The Secret to Managing Your Schedule isn’t about Your Calendar
The vulgarity of busyness destroys effectiveness.
Life is a burning ant hill in many organizations. But crazy schedules reflect people, not time management skills.
Life is manageable only when you manage your calendar.
The people and things that control your schedule run your life.
Time:
Time cannot be managed, influenced, or domesticated.
The second-hand ignores you. It never negotiates.
The best you can do – in a world galloping through constant interruption – is manage a few blocks in your schedule. When the boss calls, for example, you pick up.
The closer you get to managing how you use time, the closer you get to managing your life.
Biggest mistake:
The biggest mistake we make with time is frantically cramming more into it. Chaos is ineffective. Pandemonium eventually becomes apathy.
Constant hurry trivializes leadership and demoralizes teams.
Second biggest mistake:
The second is under-estimating how long tasks take. Inexperience or lack of humility explain why people over-schedule themselves.
Arrogance ignores limitations, over-estimates abilities, and misjudges realities.
When experience overschedules, the problem is arrogance.
Arrogance:
- Sets unrealistic goals.
- Rejects personal limitation and weakness.
- Assumes things will go well.
- Needs to please.
- Scoffs at self-care.
- Won’t set priorities. Arrogance believes you can have it all.
- Lives for today. When your identity is tied to performance, everything thing has to be perfect.
The secret:
The secret to managing your schedule concerns you, not your calendar. Arrogance overbooks and overcommits.
- Humility has a few strengths. It can’t succeed at everything.
- Humility knows its limitations.
- Arrogance wears rose-colored glasses. Humility is realistic about itself and others.
- Humility delivers on its promises.
- Arrogance says yes to gain favor but overcommits and makes excuses.
The secret to managing your schedule begins with humility.
What shifts in your approach when you look at your calendar through the lens of humility?
What’s your best tip for gaining control of your schedule?
What shifts in your approach when you look at your calendar through the lens of humility? The limitations as you mention truly exist They can be mental and physical in strengths and weakness, we just need the happy medium that works yet not overworks us into “Burn out status”. Learn to be humble and kind” ,and don’t forget to smile, they don’t know what your thinking.
What’s your best tip for gaining control of your schedule? Learning to say “No” as was discussed in last weeks posts. the secret to becoming manipulative and juggling schedules becomes a well balanced habit that develops when leaving oneself an out, when the time fits. Just insert a “No” on occasion and everything fits a bit better than trying to create a magic schedule that we can’t keep and honor.
Thanks Tim. “Just insert a no on occasion.” I don’t want a NO PERSON on my team. “On occasion” feels balanced.
“Humility has a few strengths. It can’t succeed at everything. Humility knows its limitations.” With this acknowledgement comes the need to have a “backbone”, to say no to more, to say I need to take care of these challenges first, to say I can’t effectively jump from one thing to another back and forth on a continual basis. Individual and team limits or boundaries are necessary otherwise the results are not complete and burnout occurs.
Thanks Roger. Ouch! No is about backbone!!
One can’t manage time, one can only prioritize within the time allocated
Brilliantly stated! Thanks Robb.
“What’s your best tip for gaining control of your schedule?” *Blocking time to get work done.* In my job, I could literally be in meetings every minute of the day, but then I would never accomplish anything, would be in constant overwhelm, and my home life would suffer. A few years ago I realized that I had the ability to pre-schedule chunks of time (min 2 hours/week, max 1 day/week) to work on the work. This helps me in that all important “saying no.” I’ve learned it’s hard for me to say no when there is a legitimately open block of time on my calendar, even when I know there is work that needs to be done then. (And in my world, people will just go ahead and schedule themselves onto my shared Outlook calendar if it’s free.) So I schedule blocks of work time that I more or less hold sacred. It has been a game changer!
Thanks J9. If it’s important, schedule it. I was doodling around with was to express your suggestion.
If you take on a new project put it on your calendar for the next 6 weeks, for example.
Two hours seems like a large block of time, but I can see where it would be very useful.
The bottom line is that you can’t do more with less. You can only do the right less.
Jennifer you made me laugh here. I used to work at a large Power plant where the “new” Plant Manager who came in was named Less. We used to joke that we can now do more with “Less” when in reality because of his style we ending up doing less with “Less”.
Too bad his last name wasn’t Moore: Then you could have done less with Moore or more with Less!
Haha! Love it.
Wow. I love a well crafted thought. Thanks Jennifer.
The trick is figuring out the right less to be doing. To be productive (versus busy), you need to put things into buckets: I have to do it, has to get done but someone else can handle it, has to get done by someone who needs training, why is this even a thing, etc. That takes time and energy, and folks sometimes lose track of that.
Fantastic post here today, Dan. The better we discipline our use of time, our prioritization of activities, and our realistic view of just what we can effectively take on, the more productive we come. As well as the better we handle stress, and the better we sleep. I appreciated the way you laid things out in this today.
Thank you Jim. My take away from your comment is the word discipline. For example, it takes discipline to go to bed early enough to get 8 hours of sleep. But when I lack discipline, my productivity declines.
Could it be that Humility is in the middle, with Arrogance on one end and a total lack of identity and self-worth on the other?
Many have hit on learning to say no and that works to a certain extent. The problem I run into constantly is with Google (or other calendaring applications) in a large organization.
Several throughout the organization believe theirs is the only project on anyone’s schedule, so they have no problem creating appointments on my calendar for their activity. If I already have something scheduled for the same date and time, then I am the bad person for needing them to change their appointment. Saying no locally is one thing. Telling another team in another location you cannot participate in their team activity because of schedule conflicts is not as easy.
Gutted! You got me… I have lots to work on.