This may be confronting for some people, but saying “I’m so busy!” is actually another way of saying, “I’m not managing myself”.
Language creates our reality, so it’s important to avoid using words like ‘busy’.
Here’s another way of looking at time management, self-management and how to manage your commitments.
A top graduate decides to approach four top law firms and asks them to tender for his employment. He was 24 years old with a double degree with honours and could speak three languages. He was actively involved in social work and kept physically fit with exercise and sporting endeavours.
So he felt he could be inventive and ask the firms to tender for him rather than the other way around.
Two of the firms were intrigued enough to organise a job interview with this graduate and during one of the interviews he was asked, "How did you manage to achieve so much at such a young age? I’m also intrigued on how you manage to keep a well-balanced life with social work and fitness. How do you do it?"
He answered – “24 boxes!”
“I don’t look at time as 24 hours. I look at my 24 hour day as 24 Boxes”.
Picture having 24 Boxes given to you a day.
Each box is a 5L box. You can only fill this box with 5 litres of contents. You can’t push 6 litres of things into this box because then things will overflow and erupt, or you may know the feeling as 'the wheels fall off!'
The key is - if the box is full and you decide you really need to urgently put something else into this box then you must first create room for it by taking something else out of the box.
Draw up 24 boxes and discover how you use your 24 boxes (choose a typical workday to begin with).
How many boxes are left over?
Or did you run out of boxes before you finished?
Are your boxes serving you well?
What connections are you making after completing this activity?
Do you forget to say “no” in order to say “yes” to things?
How could this make an impact in the way you manage yourself, and manage your time? Are you "too busy?"
By Intepeople Executive Coach, Anna Gibbons. Find out more about Intepeople's Executive Coaching services here.
Written by Intepeople Executive Coach, Anna Gibbons.
Coaching is no longer just for under-performers - it’s for the ambitious, those with dreams and goals of thriving to their full potential and being authentic leaders in their organisations.
Here are five great reasons for working with an Executive Coach on your own personal and professional development:
We all know the saying when you’re in a situation, ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’. When we’re rushing from home to work and juggling being a parent and a partner with our career, we simply do not get the time to sit, self-reflect and create change.
Sure, we can chat with our colleagues, friends and family - but it’s a very different conversation with an executive coach.
The quality of our conversations are crucial and a coach can help keep your clarity and perspective when discussing challenges and stressful situations. Our friends and family are great at offering empathy and sympathy, but a coach tends to hold the space for you to find solutions rather than jump into the pit with you.
The brain likes to offer excuses when you’re trying to get out of doing the things you don’t like doing. But it’s the things we don’t like doing the most that usually have the greatest return or pay off.
An executive coach helps you to ‘lean in’ to these things rather than to ‘lean away’. When you have to meet with your coach to discuss progress and your actions towards your goals, you are no longer able to procrastinate and put things off.
Negative self talk is in everyone’s brain. Yes, EVERYONE'S! The main difference between successful and happy people is that they choose not to listen to it the same as unhappy people or unsuccessful people perhaps do.
The human brain is hardwired to keep us safe so it’s constantly wanting to bring the fear of ‘not being good enough’, or fear of ‘failure’ into our thoughts. However, we no longer have to worry about tigers chasing us, so we need to learn to control this negative self-talk. An executive coach can help you do this by building on your mental tool kit.
Having an executive coach isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.
A coach will ask you questions you may never have been asked before. They will help you picture success and visualise where you want to be, what it feels like, looks like and sounds like. When the brain is in a positive and motivated state, solutions jump out at you and you can more easily make a plan to get where you want to go.
'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.'
A coach helps you to see the barriers that are holding you back from achieving the results you want. Barriers can be limiting decisions or unhelpful beliefs that no longer serve us. By reconnecting with our values and purpose we are able to work more efficiently and make better decisions.
These are just a few of the many reasons why an executive coach should be part of everyone’s personal and professional development plan. If you are tempted to find out more about Intepeople’s Executive Coaching services, contact us now.
