Time Management Doesn’t Work And The Similarities Of Art and Business
Between my corporate career and becoming a professional speaker and executive coach, I explored painting and drawing for a year, back packed in Costa Rica and worked in a studio with professional artists. I learned so much about creativity and mastery that I bring a lot of those ideas into my business speaking and coaching practice today. And thank God I do not have to make a living with my artistic skills! Although I still love to paint as a hobby.
One misconception about the idea of attraction is that all you have to do is sit back and visualize your success and it will happen. This is not how I have found it works. When I decided to explore learning painting and drawing, I had some misconceptions about artists. I romanticized the life-style, sitting in Paris cafés and hanging with interesting people, having incredibly interesting conversations, etc.
Although I have met some of the most interesting people in my life going down that path, I also found that really successful artists worked their butts off. For a lot of them, though, it didn’t feel like work. They were passionate about what they were doing. But they were in action—intensely.
I also thought the art would just flow for really successful artists. On this I was wrong as well. (This was a good learning process for me, as I now know that you really can’t understand something until you have immersed yourself in it.) For me, one of the best art and life lessons I learned was that I had to keep myself in the environment for doing my painting. I had to have the easel set up at all times, with brushes clean and ready to go when inspiration hit me. Most of the time I just had to show up at the blank canvas and jump start the process, before inspiration hit me. I am just sharing with you how my process worked. You will need to either find your own process or use something that works until you find your perfect process. Artist must paint every day, sales professionals must perfect their art every day, business leaders must to do something every day to enhance their businesses, writers must write everyday.
I have studied and taught many different time management and productivity systems over the years. And one major finding is time management doesn’t work. By that I mean the term “time†management doesn’t work. What does work is self-management. It all comes down to you. You are the only one responsible.
As a business professional, you are betting your time and money on what you think/feel will give you the best return for your time and money. You want to spend your time and money doing those things that will propel you towards your goals and dreams. But, once again, it is just easier for most people to jump into action. And then go nonstop and buzz out.
In my opinion, you will get the best return on your time and investment by taking some of these action steps below:
- Listening with increased awareness to your deeper core self, who are you?
- Setting your business direction connected to this unique core self, spirit.
- Catching intuitive concepts, solutions, and ideas from this deeper core self
- Connecting your own powerful feeling state to your goals, if you are not jazzed, change the goal until you are.
- Increased awareness of your internal dialogue so you are not working against yourself.
- Creating powerful intention statements out of your deep core desires.
- Managing health and energy.
- Creating support around you.
- Circulating your time, energy, and money. I am not suggesting that you don’t do anything until these steps are taken. I am suggesting increasing your awareness and consciousness before and while you are taking action. And to stay connected and aware around the actions and steps you are taking. Now that is true time savings. Laser focusing your time around the right actions will lead to your ultimate success and happiness based on a solid foundation of your core unique self. This beats wasting time building a bridge to someone else’s dream life. You might be effective and efficient, but when you get to the other side, it will be a big disappointment. This leads to what some describe as living a life of quiet desperation or empty success. “Is that all there is?†is the thought after reaching their success.
I also all about best practice techniques that work for effectiveness. Below are some of my favorite common sense but not common practice work effectiveness ideas:
Use your individual energy for maximum performance. Choose what you will work on during your best high energy times of the day. You can get five times more done when your energy is good than when you are dragging. My prime time it 9:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Find your prime time and commit to doing those tasks that require more discipline and brain power. Do the more routine tasks outside of your prime time.
The Covey Model of First Things First. Urgency vs. Importance. Most people live their lives reacting from one urgent task to the next. And we now know that with technology, you can fill up all your entire day with urgency. This is the road to failure—spending all of your time in quads
I and III focused on urgency, whether it is important or not. The key is to increase aware- ness of what is truly important. Be clear about what is important. Say no to those activities that are not important, quads III and IV. And spend a minimum amount of time every day in quad II—those activities that are not urgent, but vitally important. Everything in this book is pretty much a quad II activity. Why do you want to discipline yourself to spend at least a is were most of your success will come from.
Doing tasks that are urgent and important is critical, but only about 20 percent of your successes come from those activities. Doing tasks, such as the ideas in this book, important, but not urgent, will lead to 80 percent of your successes.
How much time in quad II? A minimum of one hour a day in quad II, which are goal related, proactive activities. Quad II is your bridge to your dreams.
Pick your three most important tasks for the day and don’t quit until those three are completed. I have also heard, “start every day with a six-pack.†Not a six-pack of beer, but six of the most important things that need
to get done that day. Most of your day will
be filled up with urgent and important tasks that absolutely must get done. However, if you are consistent every day and committed to at least a few of the really important tasks, that is one big bridge to success that other effective people identify as a key to success. In Mark LeBlanc’s book, Growing Your Business, he suggests you set your revenue goal for the month and each day ask yourself an A.M. question and a P.M. question:
A.M. Question—What three things will I do today to meet my revenue number?
P.M. Question—What three things did I do today to meet my revenue number?
We all have dreams, but most people don’t reach them. Those that do are spending a little bit of their day connecting to the most important and dramatically increase their odds of success!
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With a natural, engaging, and interactive style, Patrick blends his business skills with an understanding of transformation processes to deliver a powerful message to help audiences to build their leadership brand, grow their businesses and get more of what they want in their life.
A professional speaker for over 20 yrs, Patrick has spoken to more than 1,450 audiences and averaged 4.9/5.0 on statistically tracked engagements. He delivers with his ability to inspire change with a dynamic, practical and actionable message. Recent clients have included Price Waterhouse, Abbott Labs, Cadillac, Kantor Operations, Briggs & Stratton, and SAP to name just a few.
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- Increase personal and organizational effectiveness.
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- Get more of what they truly want in their lives!