A few days ago I overheard a conversation among two friends in a coffee shop. I wasn’t particularly eavesdropping, but the topic of their conversation was fascinating enough to divert my attention. Anyways, I was brainstorming for a blog topic at that time.
The man in his mid-20’s was focused on eating what appeared to be cookies and coffee ice cream. The woman with him who appeared to be the same age was face planted on the table. I could tell she was very stressed.
The lady talked about how messed up her personal and entrepreneurial life was and how she wasn’t able to get anything done and right for her dropshipping business in the past few days. As I listened to her ranting, I was able to devise some tips for her problems.
I also got the idea of writing this blog. If you face the same problems, then you should read the tips I’ve devised.
1. Determine your core values
What’s more essential to you? Is it your family, career, friends, business, school, or yourself? Rank these priorities according to how much you value them. The most valuable priority should be given more time. It’s also important that whatever your ranking is, you’re happy with it.
(The woman clearly did not know what her priorities were.)
2. Organize your schedule depending on the rank of your values
If you value your business or career first before yourself or your family, then give more time to spend at the office. You should do the math first before organizing your schedule. Start by calculating how much time you should spend at the office every week.
9 to 5-weekday schedules take up 40 hours of a week which is a total of 168 hours. That’s 24% of your total week. Now, it’s up to you how you’re going to spend that remaining 76%. Remember, secondary and tertiary priorities shouldn’t be given more time than the first, and tertiary priorities shouldn’t be given more time than the second.
(I think the woman failed to create a schedule for her priorities.)
3. Limit nonessential activities
The one thing that baffles me the most nowadays is how much time we waste on social media, video streaming services, emails, or the internet in general. Now don’t call me old-fashioned, these are good tools if used for business, communication, and educational purposes alone.
But if you use these tools just to gossip or procrastinate, you might as well schedule when to open your phone and put a timer to your app use. For limiting app usage, iPhone and Android users can start here.
I also highly suggest opening your phone for procrastination when you wake up or before you go to sleep. This strategy gives you more time to get your top daytime priorities done.
(I could tell the #1 reason for the woman’s problem was her smartphone addiction because she was very focused on her phone when she and her friend arrived. She only put it in her bag before she face-planted herself on the table.)
4. Establish boundaries and unplug
The time for work is for work. Personal time is for you to do your personal priorities. Nowadays, that’s commonly disregarded due to the nature of remote working and the high availability of communication devices.
You must inform your subordinates that you shouldn’t be contacted under any circumstances on any platform. You must also train them to be independent of your instructions or wait until you’re back. If a client calls in your free time, a simple “I’m sorry, I can’t take business calls as of now. You can talk to my manager, I’ll give you their number.” would suffice.
(The woman’s stress could be attributed to the probability of her answering her phone even in the dead of the night.)
5. Differentiate important from urgent
Urgent is oftentimes what’s important for others. Important should be for doing your own thing. A good example scenario of this is a phone conversation between a couple where the husband forgot to deliver a report for work and went on a business trip. Here’s how the conversation went:
Husband: Honey, are you at the shop?
Wife: Yes, why?
Husband: I forgot to deliver a report to my boss and he needs it ASAP. It’s in the car. I left the car keys in the lobby drawer and I’m currently on a business trip.
Wife: I’m guessing you want me to deliver that report to him.
Husband: Exactly.
Wife: Well, I also have important things to take care of here at the shop. It’s better if you should find someone else to make the delivery. I’ll be waiting here in the shop to give the keys to our home.
Husband: But…
Wife: I’m really sorry.
Husband: Okay. I’ll find someone else. (Hangs up)
As you noticed, the wife doesn’t make any compromises for the husband’s personal request. She also does it in a professional manner and offers a solution. This is exactly what you should do. If you have important things to do, learn to decline other people’s urgencies. Especially if the urgency overlaps your priority.
(You could say that the woman mentioned in the introduction would take requests even if she was busy doing something important.)
If there’s one important lesson I’ve learned from listening to the friends’ conversation, that would be having the courage to stand for your own convictions. I do hope you’ve learned well from this blog!
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