This past weekend I had an epiphany about “TIME”. I was entertaining out of town guests and we were talking about “TIME” and the management of time and how we use our time in the course of a day. We know we have lots of distractions and interruptions and when those occur our productivity goes down and we almost always do not go back to doing what we were interrupted from. There are lots of statistics out there which are readily available and I will not bore you with them here.
Let me ask you. Have you ever experienced a moment or several moments in your day when you are finished with one thing and you have another coming up shortly and you find yourself standing or sitting there with a few minutes to spare? OK! OK ! You don’t have to shout. I know you say you don’t have a moment to spare, but here what I have observed over and over not only in my life, but , my family, peers, strangers and others; when these precious few moments show up; we immediately go into our “default behavior”. What is your default behavior?
Here are several examples of what I have seen and I have even done myself:
* Pick up the phone and call someone until the next thing
* Pick up the phone and text someone until the next thing
* Check the email, something very important might have come in since I last looked before the next thing
* Smoke get a quick drag before the next thing happens
* Eat something until the next thing happens
* Visit with someone who is working to kill time until the next thing happens
* Go online and shop until the next thing happens
* Go online and check personal email until the next thing happens
All of these are POOR time management defaults and we all do many on this list. I know there are thousands of others that I have not observed.
All of these items listed above have one thing in common. Do you know what that is?
They all involve decision making skills. These skills are the same whether you are at work or you are at home. They know no boundary of any kind.
If you decision making skills are not fine tuned and honed then you will not be as productive as you might have been when employing some simple things.
One of the critical triggers that I have observed over and over is the “inability” for people in general to tolerate “inactivity in the form of being with themselves”. They are always looking for the “next thing”. We have totally unlearned how “to be”. Do you remember when you were a kid and you would tell your parents: “…….there’s nothing to do……I’m bored……” ? What did your parents do or say when those words came out of your mouth?
If your parents felt responsible for keeping you busy and happy at all times they probably became your “private entertainment” concierge. You never learned how to just “be” and find something to amuse yourself with where you were learning something or entertained in some other method other than being plopped in front of an electronic device of some kind.
We keep our calendars so full we are overwhelmed. When we have a free moment we are looking to our personal concierge for a “fix” until the next thing!
At your next default moment……S-T-O-P ……..and think we doing any one of the items above move me forward, earn me more money, calm me down “really”, or fulfill me in some manner?
