5 Ways to Maximize Your Time
2021 is winding down. As we are learning to live and function alongside the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is also a great opportunity to inventory how you use and protect your most precious resource: TIME.
We all divide our time in ways that we deem necessary in order to move our lives forward, personally and professionally.
Ideally, the ways we choose to spend our time make our lives better, more fulfilled, and purposeful.
But, what happens when our time is invested in ways that draining, consuming, and stress-inducing?
Answer: change has to be made.
The Pareto Principle offers a litmus test for balance.
In short, it deems that 20% of causes create 80% of consequences.
For example, when my dance studios were participating in the competitive dance industry, our competition team represented only about 10% of our overall studio population (< 20% of causes). BUT, it consumed a massive amount of our time, attention, and resources (possibly >80% of consequences).
Our resources were terribly imbalanced, and that's one of the reasons we left the industry, which is detailed in my book Trash The Trophies.
Now, we maintain a vigilant attitude about how our time is spent in the studios, and I carry over this mentality to my personal life, as well.
The following 5 Questions help keep our time allocation in check:
Are we moving forward, standing still, or regressing? The goal is to always maintain forward motion.
Have we set detailed policies, protocols, and expectations, so that actions requiring consequence are pre-determined, removing stress and emotion from the equation?
Are we being self-aware in the areas in which we devote our time and attention? Is it productive or not?
Are we responding to situations that require resources with action to avoid fatiguing the conversation in the future?
At the end of the day, are there tangible, forward-moving outcomes to support goal achievement?
As we head into a New Year, it is a great time to stop the minority of issues from jeopardizing the majority of your time.