Going to wintertime gives you the extra hour!

Of course this statement is nonsense, but in the minds of some, it does give an extra hour of sleep... 

In my previous blog, I mentioned the importance of being in control of your own time. Sounds easy, but in fact many struggle to do so.

Of course, no one can create more time in a day. Time is fixed. The way you use up your time is the flexible part. You have to make up your mind how to allocate your time to sleep, eat and doing other necessities, devote to family and friends, learning and hobbies, and finally your work. The order in which I have listed, is not random 😉.

Some believe that the objective in life is to put 'work before pleasure'. And, even worse, there are people amongst you that 'just let it happen'. They will not realize the consequence of their choice, until after their working life when they end up with ample memories.

Although I will never stop you from making a conscious decision to fully devote yourself to work, I would not recommend doing so. And without becoming too much philosophical, there is so much more to life, outside your working life!

So, the keyword is 'conscious'. It is that simple! Maybe hard to believe, but this also applies to spontaneous thoughts and subsequent (lifechanging) decisions.

Bringing this into practice, here are some hints that might be helpful to you..

Whatever you are responsible for, set up structural meetings to follow the progress and monitoring. Certainly, do not meet longer then a pre-set time, and why continue a meeting longer all is discussed? It is not wrong to do 5 minute meetings.

Always challenge unsolicited invites to meeting. You will be amazed how many times you will be on the invite list, just because you are part of the organisation. Does it make sense to accept or is your presence important to you or your team? If so, make every attempt to participate, or maybe partly just for relevant action items!. Alternatively, you could give your view or respond to action items in advance to the organiser, and ask the minutes to stay informed.

Consider a meeting relevant to you that is scheduled when you are not available and the meeting takes place anyway. So, where does it put you, if no interaction is done beforehand or after the meeting? Does this mean you or your teams' opinion or action is seen as relevant?

Avoid as much as possible to have your day and week schedule fully blocked. Block time in your day and week schedule to cope with unexpected events and to work on any backlog of actions you may have. If you block time in a structured way ,fitting the normal day schedule, maybe people around you will become adjusted to your rhythm...

Always free up (even blocked) time to people in your team who require your advise or help adhoc (also with people in your team you would meet up in a structural way). But always think about other ways to follow up giving additional help, before taking responsibility of yet another task.

If your management is ongoingly driving you nuts with loads of questions? Then I strongly advise you to set up a (bi-)weekly meeting (as I stated earlier) with your management and present the current status in a structured way. Obviously, in your first meetings you will find out that there are still a lot of questions and items you have not thought of before, still creating some discussions. However, if you continue to follow this approach, the difference will be that you will control the meeting. Once you also incorporate the relevant additional items, you will notice, the meetings become more effective and trust will build up leading to less meeting(time) and frustration.

Do not forget to spend conscious personal attention to people in your team, celebrate success and important milestones and constantly keep spirit and humour levels up.

Last but not least, do not end the day without noting the outstanding action items on your backlog and crossing out those that are done; Eg. clear your head before you go!

And start the next day by taking note of your backlog. Understandably if your backlog continuously grows the moment starts to come that you get out-of-control! Keep away from that moment or put this forward during the meetings with management as mentioned. Alternatively, review the hints again 😉.

I hope you slept out well when wintertime begun....