What notifications can you turn off, and which chats can you mute?

The key to mastering your environment is to know yourself and be honest about what is getting between you and a productive day.

Master Boundary Management.

When clients tell me they struggle with time management and work late at night, it's often because they lack boundary management.

Never mind setting boundaries with someone asking for assistance or placing another task in your inbox; it's because you can't honour the boundaries you create for yourself.

How often have you intentionally blocked out time in the calendar to work on your tasks but found yourself giving that space away to someone else's urgency? Or have you convinced yourself you'll do it after hours and again given your time to others?

Even though you may place a boundary around a block of time for exercise, padel or a self-care activity, you find yourself staying late at the office or hitting snooze to catch up on sleep because you worked late again.

The more important skill to master to own your time is to keep the promises you make to yourself and protect your time like a warrior. If you don't honour your own boundaries, no one else will.

Master Discomfort Management.

Mastering your time doesn't mean getting more things done but getting the right things done.

What happens if the right things trigger fears like not being perfect, being judged, failing, or assigning too big an outcome to the task? For example, you place the future of your career in the next fifteen-minute team presentation. No wonder you will do anything to avoid it!

When we associate a task with discomfort, we will create a new distraction to avoid it.

Author Nir Eyal says, "All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. If behaviour was previously effective at providing relief, we're likely to continue using it as a tool to escape discomfort. If you know the drivers of your behaviour, you can take steps to manage them."

Here is a great exercise you can do to uncover how you go off track despite your best plans from Nir's book, Indistractable.

·       Name four things you tend to get distracted while doing.

·       Describe what you did to distract yourself. For example, while working on a big project, you defaulted to checking your inbox.

·       What discomfort(s) or internal trigger(s) did you feel immediately prior to the distraction? These can be states like hunger, exhaustion, or feelings such as sadness, anger, boredom, frustration, being overwhelmed, sadness, etc.

·       Simply state your observations (i.e. When I feel stressed, I tend to scroll news headlines, or when I fear failure on the task, I tidy my office).

·       Be sure to avoid placing judgment on your actions but rather be curious.

·       By reimagining an uncomfortable internal trigger, we can prepare ahead of time and disarm it.

The next time you have to work on the project, name the emotion or internal trigger when it arises. Notice how it is making you uncomfortable and now laugh at yourself because you've caught yourself in the act.

This is how you create change: choose a better action than a distraction. How can you launch into the discomfort because this is the compass for your growth?

If it makes you uncertain, it's because it challenges you. Embrace it, don't avoid it.

What can you do to reimagine the task to make it feel more like play? What small challenges, constraints, or novelty can you add to make it fun? For example, take yourself to your favourite coffee shop to work on the task.

Final thoughts.

Time management is not one skill to master but meta-habits that stack throughout the day.

The ultimate meta-habit that is a prerequisite for these six skills is self-awareness. If we cannot self-observe, then we cannot self-correct.

There will be days where we feel like we got it right and things flowed; then there are days where you didn't stop but get to the end of the day feeling like you accomplished nothing.

The more awareness you can place on your habitual patterns and habits, the more you can prepare in advance to set yourself up for success. When you can master these six skills, you can begin to own your days and live the unhurried life on your terms.

·       Energy management

·       Choice management

·       Anxiety management

·       Discomfort management

·       Environment management

·       Boundary management

Here's to owning your days,

Warm wishes,

Lori