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Time Activity Funnel
Without it, you are literally flying blind when it comes to trying to organize your time. What is a Time-Activity Funnel (TAF)? Let me explain.
I started giving Time Management Seminars in the early 80's. Yes, that is a long time ago. As with anything, the more times you do something, you generally get better at it. This is true of the seminars.
I would start out by explaining why it was so important to have a handle on exactly what you want to do at any given time. Without this knowledge, you were simply not going to be able to effectively manage your time, along with a host of other things you were not going to do well either. I would explain that without an effective method of collecting this information, you would not be able perform all of the other functions in the PTS.
I had a clear picture in my mind of what I wanted to convey. Generally speaking, I did well enough at explaining this part of the system that the majority of the people attending the seminar understood what I was trying to get across. Initially that was okay, but I did not feel that I had really nailed this concept and it was a particularly important one. I always try to improve the seminars and improve the PTS. In this case was trying hard to hit the home run where I would be satisfied with the explanation about the need to have all of the things you want to accomplish in one place, written down so you could properly move on to the next step.
One day I was putting oil in my car and was using a funnel. We all know what happens when we use a funnel; we pour our liquid in the top part of the funnel, the large reservoir end, and then the liquid moves down the funnel, narrowing as it goes through the throat of the reservoir, the small end, and then empties into wherever you want the liquid.
I’m not sure why that registered with me that day; I had used a funnel hundreds of times before but that day the light bulb lit up in my head. This was my home run, the funnel was the perfect visual aid for my seminars and more importantly, for myself. I can’t pass on to other people what I first don’t understand myself.
I always understood the relationship between proper Time Management and being able to put down all of the activities that you want to do. This was crystal clear in my mind, but I was not able to convey this concept to other people as clearly as I wanted to. I wanted the light bulb to go on in their heads as clearly as it did that day when I made the visual connection between the concept and the oil funnel.
The next seminar I put on, there were 26 people in attendance. There was a 49 cent plastic funnel in front of every person in that room. Of course they all asked, what’s with the funnel? I said when we came to the part about the funnel, I would tell them. That wasn’t 100% true. I was hopping, as I got to that part and started the explanation, that they would put 2 and 2 together. It worked, as I started to explain activity gathering and collecting, at least half the group started to pick up their funnels and look at them and look at me and the lights went on.
I’m not one of those people who believe that if you can visualize something it will somehow magically happen. I do believe that if you can visualize some activities and if it makes the activity clearer and allows you to cement that process in your mind, it can be beneficial. This is one of those cases. Why I like this visualization so much is because it is 100% right on the money.
Now that I have explained where the funnel came from, lets spend some time in giving you some fast facts about the concept. Part of the PTS deals with taking an initial inventory of ALL of the things you want to do in life. That’s an all-encompassing task and it is suppose to be. Before we go on, I need to add another dimension to this discussion because it should help us to understand the process better. There are two parts to a funnel and two steps to this process. There is the wide top part of the funnel, the reservoir, and the bottom part of the funnel, the neck, the long narrow thin part. My discussion here will only deal with the collection of your data and how it fills the top large reservoir of the funnel. The 2nd step will deal with this data as it rushes out the bottom of the funnel through the neck of the funnel. That discussion will take place at another time.
Lets deal with the inventory of all the things you want to do and accomplish in life. Lets break that down a little. First of all, we need to separate the activities you want to do for tomorrow at work from the goal you have to learn how to scuba dive in 3 years. For someone who is starting on this process, the goal is everything goes in the funnel, just start throwing the ideas in there, the more the merrier. If you start to separate them, prioritize them, try to rank them, you will defeat the purpose of this process. What you need to do is start to see what you want to do; you can start to massage this information latter.
What Goes In The Funnel?
Everything. Professional, personal, financial, family, spouse, children, social, religious, sports, hobbies, relationships, education. You want everything in there, no matter how small, no matter how minor, no matter how seemingly insignificant, it all goes in there. This is one of the first things you will do on your Time Management journey. Unfortunately, people stumble on this one. They stumble for two reasons. One: they don’t put all of the things they want to do into the funnel and Two: they don’t think it’s important and they don’t do it. Not doing this exercise cripples their later activities and renders them far less effective than if they had done this part of the system. Nothing is too insignificant, nothing is too minor. If it takes time to do it, to accomplish it, it goes into the funnel.
Where Is The Funnel?
That is a two-part answer. First, your real funnel, the plastic funnel I hope you go out and get. This plastic funnel, the real one should go somewhere in your office, where you work, a place that you will see it every day. You want it visible, you want it to remind you daily of this part of your process. Some of you will look at this as hokey, unsophisticated. I hope you don’t. This visual reminder does help and it will be to your eternal benefit if you can ace this part of the system. I’ve been working with Time Management in one form or another for over 25 years, not a day goes by that somehow some time I don’t visualize and think about the role the TAF plays.
The second part of the question, “where is the Funnel?” is easy. It’s in your Day Planner. This is covered in much detail in the PTS. Some points here. First, your data going into the funnel MUST be written. If it’s not written, it does not exist. Writing out your activities, hopes, dreams and aspirations, makes them more real and puts them in a form that can be recorded, managed, worked on and properly organized and finally, time activated. Your Day Planner is the large open reservoir, ready to accept all of your input in a written form. Second, at this point you don’t want to do any editing of any kind, this is not the time or place for that. You want a blue print of you current and future life.
What’s The Point Of The Funnel?
I heard this saying a long time ago and it fits here. “You can’t put 10 pounds of manure in a 5 pound bag “. In other words, how do you know how much activity you are trying to squeeze into a limited amount of time? We all have the same amount of time every day, the same amount of time every week, every year. What is different about every one of us is how we choose to use that limited amount of time available to all of us. Without getting into a philosophical discussion, we are all going to die at some point, we just do not know when. We can’t plan to our last day because we don’t know when that will be. All we can do is try to squeeze as much life as we can out of as many days as we get.
The point of the funnel is for us to get a handle on what we want to accomplish over time and to start to parcel out our time in relationship to what we have in the funnel. We use a term in the PTS, Time Activate Activities. That’s why having the funnel is so important. Let's take an example: you start to fill up your funnel, your Day Planner, with things you want to do. After the first month you notice that you have put 3 activities in there: 1. want to go back to school to get your degree, 2. want to learn how to fly and 3. want to spend more time with your son and have decided to be the soccer coach this coming season. This is already on top of a busy work schedule, church activities, and normal family obligations. You can see you are in fact trying to put 10 pounds of manure in a 5 pound bag
The funnel starts to help you look at all of your obligations, tasks, jobs, wishes and starts you along the path of saying I can’t do all that I want, at least not right now. It starts you on the path of picking out what is really important to you know and allowing you to focus on those activities, now. .
Summary.
There will be a lot more about using your TAF and your Day Planner in the PTS. For now, you can start to work on writing down the things you want to do in your life. It can be as simple as a to Do List for your day-to-day activities. Start writing down areas of your life that are busy now and flesh these out. You may want to add new categories for new interests, things you always wanted to do but “didn’t have time for”.
This process should become a part of your day-to-day schedule. This list will constantly evolve and change. You will add and subtract goals, tasks, jobs, careers, relationships, and life long objectives. Sometimes the end result is important, sometimes the process is the key. This time around, it’s the process that counts.
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