selfish |ˈselfi sh |
adjective
(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure : I joined them for selfish reasons.
Working as a business coach, I’m sure that you’d be surprised to read this title. Am I not supposed to be a proponent of “open door” management. Promoting a philosophy of openness and accessibility for managers and business owners?
Truth is I do believe in this, but let’s get real here also. We all have jobs to do too, and lives to live.
4 years ago in the midst of a frenetic work lifestyle of 4.30am starts and 12pm finishes. Of travelling away at least 4 nights a week, of never relenting, and never allowing myself to really stop and think about how I was spending my time, an incident occurred that was to have a profound impact on me and how I spent my time.
I hadn’t seen my then 6 month year old son in 10 days. Siobhan my wife and he were on a week break in the West of Ireland and I was due to meet them. I changed my plans due to a work commitment and stayed away for longer than normal. Something I had done too often..
This was different because I was really looking forward to seeing Martin and my expectation was for a warm reception. How wrong I was. He looked at me as if to say “where have you been”? I can’t underestimate the impact that incident had on me.
But it was enough for me to completely reevaluate where I was spending my time. It made me realise that I needed to become a lot more selfish with my time. I needed to get more balance.
How many of you have become so absorbed in your work that you have forgotten how valuable your time is to you? Well, it is critical that you recognise your time value, and for you to also become a little bit more selfish about your time.
Here are some of the steps I took very quickly to stem the loss of my time.
The first thing I did was an audit of my time. I tracked what I was doing every 15 minutes for a week.
I tracked what I was doing, who I spoke to and what I accomplished.
It was a tough exercise to complete and even tougher to see the results. I had allowed my time to be hijacked by unnecessary interruptions and unnecessary travel.
Yes we were growing exponentially at the time and yes I needed to have flexibility in my schedule but my discipline of planning my time had just been eroded progressively.
For those of you who travel a lot, have you ever noticed that the phone is relatively quiet, in that the level of interruptions you get is less than when you are in the office. It’s as though people subconsciously decide that phoning you is too much hassle, and that it’s easier to wait until you return. You then get literally bombarded with requests for your time.
The real killer of time is the casual meeting. I always found that when I returned I was inundated with people who had a list of issues they wanted to deal with and this just ate in to my time.
I did a couple of things. Simple things.
One I removed the chairs in my office. Harsh? I don’t think so. Did it work. Absolutely. There was nowhere to get comfortable and have a chat.
Secondly I reintroduced our weekly scheduled meetings but with a definiteness of purpose. I had to limit access and to make that access a lot more productive.
Thirdly I insisted on an agenda for all meetings in advance, with supporting material needed to make a decision. This was a huge benefit to everyone. It saved huge amounts of time.
Fourth I completely re structured how I travelled. To this day I have an almost obsessive focus on minimising my travelling time. It works. A few simple steps made a huge difference. The most important step was that I took charge of my time. I allocated in my diary ( block schedule) times for travel. I picked the days and times. I then simply structured meetings and travel dates around my timetable. I cut out days a month with just this simple step.
Those of you saying this is unrealistic, I say then you haven’t really tried to make it work.
Answer this question. How many of you when arranging an appointment, allow your customer to choose the dates and times? Why? I used to but now I have scheduled times in a week for client meetings, and I simply guide people towards certain dates and times.
An example would be when I was travelling in the UK, I would always suggest the dates and times and give some suggestions to the clients of dates that fit my schedule. It rarely caused any problems and I did build in some flexibility. The reality was that over 90% of appointments quickly became structured around my schedule. Selfish yes, but effective also and there was absolutely no resistance from my clients. NONE!.
The other thing I would do and do to this day, is I will always review my next week on a Wednesday and assess my options. I am always trying to minimise travel times. The truth is that when you travel abroad you are forced to think like this, but the same logic applies to your travelling in Ireland. A quick phone call to reschedule an appointment can literally save you hours of time.
Fifth I scheduled the key tasks that I needed to complete weekly in my block schedule in order that I “make an appointment with myself”. This became sacrosanct to me. I committed that no matter what I would not move these times and appointments, and as a consequence rarely did. I scheduled for example “strategic time” weekly. I scheduled planning time daily. I scheduled reading time weekly as I needed to be an expert in my industry.
To be honest I found this very hard. The discipline needed is immense but the rewards are greater. Don’t do what I do and produce a schedule that looks like a military exercise. This is counterproductive and you’ll just beat yourself up when you can’t liv e up to it.
I am currently on my 7th version of my block schedule and I now have a system that I find really works for me. The key is to really be selfish about these time slots weekly. If you are you will always feel that you are in control of your time and you’ll just get so much more done weekly.
Actions
Track what you are doing daily for a week.
Be honest and assess how much of your time you are wasting in travel, meetings, casual conversations and other low value activities. Don’t be surprised if you quickly find half a day available.
Make appointments with yourself weekly. These are immovable dates and times, where you focus on your high value tasks and goals. Plan time for strategic thinking. Get out of your office during this time.
Plan your week in advance and review constantly to assess where you can save yourself an hour.
Be selfish about your time. It’s yours. Use it wisely. Once used it can never be retrieved.
Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.
