Stop Managing Time

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Do you find that you get everything done that you want to get done in the week or do you feel like you're continually chasing your tail?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to start a conversation with you around productivity.

Productivity comes in various forms. You may use that word regularly. It may be something that's totally unfamiliar to you. To start this conversation, I want to talk about what it's not before we look at what it is. See, there are some myths out there, things that have been taught to us over the years that do not serve us, and there's a couple of them that I want to talk to you about before we get into the topic of productivity.

The first thing is this elusive, mysterious myth called time management. See, it's not you or I that manage time. There's 24 hours in a day. We're not going to get any more than 168 hours in a week. We're not able to manage time. So, that's part of the problem.

If we try to manage something that's not within our control, then we're never going to be able to achieve it.

Over the years have been many, many courses that I've done on time management where I've subscribed to the idea of this thing as well. But what I've found is that even though there's no such thing as time management, there are 3 key things that you and I can do to be able to get more done in the day, in the week, in the year, and we're going to talk about this over the next few weeks.

The second myth that I wanted to dispel is the myth around work-life balance.

See, work-life balance is a myth.

It assumes firstly that work and life are separate when work is just a part of life. It's one of the things that consumes your time.

What we want to look for instead, is our own perfect life balance. And that's something that's different for you than it could be for me because we have different priorities, different things we wanted to get done, we're at a different stage of life, a different stage of career, business, whatever it is.

Let's come back now and have a conversation now that we know what it's not.

Let's have a conversation about what productivity is. So, we've established that it's not about time management, it's not about work-life balance. And I said there are 3 elements to getting more things done.

3 things that we can actually manage when we make a decision to do so.

The first of those is priority management. What is it that we allow to fill space in our day? What is it that we allow to take up bandwidth in our calendar? And there are many reasons why things are priority and things are not. Why things appear like they're a priority in the moment because they're a comfort activity or whatever and we're going to talk about that next week.

The second area that we can manage is our environment. What are we allowing in our environment to take our focus, to distract us, to give us things shiny or not to look at that are not involved in what it is that we need to achieve right now? What are we consuming on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a yearly basis? The average person apparently watches about 4 hours of television a day. So when we take that and we multiply that out over an entire year, that's 2 full months, 24/7 gone out of our life, out of our opportunity to be productive and get more done.

So, what is it that you're doing to consume your bandwidth? What are you allowing to distract you?

And the third area that we can manage is our energy and

how we manage our priorities and how we manage our environment has a lot to do with how much energy we have.

I don't know about you, but there are a lot of times when I'll get home from working with clients or whatever it is that I'm doing. And there were times where I didn't have enough energy to be who I needed to be when I got home. I'm spent, I'd given all my energy.

Those are the 3 things that we're going to talk about this month. Let's recap them: Priority management, environment management, and energy management.

It's not about time management, it's not about work-life balance. It's not about to do lists.

In fact, one of the greatest things that I have ever been introduced to, to counter the to-do list is my to-don't list.

What are the things that I'm not going to allow to consume my bandwidth, to get my attention, to sap my energy?

That's it for me again this week. Join me next week when we continue this conversation around productivity by looking at our priority management. I'll see you then.