Episode 24: Mastering Every Minute: The Synergy of Time Management and Balanced Living

Imagine transforming your daily grind into a well-oiled machine of productivity and fulfillment. That's precisely what we're unpacking in our latest episode, where we unravel the golden threads of time management and the astonishing impact it has on weaving together our professional achievements with personal contentment. We'll guide you through the process of setting meaningful goals, prioritizing with precision, and planning like a pro—all while leaving room for the spontaneous joys of life. And for those who think delegation is a dirty word, we're ready to change your mind. Our discussion is peppered with the real-life success stories of go-getters and diligent planners who've turned the tide in their favor by mastering their minutes.

In this rich tapestry of time tactics, we also delve into the nitty-gritty of strategies that truly work. Learn how the Eisenhower Box can revolutionize your to-do list and why the Pareto Principle is more than just a fancy numerical notion—it's a game-changer for efficiency aficionados. To top it off, we share how digital darlings like Jira and Asana can declutter your workflow and why SMART goals aren't just smart; they're essential. No matter if you're a seasoned CEO or a start-up enthusiast, the insights from this episode promise to elevate your approach to time and task management, leading you to a life where stress takes a backseat, and balanced living takes the wheel. Join me, Shawn, and witness the profound benefits that come when you take the reins of your time.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Full Circle with Sean. I am your host, sean, and today we're talking about time management. So what is time management? And, simply put, it's a skill that involves organizing and planning how to divide your time between specific activities. And it starts with efficiency and productivity, so you maximize your productivity by efficiently using your time available. And then prioritizing right, so identify the most important tasks and give them the more focus and more time. It moves to goal setting, so setting clear, achievable goals and aligning daily activities to use those goals. It involves planning, so you have to allocate specific time slots to tasks or responsibilities to ensure that they're completed within set deadlines. And then even delegation, so you can assign tasks to others when appropriate, and that can be a more efficient use of time. Decision making Quickly determine which tasks to handle, which tasks to delegate, which tasks to postpone and which tasks to eliminate and we'll get into that a little bit later when we're talking about some strategies around time management and stress reduction, so decreasing stress by preventing last minute rushes to meet deadlines and we've all done it, we've all been there. And finally, work-life balance, so ensuring there's a balance between work duties and personal life by managing time effectively. And that's not to say that time management is all about work. It isn't. It's about personal life as well, and we'll talk about that a bit.

Speaker 0: 1:31

So what's the importance of time management? We've already covered just a little bit of it. So increases productivity, so the efficient use of time results in higher productivity. But it also creates the ability to achieve more with less effort, and we all want to do more with less effort. Right? Enhances quality of work, so time management allows for better focus on tasks, which improves the quality of the work produced. It can reduce your stress, so proper planning and scheduling reduces the anxiety of deadlines and, as we said before the rushed of last minute work. It can improve professional reputation. So being punctual and meeting deadlines constantly enhances one's reliability and professionalism in the workplace. I talk about that in one of the earlier episodes, where I'm always 15 minutes early, right, you know importance of time management. So it also enables career advancement. If you're effective and efficient in time management skills, then you set the stage for quicker and more effective task completion, which is crucial to career progression. And really overall it cultivates discipline. So the practice of managing time effectively helps in developing a sense of discipline, and that could be applied to all areas in your life, not just time management.

Speaker 0: 2:55

So, moving into understanding of time management, we need to realize that it goes well beyond simple daily task organization, and it begins with strategic planning. So you envision your long-term goals and you break them down into actionable short-term objectives, and then you have your prioritizing right, so determine the importance and urgency of tasks and then you figure out a way to do them that maximizes the efficiency of your time. You can also allocate different resources, so you need to distribute the time, the energy and the attention in a way that can optimize productivity and goal achievement. And you need to be self-disciplined, right so cultivating personal habits that foster on-time task completion and consistent productivity and, of course, very important, stress management Okay, so you need to incorporate breaks. You need to incorporate leisure activities into your schedules to ensure that you maintain a high level of mental and physical health. You need to manage your deadlines so you're setting realistic deadlines for tasks and projects and then adhering to those deadlines. But Even with that, you need continual assessment and adjustment. It's like everything that we do in life. It's like everything that I've talked about in previous episodes is we need to reflect, we need to review how we're doing so, regularly reviewing our schedules and workloads, and then we make the necessary adjustments to improve the future of our time management and then we learn from those experiences of our time management. And then we learn from those experiences. So you need to analyze your past time management success and your failures so that you can refine your techniques and your approaches.

