Mastering Time Management Through Strategic Planning

Is it possible to expand time? Literally, no. But there is a way to find more time if you’re willing to use these techniques.

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Script | 345

Hello, and welcome to episode 345 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Common phrases you will hear are “I don’t have time” or “I wish I had more time”, and yet you already have all the time you need.

The problem is not time, the problem is often the amount of things we want to do in the time we have. 

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, life was simple. Find food and water, make babies and stay safe. Neglecting either of those three things would result in some serious issues—the biggest of which would be death. 

Given that human evolution is slow, we are not best suited to deal with hundreds of emails and messages, requests from bosses, finding child care, commuting to and from work and all the other modern-day accessories we’ve chosen to add to our lives. 

We cannot expand time, yet if we are unwilling to reduce what we want to do, we will feel overwhelmed and that more modern ailment, the fear of missing out, or FOMO. 

However, there are a few techniques you can use that will give you enough time for the things you want to do if you are willing to try them.

But before I get to how, allow me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Giles. Giles asks, Hi Carl, I’ve done your “perfect week” exercise and realise that my problem is I want to do too much. There isn’t enough time in the day. Do you have any tips on fitting in hobbies and still get enough sleep?

Hi Giles, thank you for your question. 

The good thing is you’ve discovered that no matter what you want to do or feel you must do, you will always be limited by the amount of time available. 

And, now that you’ve done the Perfect Week calendar exercise, you can see what you have left after taking care of your work and family obligations. 

One of the first realisations about finding time was when I learned of Ian Fleming’s writing routine. 

Ian Fleming wrote a new book each year from 1952 to his death in 1964. He never missed a year, even in the year he had his first heart attack in 1961. 

In the early years, Fleming worked For The Sunday Times as their foreign editor, yet he negotiated a two-month vacation each January and February. During those two months, he would fly off to his Jamaican home, Goldeneye and almost from the first day, would begin writing the next book from 9:30 to 12:30. 

After lunch, he would nap, and then the day’s socialising would begin. 

Around 4 pm, he would go back to his writing desk for an hour to review what he had written that morning, and that would be it. 

Four hours a day for six weeks. That produced the first draft of his next book. 

For the rest of the year, he worked his regular job in London. Dealt with any rewrites and began marketing the book that was being published that year. 

If you were to analyse how Ian Fleming managed his time, he wasn’t looking at the day-to-day. He looked at the year as a whole. 

He knew he needed six weeks to write a new novel each year, so he made sure those six weeks were blocked out in his diary before the new year began. 

That’s just six weeks out of fifty-two. 

This is similar to blocking time out for your core work. If you know you need ten hours a week to do your core work, hoping you will find the time is not a sustainable strategy. You won’t, so it will be more a case of hoping you will find the time. 

Those ten hours need to be locked in each week.

Ian Fleming would never have written fourteen James Bond novels if he had “hoped” to find the time to do so. He had to find the time and then protect it. 

You have 168 hours a week and twenty-four each day. Squeezing everything into those twenty-four hours will be tough—almost impossible. Yet, if you were to schedule for the week, where you have 168 hours, things become possible. 

I see many people anxiously trying to find family time every day. It would be nice if you could do that, but you are dealing with other people and your 6 to 9 pm might not be convenient for them. 

Instead, you could agree with your family that certain days or evenings are for family time. For instance, my wife and I ensure that Wednesday afternoons and Saturday evenings are protected for family time. 

It’s lovely because while it is flexible, there’s no need for us to be trying to schedule time. It’s already protected. 

This is all about expanding time. Looking at an individual day is tough; there are a lot of emergencies and unknowns that pop up. However, if you were to establish what you want time for each week (or month), block the time out so you know you have the time to do it, you will always have the flexibility to move things around if things change. 

For example, this week, my wife had an exam to do on Wednesday afternoon, so we rescheduled our family day out to Thursday. All I needed to do was to move a few of my other commitments around so I could still get all my work done that week. 

You can apply the same principles to your work commitments. If you require ten hours a week to get your core work done—the work you are employed to do, not the work you volunteer to do—you can pre-protect that time on your calendar. 

Now, I know many people will object and say they cannot do this because they have to attend meetings. 

That’s fine. Let me ask you a question. What will do more to get the project completed? Having a meeting about the project or working on the project?

If the project objectives have been communicated clearly and roles defined, meetings should not be needed. 

One of the best ways to regain time is to become less accessible. Most people’s time management problems start by being too accessible. Of course, this will depend on the type of work you do. A salesperson, for instance, should be accessible to their customers. But perhaps not necessarily be as accessible to their admin departments or even their sales manager. If you’re producing the results, I can promise you your sales manager will leave you alone. 

When I first began teaching time management and productivity, I was available on all social media channels. I was on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email. Just to stay on top of all those channels was taking me three hours a day. I don’t have three hours a day to manage all those channels. 

So, now I push everyone towards email. I have a process for dealing with email. Over the years, I have refined it to a point where I can handle over a hundred emails in less than an hour. 

And the final point to make here, Giles, is you don’t have to do everything now. 

Imagine If there’s a period each year when things go a little quiet at work. Perhaps in the summer, it’s quieter than at other times of the year. Maybe July and August is a good time for you to do some of the bigger projects. Then, when you enter the busy times of the year, you can work on the smaller projects. 

One way you can do this is to use a tool such as Todoist, Asana, or Trello that allows you to create boards. You can then create four columns and spread out the activities you want to do. 

For example, in quarter 1, I focus on my biggest projects of the year; I like to kick off the year with a bang. Q2 is focused more on processes and making them more effective and efficient. 

Seeing everything I want to accomplish over the year organised in quarters stops me from becoming anxious about all the things I want to do. 

This also gives you a plan for the year, which in turn helps you to be more focused. 

Again, you can be flexible here. Feel free to move projects around the year so you are working on the right projects at the right time. 

Time can be your friend or enemy. If you don’t harness it, it will be your enemy. If you take control of it, you will find you do have sufficient time for the things you want to do. Perhaps not this week or next, but when you look at things over a quarter or a year, many things become possible. 

I know some of you would like to build an exercise programme into your life. Yet the thought of joining a gym, or yoga class puts you off because you have go to the gym, spend an hour exercising, then shower. After all that it will have eaten up two hours of your time. 

You don’t have to do all that—certainly not initially. You could do some bodyweight exercises at home or go out for a walk. That won’t take up much of your time. I do twenty minutes every day at home. 

As your fitness improves, then you may wish to add a few gym sessions. But that’s not a requirement of being fit and healthy. 

I hope that has helped Giles. Thank you for your question, and thank you to you, too. It just remains for me to wish you a very very productive week.