Why is it that we think we can continue to add to our pile of things to do and stress ourselves out because there is never enough time?

It’s a tough reality to face. When you say “yes” to something, you must say “no” to something else. Whether you are aware of it or not, at the end of the day what you said yes to left other things undone.

It’s natural for our priorities and goals to shift in our businesses and in our personal lives. As we come into a new year, many of us are reflecting on our progress from the past years and focusing on our future goals.

In this podcast episode, Sharon and I talk about time management and the importance of evaluating what to let go in order to make room for growth. We give examples of some tough decisions we are facing at the moment and how we are working through the process to achieve our goals we’ve set for ourselves for the coming year.

Recap:

Be Realistic With Your Time

Time is our most valuable resource. We can never get it back. We can never make more. We just keep moving forward whether we like it or not.

People set goals, but don’t put an action plan in place. That action plan must translate into something listed on your calendar.

Just because you put something on your calendar to take an hour, does it really take an hour? Things can go two ways. You think something should take only an hour, but in reality, to do the job right, it will take much longer. Or, you are dragging your feet and making things take longer because you are unsure, not confident, or just wasting time.

It takes practice and continual work to find processes that work for you to have a good sense of how long things will take so that you can become more efficient.

Carefully Evaluate What You’ll Give Up

You must prioritize and figure out what is important to you. Before you decide to give up something, take a moment to evaluate and understand the value it brings. Sometimes we aren’t in a mood and don’t want to do something. Let’s take, for example, exercise.  If you are trying to achieve a weight loss goal and give up exercise because you don’t feel like it, then you wouldn’t be getting closer to reaching your goal. It’s in your best interest to keep your appointment with yourself and do it because you see the value of the end result.

Blocking time on your calendar is a helpful way of visualizing what you should attend and what you’ll give up in order to add something else. When you see your calendar full of events and faced with other demands on your time, it’s easier to visualize your priorities and either say no or move things around.

Shift Tasks to Make Room for Growth

Sometimes it’s a good idea to eliminate tasks, but often times, we can’t eliminate them because we need to keep things running smoothly. But should you be doing the task or is it time to delegate so you can accomplish more? You should think about how much is it costing you to do the task versus paying someone else to do it.

You should be asking yourself these questions:

• How much is your time worth?
• What tasks are eating up your time?
• How much time do I devote to those tasks?
• How much it’s costing you to do it yourself?
• How much would it cost to delegate the task?

Attaching a dollar amount to your time helps you measure and prioritize what tasks you should keep and what tasks make sense to delegate.

 

There are many things that demand your time and only you can make the decision of what takes priority.

Be realistic with yourself about your time, assign a value to your time, evaluate carefully how you are spending your time, and see if some tasks should be shifted.

What are you doing now that is holding you back from future growth and how are you making progress of letting go?