Speaker 0: 4:38

Now, what are some of the common misconceptions of time management? Yeah, the one is it's about working faster, and that's not actually the case. Time management is more about working smarter, not faster. It involves efficient, not actually the case. Time management is more about working smarter, not faster. It involves efficient planning and prioritizing to ensure quality work without necessarily increasing the speed. Another misconception is time management eliminates leisure and eliminates your breaks, and in reality, effective time management actually should increase your breaks and your downtime and prevent burnout and maintain that productivity. Another misconception is being busy means being productive, and there's a lot of people that are busy and do busy work, but it can often be unproductive. True time management distinguishes between being busy and being effective and it focuses on the outcomes rather than the activity.

Speaker 0: 5:35

Another misconception is that time management is a rigid structure. Right, it's all about the rules, but while it does involve a structured approach, good time management allows flexibility. You need to be able to adjust your plans as necessary to deal with unforeseen circumstances and guess what? You don't need to be a naturally organized person. Time management skills can be learned and developed by anyone, and it's regardless of their natural tendencies toward organization and I guess, one of the final. There's probably a lot of misconceptions, but one of the final ones that I see quite often is time management tools are a one size fits all solution. Okay, and it's not true. Different tools and techniques will work differently depending on who you are, depending on your needs and in the context of what you're trying to achieve, and, in fact, effective time management often involves customizing approaches. So you might take a little bit from this approach and a little bit from that approach, and we'll talk about some approaches shortly Now.

Speaker 0: 6:36

There's a bit of psychology behind time management, right. There's procrastination, there's motivation, so let's look at procrastination. So procrastination can be the fear of failure, so it's often driven by the fear of not meeting expectations or failing at tasks, and that can actually stop you from even starting or delay you from starting, which we call procrastination. And then there's perfectionism, right, and it's the desire for perfection and that can be paralyzing. Perfectionists often procrastinate to avoid producing work that doesn't meet their standards. Decision fatigue I actually talked about that in the last episode and it's continual decision making depletes mental energy and it can make it harder to start or continue tasks and it can actually lead to not such good decisions, right. And then there's being overwhelmed or anxious, and feeling overwhelmed by tasks can trigger anxiety and this can further delay tasks initiation or people could avoid the task altogether.

Speaker 0: 7:41

Right Now we'll go into motivation, right. So the role of motivation. So motivation is quite crucial in initiating and completing tasks. Low motivation can stall time management efforts, making even simple tasks seem completely overwhelming. You know there's the effective intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and again, I talked about this on a previous podcast, but it's understanding is that the internal drive, or the external rewards, that's motivating your time management and that could help you tailor your strategies more effectively. If you know there's setting achievable goals. So motivation increases when individuals set and achieve small, manageable goals and that reinforces a positive cycle of accomplishment and motivation. And I always say baby steps, right, little tiny steps. Break it down and as you start going, the motivation will build, the drive will build, the momentum will build. And then there's maintaining work-life balance. So you need to ensure sufficient time for rest and personal activities and that can recharge motivation and when you're motivated, it'll enhance overall productivity.

