Become Master of your time
19 April 2016
“I’m overwhelmed“, “I do not have a minute to myself“, “I would need my days to be longer than 24 hours“, “I’m gonna break“, “I live at a hectic pace” …. These sentences sound like leitmotifs in the mouth of your employees. You also catch yourself pronouncing them too regularly. Situations of “overwhelm” have become too common. An ongoing study by Technologia indicates alarming figures: three million people are at a high risk of burnout.
What can we say? Burnout is a term used to describe professional overwhelm. In this specific case, the sphere of work infringes on personal life until it completely takes over, causing behavioral problems, sleep disorders, and even severe depression. How can we avoid this danger that is affecting more and more people? How can we avoid becoming overwhelmed? How can we reconcile personal fulfillment and professional success?
A question of rhythm
Although there is a common, undeniable objective time, that allows us to understand when we say, “tomorrow will be Tuesday … 2016” or “I’ll meet you at noon.” Yet this objective time meets another time; a subjective time. Only you understand what you mean by “soon” or “fast”. The measure of time in this case is yours, but it is often caught up with and influenced by the constant requirement for productivity. We will only achieve a profound change and gain serenity and well-being if we regain some control of time, by reconciling objective time and subjective time.
An effective way to regain that harmony is to adopt a vision on several levels:
– Short-term: the time of daily organization and ritualization that cannot be reduced to a reaction or to an emergency.
– The medium-term: That of the objectives to achieve.
– The long-term: That of the dreamed aim, essential, deeply rooted, which is fully satisfied and marks the time of realization. That according to Tony Crabbe we call “real success”.
Most often, the vision does not extend to the formulation of a dream, of a deep desire for personal fulfillment. And yet it is this vision that allows us to stay on course, to build outside of the ongoing stress and above all to be able to prioritize actions.
Save time on time
To improve efficiency and well-being, two simple and essential practices prove decisive according to Tony Crabbe:
– Distinguish urgency from importance in order to “strategically prioritise”.
– Learn to focus or concentrate. Indeed, these days the demands are constant and prevent us from sustained focus.
How many times are you tempted to check your email every day? To reply to a colleague within five minutes? Check your diary? Check your messages? Your text messages? All these disturbances, called “inputs” are the direct result of hyper-connectivity. Recent scientific studies show that a period of 90 minutes of continued attention is optimal and allows a task to be dealt with efficiently, while switching back and forth between tasks and the multiplication of tasks drastically reduces efficency. Our ambition is to return to a quality of presence and concentration.
The time of differentiation
There is no magic wand to escape the cyclone of daily demands and stress. The only rule – if there is one – is above all to be able to return to self, to our expectations, and our aspirations to build a personal path. You are someone – and not just anyone! So let your uniqueness express itself. It is most often for your differences that people will remember you, but first you have to recognise them yourself. By creating a revolution inside yourself, you can focus on what really matters, what we feel we are made for, and what we want to invest our efforts in. Tony Crabbe tells an eloquent anecdote of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industry): this company made incredible profits by focusing on its strong expertise and passion for science. It filed 150,000 patents for brilliant inventions. But from the moment it walked away from those / its values to focus on profits, it experienced a rapid decline. So you, what are your strengths and passions? Do you highlight them, do you cultivate them?
“Making an impact not by doing as many things as possible, but by behaving differently”: this could be our motto. It’s up to us now!
Hommes et Projects was supported by Adeline Mace ( L’éclaireuse ) during the trade fair Connec’sud in Montpellier ( Parc des expositions ) on June 2nd 2016 to speak about the subject of time management . Find a video of the event below.
