Finding Free Time
I was recently out west in Baja, riding out the tail end of winter with the ocean in front of me, watching a few whales play in the water.?I find when I’m away, delighting in nature, it frees me up to think differently. And, even while “working from anywhere,” being here allows me to look at my business differently.
It was the perfect time to dip into my friend Jenny Blake’s wonderful new book?“Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business .” It’s supremely helpful - packed with systems, tools, frameworks, reflective questions, and an ample amount of cheerleading. All of which have given me new ways to think about systemizing my business. Not only that, but for those of you who think that systems have to be dull, I'll quote you from my text to Jenny when I picked it up: “I started your book and now I can’t put it down. Today is canceled until I finish it.”
As I said in my own book?From Start-up to Grown-up ,?“Structure is Sexy.” With Free Time, Jenny lets you delight in processes and find soul in systems. She offers an overarching framework that I’ve been thinking about: Align, Design, Assign.?
?She also encourages “permission slips” to give yourself or others, with samples like “Drop everything but deep work” and “Give the monkeys on your back to their rightful owners.”?Jenny’s book is filled with tools and practical advice, and it’s just a great read. You can pick it up?here .?
We all want more free time of course. One thing I talk about with my corporate clients - and I offer this to you as well - is freeing your time up to do the?“important but not urgent” ?work that may make less of a difference in your job day-to-day but have an enormous impact on your career overall.
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One of these significant areas is improving your skills as a manager.?And with the “Great Resignation ” still swirling around us, it’s certainly a good time to double down on your investment in yourself as a manager so you can help your people feel motivated, fulfilled, and ultimately keep them longer.?
That’s why I created my new course on LinkedIn Learning: “Promoting Internal Mobility as a Manager .” The skills I teach will give you a black belt in managerial?prowess: how to “re-recruit” your people; advanced coaching skills; how to help your people find mentors; how to build talent networks all around you, and, yes, how to help your people find new opportunities inside of your company if you can’t help them advance in their careers in your group. When you learn and use these skills you’ll help your people build their careers and gain the reputation of being a great manager, so, counterintuitively, you’ll actually find even more around you. (By the way, I also cover how you can use internal mobility to find your own new job!)
I hope you enjoy this course - let me know if you checked it out and what you thought.?
In the meantime, it’s always a good moment to think about the ways you can free yourself up more. Then, make sure you are intentional with what you do with your precious free time.?
Alisa
It all starts with permission to live differently.
How about scheduling blocks of time for you? Same as you do for work? We need to rest our bodyminds to have creative space and feel refreshed, patient and open to the world around us.
One of my personal challenges this year is precisely this, to get more free time, to be able to dedicate that time to developing my own entrepreneurial project. Sometimes the weeks are so overwhelming that I end my week very tired. What I try to do, to save time, is to group similar activities, which allow me to create economies of scale in their execution and thus reduce the time spent on those specific activities. It's a simple measure, but it works fine for me. Have a great weekend Alisa Cohn.
Sustainable Adhesive Solutions l People Connector
2 年One of the best things I did to free up time was to track how I spent my time. The idea of time tracking neither revelationary nor sexy. I did this when I was burned out and felt like I consistently worked 80hr weeks. Before the time tracking exercise, I was sure that I slept 4-5hrs each night and worked every waking moment. It turned out that I only worked about 40hrs each week, was in bed about 8-9hrs each night, but was thinking about work constantly. Thinking about work in this case didn’t help me get work done. All it did was make me anxious. Looking at time spent on paper was the ?? moment for me. The data helped me free up my mind and gave me back time to focus on other things, like reading a good book ??.