11. No Appointment- No Reward

  If you want to get in control of your time, you have to start to not reward people around you who want to steal this non renewable resource from you. Un announced drop in appointments are killers to your day. They destroy any flow you may be generating and the time they take is usually in your prime work zone. I need to send a signal that you are happy to see and meet with people, as long as it fits into your schedule. Remember, you are not the one who did anything wrong. Be polite, be firm, be unmovable. You can simply say that right now you are tied up with a previously arranged activity that has to be done, period. That is the truth, you are working on something now that you took the time to organize and prioritize, time activate and set it into your schedule. You thought it was important enough to do all of that, it certainly is important enough not to be interrupted by someone who has little or no respect for your time.

     At some point in your journey to regain control of your life and make it work for you, you will have to establish your own style when it comes to protecting yourself and your time. This is an area that requires you to make a stand. You must make that stand and you have to work out how you will do that. People who just drop by and expect you to deal with them are simply stealing from you, its that simple and it’s that cut and dried. The question is, what are going to do about it?

  12.  The Art of Saying No

   This is an appropriate point to follow the one just above it. We have all heard the expression “ What part of no didn’t you understand ? “  To get to that point, you first have to say no. If you are going to reap the maximum amount of value from each day, from each minute you have available, you are going to have to learn to say no, it’s that simple. In hundreds of seminars, people give me examples after examples of situations where other people are off loading, down loading , handing over, tasks and jobs to these people and in the process, are drowning them. A lot of the time my answer is simple, when you see this happening, you have to just say no. It’s either you are them, who is it going to be. Are you the one who is going to come up short at the end of the day, or will it be them. Someone will invariably fall short, some one will end up not being able to complete the activities they wanted to do that day, this is inevitable. All that is left to decide is, you or them    

      I realize this flies in the face of most peoples basic sense of humanity . It’s mean, uncharitable, not nice to say no to someone who comes to you and wants your assistance or help. I’m not suggesting we suddenly start saying no to every request, every overture, or every time someone walks up to us. I’m raising the issue that in far too many cases, we dig a hole for ourselves when we indiscriminately go off our own planned course because someone else has entered our space with a potential course of action that  will sideline us. We once again, find ourselves back in familiar territory, we want to follow our own path, someone else wants us to deviate from that path. The issue is and always will be, that deviation its not beneficial to us. You have to decide in each situation, how much time am I willing  to sacrifice, to give up in this situation? Is this the time I give up those 5 minutes to a fellow co-worker to listen to his story. Remember, you day is under attack, all day long, it gets chewed to bits, 5 minutes at a time. Saying no is not the worse sin you fill ever commit.

13. Standing Up Helps

Standing up is a good tool in getting people to respect you, your space and your time. Someone walks into you office unannounced, stand up immediately. First thing that happens, they don’t sit down. Of course, you don’t have a  chair in your office because that is an open invitation for everyone to sit down and settle in for a chat. Okay, they walk in , you stand up, what’s the message that you are sending? By standing up, right away, the message is, you were heading out the door, just as they walked in. You know have the option to continue that process, or any other variations. Going to a meeting, washroom, conference room, out, to an appointment, your choice. At the very least, you can say, was just stretching before I go back to work. Irregardless of what direction you take it, standing up makes the interruptions shorter and less frequent.

 14. Set  Written  Deadlines

  Deadlines are just wishes until you take the time to put them in writing. Deadlines have to mean something. A deadline that keeps moving is just wishful thinking. The process of putting the deadline into writing helps in the planning and organizing process. If it’s a deadline, there will have to be some other activities that go along with it. Those activities will also have to be monitored. The more interconnected activities that are associated with the deadline, the better. Along with writing the deadline down, let as many other legitimately involved  people know about the deadline. You are less likely to sluff off not making the deadline if half the office knows about it.

  15. Starting Large Tasks

  How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Starting large tasks can be daunting. Sitting at your desk looking at the huge task ahead is not going to get it done. If you have 60 days to complete the task, divide the workload into roughly 60 time frames of 2 hours each. Whatever the time allotments will be, make them bite size and stretch them over the largest time frame possible. This will allow you to make adjustments early on in the process with enough room to ad or subtract as you go along. Start early, be sure to et some concrete work done in the early going. Once you see progress being made, its easier to start to gain some momentum. 

 

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