Everything we do requires time. Managing our time is the foundation for how effective we can be. Unless we manage our time, we will probably not be able to manage anything else effectively.

In the book The Business Coaching Toolkit, authors Stephen G. Fairley and Bill Zipp list four facts about time:

Time is a limited resource
Time is an inflexible resource
There will always be more things to do than time to do them in
Focus, not efficiency, is the key to mastering our time.

Everyone gets the same amount of time in each day, no more, no less. You can’t buy more and you can’t trade for more. You can’t save it for a time when you need more. It is not like a savings account where you can bank it and withdraw it when you need it. One second, one hour, once spent is lost forever.

There will always be more than we can get done, even with today’s technology. It seems like the more we do, the more there is to do. We now have emails to respond to, voice messages to answer, text messages to read and answer. Technology has added more to what we do each day, even though we can do it faster and across time zones, these are tasks we did not have to do just a few short years ago.

So if being efficient is not the answer, what is? We have to focus on what we want to get done, understanding that sometimes we will not get done everything we wanted, but if we focus on our highest priorities, we can accomplish what is most important to us.

Fairley and Zipp compare it to triage. Medical personnel are familiar triage, and use this method to prioritize and set the order of priority of the injured they must care for. To triage is to use a system to allocate a scarce commodity, like time.

Focus on the activities that are the most important, not the most urgent; those activities that will have the greatest impact on your work or personal life. A simple to do list is not the answer; it must go a step further than that. Fairley and Zipp outline a simple system to apply the principle of triage and focus to your time. It is a weekly planning activity.

• Devote 30 minutes once each week to assess the past week and plan the next week. Do this at the end of the day to assess the week and plan the next, or do it on Monday morning before your week gets started.
• Identify and write the four to six areas of your personal or professional life that are your highest priorities. Do not list more than six. The first priority should be yourself, the rest are for work or community service. You will filter out what is not your highest priority
• Next to each priority write one or two of the most important steps to be taken to accomplish that priority area. Write no more than two for each priority. These are not the only items you will accomplish that week, but they are the most important.
• Put these priorities on your calendar. These are the first things you will do, everything else flows around them. Take five minutes each day to realign the tasks, as we may get derailed from time to time. Sometimes you will have to rearrange your schedule, but at least you’ll do it keeping the highest priorities in mind.

At the end of the week, or if you choose the beginning of the week, you can reassess your priorities that have not been accomplished and start the process again. There will be some things that are left undone, but you must be disciplined and courageous enough to prune your list so that you are able to focus on your most important activities.

If you would like a copy of the form I use to accomplish the above steps, send me an email, with “Planning Worksheet” in the subject line, and I will gladly send it to you.

Helping clients make the best use of their time is just one of the services I provide as an executive and business coach. If you know someone who would benefit from my coaching services, have them get in touch with me.