How many times do we find ourselves and others saying, ‘I don’t have time’?
Despite the many time-saving technologies we have at our disposal, time seems to be constantly at a premium. In our westernised world, it is probably the scarcest resource we believe we have. Constant busyness seems to be not only the norm, but for some, a badge of honour. Being busy can indicate how full our lives are. But how fulfilling are they?
The time issue comes up a lot in my conversations with leaders, especially when discussing their own stress and overwhelm, spending quality time with their teams and focusing on their own development. Organisational pressures are increasing year on year, with no sign of letting up. Add in ongoing uncertainty and volatility in the world, and it can easily feel like you’re constantly firefighting, running from one meeting to another without pausing for breath. Additionally, being constantly busy may inadvertently signal to others that you don’t have time for them.
A pivotal moment came for me a few years ago, when I attended an NLP practitioner course and we were discussing this very subject. The trainer said his response to people who said they didn’t have time for x or y was to reply: ‘You mean it’s not a priority for you.’
‘Ouch’, I thought, ‘That’s a bit harsh.’ But then I thought about it. And I realised there was a lot of truth in what he was saying. Whilst there are many things which are out of our immediate control when it comes to time, there aren’t as many as we think there are. Knowing this provides us with power, because when we decide what our priorities really are, we can work towards allocating our time more consciously and effectively.
If you’re feeling constantly out of control, not spending time where you’d like to, or neglecting yourself and your wellbeing, read on….
(Disclaimer: this isn’t about time management hacks. This is a broader, deeper reflection of the mindset, skillset and process for choosing how you spend your time in order to fulfil your goals).
Back to my NLP trainer: we all have the same amount of time. What we do with it is the choice. In the absence of a clear set of priorities, we often end up being at the mercy of our own beliefs and assumptions, or others’ requirements. Over time, these become ingrained habits which reduce our sense of autonomy.
So how do we prioritise our time? Understanding our purpose (what contribution and impact we want to have), the values that we hold and how we can find the right balance of priorities, can guide our time choices. In the absence of this conscious intention, our time becomes a vacuum to be filled with less helpful behaviours.
We can start by considering some questions. Your answers to these questions may feel out of reach right now, but even if our progress is a 10% improvement towards our ideal, it will benefit you and others. These can be used for your work life, non-work life or as a whole:
Identifying our priorities based on the contribution and impact we want to have, gives you a north star to guide the decisions you make about your time.
What holds us back from much of our ideal time use, is our own beliefs and assumptions. Of course, there are obligations we have, which we have less control over. But the rest of our time is far more at our disposal than we may think. Once we have identified what our priorities are, we can understand what is currently getting in the way of that.
Our limiting beliefs dictate much of how we spend our time. Common limiting beliefs that I help leaders identify include people pleasing (including difficulty saying no and setting boundaries), protecting others (your team, your colleagues), perfectionism, over committing and decision fatigue.
Busyness can play a big part in our identity: how we want to be seen and be valued. As Tim Kreider writes in the “The ‘Busy’ Trap”:
“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”
Challenging these assumptions and being clear about our purpose and priorities opens up new possibilities for creating more fulfilling use of our time. Consider the difference between “I am someone who is stretched” vs “I am someone who is intentional”.
Other barriers include a lack of motivation to spend more time on the things that may benefit you. I’m constantly telling myself I don’t have time to exercise more, which is completely untrue. I just struggle to motivate myself.
Lacking the confidence in our ability can also translate into finding displacement activities that we’re more comfortable with, to replace the thing we’re avoiding. For leaders, this may be avoiding a difficult conversation, tackling under performance, learning to delegate decisions or ring-fencing time to think longer term.
Our current habits can also be time-eaters. Sitting in your inbox constantly playing email ping-pong, scrolling through social media, or attending meetings you don’t need to be at, all take up valuable time you could be spending on more important things.
Finally, often when we feel we don’t have time, what we really mean is we don’t have the energy. Managing our energy is far more productive than managing our hours and minutes. Knowing what you need to stay energised is key.
Being honest with yourself about how you’re using your time is the first step towards identifying positive changes. Changing “I’m too busy” to, “It’s not currently a priority”, can feel uncomfortable to admit, but it challenges your thought processes, allowing you to readdress your time priorities.
Once you’ve understood your priorities and what’s sabotaging you, you may then need to develop skills and abilities to support the practical implementation of the changes you want to make. Let’s say you’ve identified that you’re over-protective of your team, meaning you’re doing far more work than you should be. Learning how to delegate effectively is crucial to enabling long term positive change. Or perhaps you don’t believe your team or colleagues will do the task as well as you can. Learning how to develop others and manage your own perfectionism may be the answer.
Key human skills such as assertiveness, self-management and coaching are all helpful areas to work on which free up time longer term.
The first three steps are key to creating changes to how you use your time. But it’s easy to fall back into old habits. Building in processes to embed new behaviours and stick to them, helps us to permanently change the way we use and prioritise our time.
Identify triggers which may cause you to revert to previous behaviours and replace these with new triggers and a reward for your new behaviour. For example, a new email pings into your inbox (trigger). Your old habit is to respond to it immediately. Your new trigger (having silenced your notifications) is the blocks of half hour time slots you have diarised each day to read your emails, so that you can respond intentionally. Your reward is whatever works for you: a feeling of calm, the satisfaction of completing an important task, a coffee….
Build in chunks of time which help you to fulfil your role and purpose more effectively. This includes reflection time, relationship building, self-development and strategic thinking. All things which can easily be replaced with firefighting if we let it. If it’s helpful, write down how this use of time will benefit you and others. You could also ask someone to keep you accountable to ensure you ringfence this time.
Find opportunities that feel right for you to practise your new skills and build up your confidence. Skills such as saying no, encouraging others to resolve their own issues, and aligning on deliverables and standards to ease delegation and perfectionism, are all examples you can incorporate into your everyday.
“I haven’t got time” is a euphemism. Being more intentional with our time enables us to feel more fulfilled, less stressed and more confident with our choices. It is an ongoing process, so taking time out every now and then (see what I did there?!) to reflect on how you are prioritising your time, and how this aligns to what is most important to you, is a helpful way of continuing to grow your energy and impact. If you could make one small change to your time priorities next week, what would it be?
If you’d like to explore anything in this article further, get in touch!
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
