Know Thy Time…
2 min read
In the highly competitive world of professional sports, the experts say that if performance can’t be measured, it can’t be improved. How true. In the business world, time is your most valuable asset. And, yet, few record it, few manage it, and even fewer measure it. Let me explain.
I have found through my consulting over the years with high-performance athletes, high-dollar sales pros, and C-level business executives that they have one trait in common: they are very good at recording, consolidating, and managing their time. You can too. Here’s how they do it:
- Record your time: keep track each day for a month exactly how you spend your time. Be specific and log in 30 minute blocks. Log your time in your work calendar organizer or personal journal.
- Consolidate: at the end of a month, categorize and consolidate your activities in separate groups such as email review/writing, exercise, lunch, returning voice mails, internet browsing, reading, meetings, outside activities, etc. The results will be surprising.
- Manage: Once you complete your categories, start organizing into blocks of time. Knowledge workers have been shown to be most effective working in blocks of 90 minutes. To spend a few minutes on something is simply not productive. Multi-tasking is dead. In the case of a critical task that will take longer than 90 minutes, take a 15 minute break to refresh on smaller task, and then come back to it. Flexibility is the key.
Ever wonder why most sporting events, films and performing arts presentations are designed to be 90 minutes long? That’s right. It’s the optimum attention span of a human being. This is why most successful athletes and CEOs work in 90 minute blocks of time too.
Try it. Make time your asset, not your enemy!
