When a person has no cap on how many hours he or she will work in a week, then the person tends to add more and more hours.
• I may need to hire another person.
• I will put things on my calendar so people will know I’ m not available. Thinking time and concentrating are actually work activities, but people look in and see me by myself and think they can just pop in and start talking.
My Thoughts
Notice how limiting the number of hours they work in a week forced them to focus and make some difficult decisions.
People tend to fill whatever container of time they have at work. If they have a three-hour meeting, they fill it. If they have a 45-minute meeting, they fill it. When a person has no cap on how many hours he or she will work in a week, then the person tends to add more and more hours.
By operating within a fixed number of hours, the person forces him or herself to really focus on one thing at a time and make meaningful progress. This also forces the person to choose what not to do, which is actually the greater challenge.
When your chosen number of hours are up, force yourself to stop working. If you use them up by Wednesday afternoon, then you have to stop for the week. If you do that once, you will probably become much more careful about where you spend your work hours. Work hours are like money. If you set a limit on how much you’ re going to spend in a week and you spend it all by Wednesday, then you have no money left for the rest of the week. The next week you will become much more careful about where you spend your money.
Your Homework Assignment
From this discussion we landed on the idea of an Activity Tracking Sheet. I suggest you put one-hour time slots from 6 a. m. to 1 a. m. on a sheet of paper, and print one out for yourself for every day of the week. Keep track of where your time goes. At the end of each hour simply write in“ Work” or“ Not Work.” See how much time you actually work. Decide if that is the right amount. Then decide what you will do to get it to the number you want to land on.
This will force you to make decisions about how you use your time. G
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Dan Coughlin is president of The Coughlin Company Inc., a management consulting firm focused on improving executive effectiveness and significance. He serves as a thinking partner for executives and business owners, working toward improving their most important desired business outcomes. He does this through executive coaching for individuals and small groups. He also provides keynote speeches and seminars on effectiveness and leadership. Visit his Free Business Leadership Idea Center at www. thecoughlincompany. com.
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GearedUp | 2017 Issue 4
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