Speaker 0: 8:49

Now there are a lot of different ways to, or methods, I should say, that help you prioritize your tasks and really help you with your time management. So there's the Eisenhower box, so it's the urgent, important matrix, and this helps categorize tasks based on their urgency and their importance. It focuses on what needs immediate attention and what should be scheduled, what should be delegated or even what shouldn't be done at all. And one of my friends he owns a big construction company. He swears by it, he learned it, he's got little note cards all over his office and it basically says important. What does he say? So it's urgent, urgent, not important, right? So it's really cool, you can dig into it. There's plenty of resources out there, but it's a really cool method. And then there's Pareto principle, right? So that's the 80-20 rule and that suggests that 80% of outcomes result from 20% of efforts. So it emphasizes the importance of focusing on tasks that yield the most significant results Good principle as well. And, yeah, there's plenty of different methods out there.

Speaker 0: 10:02

It is finding what works for you, and there are plenty of tools out there, right? So you need a calendar and you need to be able to schedule tasks, appointments and deadlines to visualize, be able to schedule tasks, appointments and deadlines to visualize how your time is allocated. There are plenty of digital tools and digital apps out there. There's Trella, there's Asana, there's Google Keep. There's plenty of things out there that help you organize tasks, set reminders and even track your progress. As I said before, we use Jira and it works for us, but that doesn't mean it'll work for you or what you're trying to achieve, or your market, but there are a lot of tools out there. So it is discovering the tool that works for you.

Speaker 0: 10:39

Now, when you're setting your goals, remember smart goals, right? Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. So what does that mean? Ok, sean. What does that mean? Okay, sean. What does that mean? Says specific are goals that should be clear and specific to provide direction. Measurable it is precision. That's exactly what it is. It's dates, it's amounts, it's other metrics that help you measure your progress, and then they should be achievable. So you need goals that are obtainable and then relevant. So goals should be relevant to the broader objective, either to you or if it's for work for your organization, and then time bound.

Speaker 0: 11:16

So you need to assign a deadline to provide urgency and a timeline for the assessment. So one of my best friends is a printer. Right, and if something comes in the print shop and it says ASAP, you know when can you do it ASAP? Well, it gets put in the list of. It doesn't have a deadline. So never say ASAP to a printer. Now, if you send it in and say I need it on Tuesday, they have a deadline to work for and that will be done by Tuesday. But if you say ASAP as soon as possible, it'll be done as soon as possible with everything else that's in the queue and it just gets pushed and pushed.

Speaker 0: 11:53

So little fun fact that I learned it's also important to write your goals down. So people should write their goals to increase their commitment to your goals and the clarity around your goals. Because if you don't have clarity in your goals, how can you ever achieve them? If you don't have clarity, it's about you, remember. I mean time management is about you and making your life better and improving your skill set and your growth progression in your life. It's all about you and it's all up to you at the end of the day. I mean, I've had plenty of people in my life before I got better at time management. I'm still not the best at time management, but before I started getting better and they would tell me all about rigid and what if this happens? And I'm more of a dynamic person and you can still be a dynamics person, you can still be an agile company, but it will help you maintain your sanity.

Speaker 0: 12:59

Okay, let's look at some time management in action. So, as an example, let's look at Tim Cook, right? Ceo of Apple. He's an early riser. He begins his day at 3.45 AM and then he checks his email. So he checks and responds to Apple-related emails first thing, and his reasoning behind it is to ensure communication flows well. Then he exercises and then he does segmented work periods, so he dedicates specific times for different types of work, including reviews and employee meetings. And then he has personal time, so he allocates evenings for personal activities and basically unwind, because he also wants a work-life balance, right?

Speaker 0: 13:42

Let's look at a quick case study. So we have Sarah. Sarah's a project manager, right? So Sarah struggles with meeting deadlines and managing team projects efficiently. So it's resulted in stress and reduced her team morale. So let's start by implementing an Eisenhower box for prioritizing tasks and introduce her to a digital project management tool. So her action steps are every morning, she's going to prioritize her tasks and then she's going to set clear daily and weekly goals using the SMART criteria and if you were sleeping during the talk about SMART goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. She is then going to delegate non-critical tasks to the appropriate team members and this is going to obviously reduce her stress and reduce her workload. She's going to schedule regular check-ins to adjust timelines and the resource needed with the team. Now the outcome that you can expect from this is, say, within six months, project completion rates will improve by 40% and team satisfaction scores will increase significantly, and Sarah, specifically, will also report reduced stress levels and a better work-life balance. Now the broader impact could be that the team, or even the whole company, adopts a similar time management practice, and then it enhances the overall organizational efficiency.

