The Best Advice for Time Management

Farah’s struggling. She’s got a lot to do, and the day just seems to get away from her. The 40 minutes she spent surfing Instagram didn’t help her cross items off her list, but it was the only break from work that she took all day. Still, at the end of the day, she feels unsatisfied and downcast because she didn’t complete what she had on her to-do list. Farah thinks she has a time management problem. Farah’s problem isn’t time management. It’s even bigger than that. Remember a day when you got three times as much done in the same time frame on the previous day? You had the same number of hours on those days as you did on the ‘meh’ accomplishment days, right? We all do. So what got you going on those high achievement days? Focus. What makes you focus? Something important you want to do, a goal you want to reach. What makes you focus is the impact you want to have. Farah’s big problem was that she wasn’t clear on her intended impact, and she wasn’t putting it into action. I define impact like this: impact is where your amazing self meets the world and makes it a better place. It’s about you doing whatever you can to be your amazing self AND it’s about contributing to others and making a difference. When you have your intended impact in mind, you can tear through things that take 3 times longer when you don’t have anything in mind but profit or another item to cross off a list. Impact is your big picture. Your vision for impact carries you forward, with focus. You’re more motivated, you move through challenges more quickly, and you’re happier! Your business is made of individual days. They add up to create your business life. Life with impact is sweeter and better. And businesses with impact make more money. Those are two of the many reasons I work with my clients on defining their intentions for having impact. With impact as your focus, you can manage your energy (and your time) in a way that lets you get things done. When we worked together on this, Farah had a breakthrough. With her energy and her impact in mind, we created a new way of working for her:

• She set priorities that moved her closer to her intended impact.
• She limited those priorities to 3 a day.
• She did what was most important to her impact first.
• She challenged herself to get things done more quickly.

The result? More gets done. She feels more at ease, yet more accomplished. She has more impact. Want to get more done? Focus on your impact. It’ll carry you through big projects and small ones, as you make a difference.