There seems to be a never ending dialogue about time management. If you’re anything like me you probably find no matter how efficient you get about handling all the different tasks and challenges that are thrown at you on a daily basis, there is still always a deluge of things you could be doing that never ends.
When it comes to time management I’ve lost count of the number of courses I’ve been to, books I’ve read and experts I’ve watched give presentations, and more recently, iPhone apps I’ve downloaded. Yet, anyone who knows me, would probably expect me to arrive to any given event ‘in the nick of time’ or more like 15 minutes late. In my life it’s not too bad – I’m not on Drag Queen time – but I still always want to get better.
A few years ago a study completed by the Harvard Business Review found that executives who scheduled a block of time each day to deal with ‘all the unexpected things that screw up your schedule’ actually achieved more because they acknowledged that the unexpected was expected.
Lately I’ve been thinking the answer might not be in making more time, but accepting less. If the world had less emails, less social media, less events, and less newspapers and magazines to read, and less television to watch, then their might really be more time to achieve goals.
So I’m proposing an information diet, less inputs and more outputs (so its basically the same theory that Sav talks about in our fitness column this month but for technology). Let the diet begin.
Getting Down to Business
Monday 9th September
My first thing I did over the weekend to free up time in my life was to tackle the Foxtel IQ box. I deleted 90% of the shows I hadn’t watched. Then I deleted the bookings for 50% of the shows that were set to record in the future. I no longer have that space in my brain taken up by a nagging voice that says “You haven’t watched that yet”.
Also on Friday night I actually managed to get to the opening night of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ so early that I had time to go across to Market and Co and have a coffee before the show. I’m not sure if this was a fluke, but it’s never happened before.
As the month goes on I’ll update this post further which what techniques are working for me.
