Imagine if every time you received
an item of post someone shouted ‘ping’ in your
ear and a light on your desk started to flash.
Picture a pile of notes on your desk saying someone is out
of the office and another pile containing a copy of every
internal memo that is circulated just so you cannot say
you were left out of the loop. Only fifteen years ago the
above situation would have seemed farcical, but it is commonplace
today.
Gadgets like blackberries, laptops, mobile
phones mean we can be contacted at anytime almost anywhere.
Modern technology has many benefits but equally we can become
slaves to them, reacting to every ‘ping’ rather
than making our working day work for us.
Busyness is the great affliction of modern
business. People are working both harder and smarter. But
how often do we take a ‘time out’ to assess
the direction we are going and if we are being as effective
and as proactive as we think.
Here are 3 questions to help you focus:
- What are you paid to accomplish at work?
- How is your time actually spent?
- How much time to you spend assessing or refining your
own performance at work?
In the March 2006 edition of Fortune
Magazine, 8 famous business leaders were asked ‘how
do they make work work for them?’ As you would
expect they each had their own style and habits honed over
many years of juggling a multitude of commitments. However
they had two interesting things in common. Firstly, they
scheduled time to exercise regularly and
secondly they took time out to reconnect with themselves
through some spiritual practice, like meditation,
prayer or yoga.
It was recently reported that the US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets up each
morning at 4.30am to exercise for an hour before she starts
her working day and she does this no matter where she is
in the world. Whilst looking fit and healthy can be a motivator,
for people who exercise regularly it is not about vanity,
but about how they feel afterwards and how much more effective
and productive they are during the day. It is the old paradox
of expending energy to create more energy.
Time Management is not just about clock
watching, it is about self management, how we go about organising
ourselves and indeed energy management.
Click
here to
read the rest of this article and discover how top performers
in the world of work are becoming Corporate Athletes.
See Top
Tips on Time Management for ways to proactively
manage emails. For more information on 'Corporate
Athlete Coaching' and 'Time
Management'
contact us at by phone at (01)
6676147 or via
e-mail
Welcome
to the April 2006 edition of Next
Steps the monthly newsletter of James Sweetman
& Associates.
ning
to Dublin for a one day seminar on
Fri. April 7th (9.00am- 7.00pm)
in the Great Southern Hotel, Dublin Airport.
(Tickets €440, incl. lunch) 