Well here we are again – the beginning of a New Year and at the risk of sounding clichéd, what better time is there for reflections and resolutions. As I was scoffing ham and swigging champagne, I couldn’t help but reflect on the train wreck that was December (well, that may be exaggerating but I do like a good story). What was clear was that my work life balance was out of whack.
I know, I know, harping on about work life balance is very predictable and probably a bit boring, but I’ve thrown together some thoughts which I’m hoping might get me back on the right side of the work life ledger in the year ahead.
If you are the type of person that has your outlook calendar split into 15 minute time slots then this will be a no-brainer, but for some people (like me) this requires a little more effort. Believe me, it’s worth it.
If you schedule in that haircut, game of squash or lunch with friends then you won’t feel half as guilty. More importantly, you won’t accidentally double book and end up in some boring meeting instead.
The art of knowing when to say ‘no’ will really help if you have too much on your plate. Of course you can’t say no to everything (well that’s what I tell my kids anyway) but if you don’t have the time or the skills, or maybe you don’t even have the inclination, saying ‘no’ early and clearly is the best approach.
In all honesty, I almost didn’t include this on my list because I firmly believe there is enough guilt in the world - and if exercising isn’t your gig then I’m not going to tell you to add it to you “must do list”.
However I could not, in good conscience, fly in the face of the irrefutable fact that exercise is good. So whether it’s walking the dog, kick boxing or Zumba, think about getting into something that moves your body and that you enjoy.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that are the final breaking point. Coming home to an untidy house, baking another batch of treats for a shared morning tea or negotiating the horrors of the supermarket aisle. Maybe you could get a cleaner, shopping online may be an option and there is no shame in buying something for a shared morning tea.
As Hugh Grant famously coined in the movie ‘About a Boy’ – No Man is an Island. When life is super busy, it’s easy to block everything else out and just knuckle down, but the older and busier I get the more I recognise the value of collaboration - and not just at work. The benefit of being able to text a friend to pick up your kids when you’re in a squeeze, or call on a colleague when you’re a bit swamped is invaluable.
Turning off my phone alerts was the very best thing I did last year. Not to suffer heart palpitations every time my phone vibrated and not to have my emails flashing up on my phone every time I picked it up, did wonders for my nerves. It’s also a great idea to put clear out of office messages on your email and make it clear on your email signature your hours of work and availability.
This certainly isn’t a comprehensive list of strategies - but I don’t want to sound too preachy or take up too much of your valuable time - so hopefully one or two points have resonated, and good luck getting your work life balance right this year.
By Emily Bisset
It was interesting to see that Worklife Balance has just tipped Salary as the number 1 factor that New Zealand professionals look for in a job. I saw this in a Stuff article about the findings of a 2014 Hudson survey.
For those of us in the ‘keeping people motivated area’ this is important stuff. We have traditionally been pushed by salary as the top motivator when negotiating with professionals. It is interesting to see the pendulum start to swing towards worklife balance.
I can remember working on implementing a massive flexible work project into a major bank. We did all the research on best practise, talked to senior managers and the executive team etc etc and came up with the following options:
We did a fantastic comms job on the options and launched them into the organisation.
Results were mixed.
Hence when we came to measure the success of the project - feedback was mediocre at best.
In hindsight the organisation was not ready for that kind of flexibility. The culture at that time was not one of total trust and confidence.
Key learning – Is your whole organisation ready to embrace worklife policies??? Does your culture really support them???
And even though you now by law have to have a genuine business reason not to consider worklife balance requests - you would be surprised at how many companies are not really ready to embrace this type of work environment.
On the positive side - if your business is truly able to offer flexible work practices then you have a great tool in your arsenal to hire (and keep) really fabulous people.
In other words - if your organisation has worklife balance as a recognised part of its Employee Value Proposition (EVP) then you have a great offering to market the heck out of – so go for it.
We would love to hear about your experiences implementing worklife balance initiatives – drop us some comments below and let our client community know what has or has not worked for you.
