"Just Too Busy' Series - 4. The key is not spending time, but investing it

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Transcript

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The key is not spending time, but investing it. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean by that is investing time in doing the right things and not spending time trying to do as many things as you possibly can. This is part four in my series about being too busy and why it's detrimental for your organization and ultimately detrimental for you. Let's have a look at four beliefs then that busy people have that we need to help overcome to get you to the point on the other side, where you're focusing on doing the right things. The first one is an overemphasis on multitasking. We can believe that we are great at doing two things at once. We can listen to a podcast. Watch the football game whilst com. Pleating the board pack. And the reality is, is we're doing lead with those two things. Well, and ultimately what we're doing from a neuroscientific point of view is putting as lots of extra strain on our brain doing two things at once. As great strain to our brain, not something we need. And it ends up, meaning we doing both of those two things. We're trying to multitask poorly. Give you a brain arrest, step back to one thing at a time and do it well. Another belief. Deadlines. That deadlines are great, right? That deadlines are what we need to get things done. We will have the product launch by the end of the month. We'll have this done by that. I need that report from you, Bob, by Friday, the latest. Deadlines are a great way to motivate and get people done, but they are only one tool in your arsenal. They're not the be all and end all and getting things done. And often what deadlines can mean. Is that. Yeah, sure. You get something done, but do you do it in the right way? Is the right thing being done? Is it being done in the right way? Because you're not having time to reflect on, is this the right element? Is this being done the right way? Because you're just focusing on getting it done by a particular time. It could be a strong motivational tool, but it doesn't have to be the only one. You need to let go of deadlines as being your only weapon or your only way of getting things done in your organization. There are other ways of doing it. It doesn't just have to be deadlines. The third thing to overcome, is your probably not great at taking a break and having a rest. You're rushing from meeting to meeting, checking your phone on the way you've barely got time to check your email in between the zoom calls you've got all day. You look at your diary and it's stacked from nine to five. With zoom meetings, even across your lunch break, you find yourself eating your lunch was checking your email. Now, you know, Instinct tells you this is a bad thing, but the reality is, is you're still doing it. You're not making time to rest. Let's take an example of where this is absolutely bad for. Your favorite football team. If they were working really hard on a Friday night, they would say they're training really hard on a Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night. And the big game was on Saturday. Are there going to be great performance at that big game of Saturday, they'd been trained in the night before. If they've been up till midnight working. And then they're expected to get up and play the best performance of their life the next day. Of course not. All right. Physical before physical. Athletes need time to rest and to recuperate our brain is nothing more than a muscle we need to spend the time resting and recuperating. You need to take breaks in between your meetings. You need time to stop. And just relax your mind a bit and enjoy. Eating your lunch. Much will happen when you give your time, the chance. Much what happen when you give your brain the chance to relax and to rest, it will recover. It will be stronger. Your thinking will be better. Your imagination will be better. Your creativity will better. Your ability to get things done will be better if you give yourself time to rest. The fourth thing to overcome, and maybe this is going to be a surprise for you. And this is an over-reliance on productivity tools. Maybe use a productivity tool, like a Asana or monday.com or Basecamp or teams or one of the many, many productivity tools that are out there. And over-reliance on these tools can actually be detrimental to the way that you get things done. They can be a little overwhelming. We've got everything into these tools. Now don't get me wrong. They are a great tool for managing and understand what people have to do. But an over-reliance and over focused on productivity and productivity tools can be detrimental to you in the longer run. Giving your team and you some space to create something a bit different. Have some time for some serendipity can actually count in your favor. And often is something that can't be done if you're having over-reliance on productivity tools. So have a think about that. Are you over reliant on these tools? And the fifth one and probably the place to start. It's busy people ignore. The value of reflection. They are too busy to spend the time reflecting on what has happened. They've already moved on to the next thing. They've closed down. That last thing we've done, we're already down to the next thing. They don't spend the time to think about areas for improvement. Their it spend the time to think about what went well, what went wrong? They're not making the same mistakes again and again, because there's no time to stop and to reflect you need that time in your life. Okay. You need to stop. To understand what you need to do differently next time, what worked and what didn't. And this is the place to start. If you're busy, the place to start is to create and to carve out some time in your schedule to reflect. An hour 90 minutes, a chance to have some sort of clarity break to refocus yourself on what is important. What are the things you need to be focusing on? This week, this month, this quarter. Refocusing your efforts and energies on to those priorities can really, really help you. It starts. By slowing down and that's got to come from the place of you wanting to slow down. By understanding that. Being busy is not your superpower. It's got you to where you are now, but it's not going to get you to that next place. The thing that's going to get you there is spending time reflecting on what it is you need to do. Focusing on the bigger picture, investing your time wisely in the important people, important strategies, important objectives, and things that you've got, not being busy all of the time. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Are you too busy? Do you want to change that behavior? Is it something that you wear as a badge of honor? Has this video made you angry? The fact that I'm telling you, you shouldn't be busy. Have you been busy previous in your life? What's changed. I'd love to hear your thoughts and your comments on this. And your progress as well. If you're somebody who wants to get better at not being busy. Let me know how you got on drop me a line, drop me a message here on LinkedIn. Drop me a comment. I'd love to know what being busy has done for you. Isn't doing for you and how you'd like to change in the future.