Carve out the time
Scott Miker
I’ve worked for several companies that had busy seasons and some that seemed to be busy all year. One common sentiment is that workers become too busy to work on becoming more efficient, complete training to get better, or coach up their teams.
While this is a frustration and work, I’ve also noticed that some people take this same mindset with them when they leave work. Instead of working to get better, they are always too busy to do what they should do.
We all find ourselves in this place from time to time. But learn to identify a short-term increase in stuff to do versus a long-term approach to life. When the busy time stretches out, learn to find a way to carve out the time.
When you become good at this, it seems to be natural. You seem to be able to complete the high importance but low urgency items. You can find time to do what you need to do to improve over time.
The systems and habits approach to improvement can be a tremendous help here. By looking at your routines you can find ways to carve out time for what is important. By realizing humans are creatures of habit and will keep operating day-to-day in similar patterns, we can learn to structure those patterns to gain the most from the time we do have.
What is really important to you? What do you always say you want to do but never seem to have the time?
Instead of letting that become normal, turn it on its head by adding urgency to figure out how to incorporate it into your life. Learn how to make the time by evaluating your daily actions and eliminating those that are inefficient or a waste of time.
By doing that, you will start to create a new pattern, one that allows you to do what you want to do. It will open up your life to show you that there is time for those tasks. But time won’t magically open up without taking the effort to carve out the time for yourself.