"But I don't have time!"

One of the most commonly heard objections to following safety procedures, or indeed to doing anything that is 'the right thing' to do, is time.? Time is seen as the enemy in life, and you might even hear people around you say things that reflect this belief.

From “time’s not on our side” to “time’s not our friend” to “time is against us”, there is no end to the feeling that time is a force to be grappled with and overcome on a daily basis.

But how helpful is this?

I often get asked how I manage to do everything I do in the time I have, with family commitments, and it isn’t easy.? When I became a mother four years ago, I really noticed how much less time I had than before to squeeze in the things I really wanted to do.? So I had to prioritise, and look to create more time, which meant sometimes saying no instead of yes.

Creating more time might seem like a bit of a strange expression, because the truth is, there will never be more or less than twenty-four hours a day.?

The only way we can create more time to do the things we want then is to be clear on our priorities, and to follow them.

If we want to do more of one thing, we need to do less of another thing, and vice versa.?

The tricky part here is the juggling to keep the balance that we want.?

There are of course some little tricks we can all use to get more stuff done, and get stuff done quicker.

There are two things that I do regularly that really help me, and they probably won’t come as any great surprise to any of you:

The first thing is to look at my to-do list, and to find where I can “kill two birds with one stone”.? As a bird lover, it’s not language that I particularly like, but it’s an idea that has served me well.? It’s about choosing the activities that are at the heart of a number of activities, so that you can cross more than one off your to-do list at the same time.?

When I did my MBA and later taught Strategic Management, I loved the work of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad on ‘core competences’ for this very reason, because it suggested a focus on the core skills you have that can be leveraged across other areas.? This work, or rather my interpretation of it, has been at the heart of everything I do for some years now, because it brings gains not only in productivity, but in impact as well.

So imagine then, you’ve got your to-do list laid out, based on your priorities, and you’ve reviewed them to see which tasks can be combined, because they have the same or partially the same activity at their root.? Now all you have to do is to plan how you are going to do them, and this is where your second productivity superpower comes in, and it’s all about the critical path.

Another skill I learned in my career was Project Management, and what stuck out for me was the notion of the critical path.? When you are managing one or more projects with many different people involved, if you don’t get the critical path right, your schedule is going to get pushed out again and again and again.

This is why, when I decide which tasks to do first, I think about the sequence they need to be done in, so that the overall time is reduced.?

Let me give you a really simple example.? This morning I had to package up a copy of People Power to send to a client.? It was a little way down my to-do list, but I bumped it up to the top so that I could post it on the way to a meeting this morning.? If I had left it where it was, it would have meant making another trip out later. Ten minutes saved!! Boom!

Going back to the time issue challenge, or shall we call it opportunity?

When you ask someone why they didn’t do something they should have or deserved to have done, for safety, or something else important, feel free of course to relate to them, because we all understand the limitations of time.

Tell them you understand that time is a challenge, or use one of those time phrases I used earlier.

Then, take the opportunity to pivot.? Not with a ‘but’, but with an ‘and’, because a ‘but’ straight after a show of understanding is not going to fool anyone.? You could argue that the ‘and’ is superficial, but it’s without doubt less likely to get alarm bells ringing in the other person's head.

So you’ve pivoted, and created an opportunity.? An opportunity for more time, and an opportunity for everyone to see things differently.? It’s a moment suspended in time, when you say, curiously:

“I wonder, given how important this issue is, what WE could do to make more time?”

Which leaves me on the most important note of all:

What’s important to YOU?? And how are you making time for it?

Because time management comes down to what is important, and how you schedule it!

I couldn't imagine me missing my daughter's birthday party and then saying "I didn't have time!". Could you?

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