Speaker 0: 15:08

Now, one of the problems that we have with time management is dealing with interruptions and distractions, right. So what we need to do is we need to set clear boundaries, and we do that by establishing specific times when you are not to be disturbed, of course, except for emergencies. We need to have notification management, so go ahead and turn off your non-essential notifications on your phones, computers and other devices to reduce the constant interruptions. And then we need to have scheduled breaks, so integrate short, planned breaks to handle potential distractions in a more controlled manner, and that could be checking emails, social media you know, at the water cooler talking to somebody. Ok, we need to focus on work sessions, so utilize techniques like like the Pomodoro technique, and that that involves dedicating 25 minutes of focus work, followed by a five minute break and then physical workspace. We need to organize a dedicated workspace that minimizes external disturbances and that will promote concentration.

Speaker 0: 16:12

Now, if we go back to the whole notification thing, I go most of my day without any notifications on. I do, obviously, the ringers on, so if you call me, my phone will ring text messages, but when I turn it on silent, it doesn't vibrate, doesn't do anything. I turn it off. So then I can look at it if I need to, to see if anybody's called me or text me, but I turn it off, but I have no notifications on. For socials, obviously, I mostly only do LinkedIn, but I have no notification on for socials, for emails or anything else, and I've actually found that removing the notification for emails has actually reduced a lot of my stress. So and I guess that leads us kind of into digital detox, right? So you need to detox from your digital life and you should allocate specific times or days where digital devices are set aside and usage is significantly reduced. You need that for your mental health and I'm telling you, if you haven't done it, try it. Okay. The world is not going to fall apart because you turned off your notifications or you didn't check your phone every two seconds.

Speaker 0: 17:21

It goes with the whole thing of you know, use the technology intentionally rather than habitually. So it was intended to do something for you and don't just keep going back to it because it's a habit and these things will help your time management. I know it seems like I'm on a tangent, but I'm not. It's very important to limit some of this stuff or learn how to detox and you can't just detox overnight but as you learn to remove that habit, what will happen is you'll start maintaining better control over your time, because you'll have better control over your attention. You decide when you look at something, rather than something decides when you look at something. Does that make sense? It really comes to a point of who's in control of your life? Is that device in control of you? Is that device in control of you? Is that app in control of you? Are you in control of that app? Once you change your mindset and you start to take control in that direction, it does change. It changes everything. It changes your productivity, it changes the way that you look at these devices and these apps that were made for you and are very valuable in the way that they help you communicate, but should not rule your life. So I hope that helped you a little bit.

Speaker 0: 18:37

With time management and, as I said, there are a whole bunch of techniques. You can find a lot of these online. So just Google you know strategies for better time management and they'll walk you through it. I know there's also a lot of free college classes and YouTube videos and stuff that teaches you that. Just remember that again, it is not a one-size-fits-all. You should learn and grab the pieces that mold with your life, because the better fit that you get, the more apt you are to adopt it over time and stick with it.

Speaker 0: 19:11

But if you put in the effort, it will change a lot in your life and it will really make you a lot happier. It'll give you that work-life balance. It'll just do really really good things, and that's personal and professional. Even in startups, where you're working mad hours, you can get more done because you're more organized, your time's more efficient, but you can also make sure that you don't forget about your loved ones and your family while you're pushing through for success. So, yeah, time management it's a skill, it's something that you need to be committed on and it's for you, it's a personalized experience and growth plan for you. So yeah, anyways, thank you, ken, for joining me on Full Circle with Sean, and on the next episode we will be talking about direction back to startups again and defining a clear vision and mission for a startup or a small business to make strategic decisions, and we'll also touch on pivoting and when's the right time to pivot and when's the wrong time to pivot. So I look forward to chatting then.