Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Santa Rosa, Calif.
As we’ve talked about play and focusing on the rights things this week, I’d like to close out our conversation by mentioning a few ways to use your time as effectively as possible.I can’t help but think of the phrase in some book contracts that states, “time being of the essence” the author must meet his or her deadlines because so much hangs in the balance for the publisher.
Time is of the essence for all of us, isn’t it? Here are a few tips for our time:
- Limit your options. You know how overwhelming it can feel to go to the grocery store knowing you need to buy bread,but when you reach the bread section, you’re faced with a veritable buffet of options. French, sourdough, wheat, white, rye, sliced, unsliced…That’s true for our days as well. We have so many options of how we will spend the dear coin of our time. Might I suggest you limit your options? Rather than looking at all the possibilities, focus on the ones that you know will lead to accomplishing your goals. That might mean not watching TV in the evenings, or foregoing the temptation to spend a few hours reading the newspaper.
- Know you can’t do everything. Isn’t that a refreshing and liberating thought? If you start the day trying to get it all done, you’re defeating before you begin. Stop believing you’re a multi-tasker. Studies show we all suck at it. What we’re actually doing is switching from one task to another at a rapid pace. Instead, focus on the next thing on your to-do list.
- Use a calendar. Every morning transfer your to-do list onto your calendar, apportioning realistically how long each task will take. And add some breathing room in your calendar for interruptions–important items you didn’t plan on that need to be added into your day.
- Give yourself breaks. Pause at regular intervals throughout the day to ask yourself, Am I doing what I need to be doing? This reality check keeps us from straying too far in a time-wasting direction. Emails, Facebook and Twitter are inherent magnets that, once they pull us in, are hard to push away from. Set specific amounts of time every day for each of these entities and know why you’ve prioritized them as you have.
Using these simple concepts will help you to close out your day with the knowledge that, time being of the essence, you’ve used yours well.
Now, let me confess that I wrote this blog because I need to follow my own advice. I’m mumbling, Physician heal thyself. Spending my time wisely is perhaps the biggest challenge of my day because I have such a variety of tasks to complete: attending to each client, attending to each publisher, paying attention to what’s happening in publishing news, staying in the social media game, thinking about how to make our agency work more efficiently and creatively, writing blogs, staying up with what each agent in our agency needs, planning the next business trip, catching up from the last business trip…I feel like I’m back in the grocery store’s bread section just writing all this.
What time-is-of-the-essence concepts are working well for you? I can use all the help I can get!
Excellent tips, Janet! I’m forced to manage my time well because I juggle writing with being a stay-at-home mom, and I have to maximize those short blocks of time when the house is quiet. 🙂 I’ve found that chunking my calendar into segments is helpful, both for my kids’ expectations and my own.
Your tips are so practical, great common sense. I’ll have to
include them in my time management arsenal. Thanks for the
helpful post. 🙂
I needed this post today like a bucket of water over my head: totally necessary to stop me in my tracks and cause me to rethink the path I’m on.
Thanks! I’m looking forward to the advice of others too. I’m trying to too much. I feel like I get nothing done, even though I know I’m making progress somewhere. 🙂 ds
Ah, the “ds” at the end of my last post–sorry about that–my dog wanted to say something I guess.
Sarah, if your dog wants to join the conversation, perhaps I should invite mine since they speak the same language.
Wonderful, timely, wise advice. Thanks, Janet!
A tip I try to use is to relax. If everything is so important, what is more important than being able to enjoy it all? This helps prioritize by understanding “Should I really be doing this if there is no joy in it?”
For example, as a writer there are those projects that we start or are working on that we realize have no joy for us, and by understanding that we realize that the finished product would reflect it.
Regarding social media, that’s why I stick with devoting time to discussing topics on only two industry blogs, and why I taking, as one friend told me, “Waaaaay, waaaay too long” to finish my blog and website: I wouldn’t get joy from a sub-par product, nor would spending every moment working on either.
There are always things we HAVE to do, but keeping to this principle helps me realize just what those things are.
Speaking as one whose mind is so constantly bubbling over with ideas, I have to shout, “Everybody back!” when I need to get something done, the posts this week have been like a lifeline thrown out for me. Thank you so much, Janet. Having just “fallen overboard” with more obligations than seem humanly possible to do, I feel I might actually be able to crawl back into the boat from here.
Something similar happened to me, last year, when Yvonne Anderson (over at Novel Rocket) was sharing about the benefits of “chasing only one rabbit at a time.” Well, a light suddenly came on for me when she put it that way, and — as God is my witness — it wasn’t a month later before I caught a rabbit! Well, this is one of those enlightening moments, too. Because it occurs to me, now, if I keep chasing rabbits twenty-four hours a day, I’ll drop dead.
So, thank you, again!
Dear Physician heal thyself:
It is because you’ve gone through this that you are best able to help the rest of us!
Signed: Running out of time
Thanks each of you for your comments. It’s nice to know we aren’t alone in this, isn’t it? It comforts me to realize I’m not the only one trying to figure this out.
And thank you, Larry, for choosing our blog to be in such exclusive company; I’m honored.
So glad you included that bit about multi-tasking. I read that study and every time someone tells me they’re good at multi-tasking, I tell them it’s literally impossible to do two things at once. Pick one and do it well.
P.S. My dog says gb
Right now, at this moment in time, it’s all the more important for me to get this right, since I’m facing book deadlines (yay!) and just got home from the hospital from knee replacement surgery, which requires another time commitment for therapy. One “trick” I’ve used for years (she said, secretly wishing her husband would pick up on the wisdom of this) is to not ever say, “I’ll just put this here FOR NOW.” Putting something other than the place it belongs doubles the effort, sometimes triples it, because I’ll likely have to move it from that “for now” place in order to what I needed to do there, too! So I’m trying to eliminate setting something, even a tea cup, someplace just “for now.” Do you want it near you or in the dishwasher. There, it’s done.
Cynthia, I love your “for now” philosophy. I’ve found that once an item is placed in a certain position, it stays there for a very long time, even though the intent was for that spot to be temporary.”For now” means permanently there until you work up enough momentum to move it again.
That concept also applies to reading an email and thinking you’ll deal with it later. The most time efficient decision is to deal with it now, while it’s fresh on your mind. Try not to handle an email or a decision more than once.