I’m so busy! So, so busy!

I’m so busy – I haven’t had time to stop and think!

Several of my clients have said to me this year,

I’m so busy!
I haven’t had time to stop and think about what I want to achieve or what my goals are for 2019!
I came back to work at the start of January and just carried on where I left off at the end of 2018!

Some have also been ill over the holidays, or since starting back to work, and feel like they never got the time they hoped to take a step back – and are playing catch up already…

Sound familiar?

How do you prioritise?

One of the questions I ask my clients is:

How do you prioritise how you spend your time?

Often we find that they are doing very little conscious prioritisation. They complain that meetings (often scheduled by others, often back-to-back) take up a large proportion of their time – and the rest of the time is spent fire-fighting, reacting to issues or emails as they come up…

Where does your time go?

As mentioned previously, it can be useful to review how you are spending your time – over the last week/fortnight:

How much of your time was spent on activities that are important to you and your goals?

How much of your time was spent on activities that are not important to you and your goals?

(Perhaps the activities were important for someone else..?)

How much of your time was spent firefighting urgent tasks?

…and how much was invested in longer-term planning, relationship-building etc?

Having reviewed where your time goes, it may be useful to make some changes and proactively prioritise time for what you want/need to do, particularly the activities that relate to the longer term…

Scheduling time for you!

I have found it useful (particularly in organisations where my calendar was visible and could be filled by others!) to book time with myself to get the non-urgent but important stuff done.

For example, I would schedule time (book a meeting with myself!) for reviewing and planning, for work where I perhaps needed to think strategically or creatively, for personal development…

(You may need to get creative in how you label this ‘meeting’, or set the visibility to ‘private’.)

I still do this now, even though I’m the only one who has access to my calendar. If it’s important to me to get it done, I get it scheduled.

What would work for you?

Just like any important meeting, the environment is critical. If you want to do your best thinking…

Where do you do your best work?

What do you need to do to prevent any interruptions during that time?

Time to think!

And…

How will you preserve or ring-fence that time when competing or conflicting demands arise??

If you’re saying “I’m so busy”…

…Having an ‘accountability partner’ can be enormously helpful and enable us to carve out time, to keep on track.

If you’re feeling busy fire-fighting and would like help finding time for longer-term thinking, or to plan (and achieve) your goals for 2019 – and beyond! – please get in touch via the contact form or call me on +44 7526 740486.

To help you work through setting goals and action plans for 2019, check out my downloadable guide for under a tenner… or check out some of my previous blogs (New Year, New You, How do I set goals for the new year?, Creating your vision, Long-term vision)

Let me know how you get on!

Sian

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