The productivity gurus love a “three secrets to…” or “hack your way to…” approach to life. Constant measuring and refining and adjusting. Never let time be an excuse again right?
Sure.
If your reality is anything like mine, most days you’re trying to keep up with everything life throws your way.
So in lieu of the hacking approach of squeezing and maximising time, I simply turn to this one question.
Usually it’s pretty obvious where I could do better:
“how am I actually using my time?”
Say you wrote down every little thing you did in a day and how long it took, what would it reveal? We only need to check our Instagram usage (now an inbuilt feature) to have our socks blown off.
This question becomes very necessary when I’m ready to make a big change in my life that’s going to require a little extra work.
If I don’t ask myself, all too quickly “not enough time” is the main reason I never start.
In many a coaching call I often hear things like:
“I need to make time to make a plan”
“My time is limited and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done”
“I want to make a change but I don’t have time to get started”
100%! time can be a real constraint for many of us. We’re navigating a change around prior commitments to ourselves and our families.
As I hear these things come up often, rather than reel off a bunch of “hacks”, I decided to share two really simple things. These two things have helped me enormously when my default is “not enough time” yet I’ve wanted to pursue any change in my career.
The first thing I ask – “This year, what are my three core priorities and/or values?”
Once we get clear on these, we can use them as way to make decisions on what we say yes or no to in our lives. Some might call this being in alignment.
In practising this style of decision-making, we’ll make a conscious effort to make space for those things that are really important. If the career change is make or break, you will find time.
Second thing, is breaking the big change into small steps.
When we first think of making a change, it is daunting. Just as you would break down the training for a marathon into months, weeks and days, you can do the same for a big change.
Or to get really simple, we set aside time for one small thing every week that will move you closer.
Again, we’re not looking to break any productivity hacking records here.
Simply get started.
