Time

Have you ever wondered where all the time went? 

How some people can achieve so much in their life, and still only have 24h in a day, while the rest of us can spend time wondering how it got to 3pm, when we feel we haven’t even accomplished anything yet?

We were having dinner with some parents of a young family recently and a question along these lines came up:

“How did the two of you do it? How did you manage with 3 children under 5, starting up a charity, one of you training to be a teacher and the other working nights as a nurse?”

The box on the right is called the Eisenhower Box which is a way of prioritising tasks. The same principle is used in ABCD analysis:

A- Important & Urgent- done immediately

B- Important & Not Urgent- given a time frame for achievement

C- Unimportant & Urgent- delegated

D- Unimportant & Not Urgent- dropped

This is a great starting point, especially when faced with a long list of jobs to do, but one of the the problems is that this doesn’t always explicitly address the overarching goals of the job, resulting in a much more narrow focus where less is accomplished.

The other problem is, not all unimportant tasks can be easily delegated, especially where resources are limited, and extra time may be needed to train some up others to take on tasks. This results in a cycle where overworked or overtired people do not feel they can delegate tasks as they don’t have the capacity to identify the tasks or people to who could help them.

This brings us back to the young couple, wanting change in their lives, but not knowing where the time will come from. I would love to say we responded to the couple with a carefully thought through answer that changed their life, but no.

Instead we replied- “We have absolutely no idea, it all went by in a haze.”

What I did do though, is offer monthly coaching for them as a couple, which they quickly took me up on. This will help them identify their goals, important and unimportant tasks, external resources and what they have in their hands right now that will help them use their time effectively.

For more information on coaching or time management, visit multiplycoaching.com or email vicki@multiplycoaching.com