Believe it or not, I am going to show you how important that twelfth part of the chronometric machine that almost all of us wear around our left wrist can be… And I assure you that you will thank me more than once. Let's forget for a moment about the more or less practicable and more or less predictable formulas related to time management. Why underestimate your talent and knowledge, dear reader, if I am convinced that you, right now, could fill in the spaces from 1 to 5 with useful rules and procedures to compete decently and successfully against the clock.
Note that I just wrote "against the clock" and not "against the clock"… I also just hinted that the formulas are all the more effective the more willing we are to apply them. Unfortunately, it is right there, in the plural, where good intentions, good intentions and even the simplest or most sophisticated strategies that we can implement diminish or end up being diluted. To put it more simply, their time is not “their” time, but only their time plot, their occupations and priorities, plus the time and the tasks of the other, the near and distant, the boss or the unknown, in short, those who interact with us daily.
I rarely find enough emphasis on this delicate aspect. It seems so obvious that perhaps that is why it is ignored. That reality of my time + your time and all its variants -even antagonistic ones, of course- becomes translucent and we look through it trying to spot the lighthouse that guides us as if in that reality the construction of any theory did not rest- system-manual of efficient time management procedure. There are many and very important considerations that we could make around this fundamental principle: the value of my time, the optimal use of my time depend not only on my own resolution, on my attitude and ability to compromise, but on others become aware of it and act in such a way that it becomes a common slogan,firmly supported and nurtured by the members of a work team or any collective.
We can conclude, then, that highly efficient time management is largely correlative, interdependent. Consequently, we are urged that others value their time as much as we do or intend to do it ourselves. Oh, but the others… The others are many individuals, many opinions, many interests at stake, too many. Is it reasonable to expect that dozens of familiar, strange and familiar beings who orbit our surroundings every day, more or less conscious, more or less responsible, worse or better motivated, have learned or want to learn to value the importance of intelligent consumption of this resource to turn it into a powerful weapon in favor of efficiency and competitiveness? Of course not.
However, this laudable purpose becomes much more affordable, that is to say administrable, if we reduce the universe to our working environment, if we start short, formalizing well-detailed agreements and strategies with the one next door, with the immediate one, with the head of offices, with transportation outsourcing, with this department, with that supplier.
Companies, conglomerates and all manifestations of human gregariousness, we know well, are comparable to any living organism and to the competencies or symbiosis that exist between them. Some fly and run at great speed, while others limp, become intoxicated, separate from the group, go astray or expose themselves to being reached and eliminated by the best, by the fittest. Nature itself provides abundant and surprising examples of foolproof timing and efficiency: just sit back and watch the apparent chaos of worker bees in and out of the honeycomb, or the migratory flight of Canadian geese in delta formation before the winter season.
A good manager and a good administration should seriously consider the need to tackle the issue of efficient time management not only from the normative-regulatory point of view, with abstractions that will hardly survive after a couple of weeks or a month.. If the responses to interaction with people outside our brilliant and magnificent purposes are not well planned, we will inevitably return to the threatening conclusion that it is virtually impossible to reconcile the proper use of your time with that of your close ones or from beyond.
Well, it is worth proposing a simple and practical strategic scheme to mitigate and counter that reality that I usually frame in a single and broad concept: "the shocks of non-consensual interactivity." Then, as I announced in the first lines of this text, I will propose a technique of my own invention, surprisingly simple, which has blessed me with many sighs of relief in my daily battle against unpunctuality and waste of time.
1. Training, training and awareness at all levels.
As lecturers and trainers we believe and preach - sometimes in the wind - that great and true strategic and operational solutions depend in large part on an adequate and well-studied process of training and education of the entire organization on such crucial issues as this. It seems like a truism, but you would be surprised at how improvised, partial and rushed certain "processes" of education and training in solid and long-standing companies turn out to be. I have dozens of experiences in that regard. Like customer service, excellence in efficient time management is a competition that does not admit exclusions or distinctions. All members must understand, accept,Periodically practice and revitalize the slogan of synchronizing your own time with the times of the organizational group as best as possible.
2. Detect, study and measure weaknesses related to time management.
Once the staff is properly sensitized in relation to the My Time + Nearby Times = Efficient Synchrony precept, we must proceed to prepare a DOFA time matrix that allows us to prioritize the actions to be taken in the short and medium term.
3. Include customers and suppliers.
Communicate to clients and suppliers what will be the actions and policies adopted in relation to the best use of their time (clients-suppliers) and the company itself (management-internal clients). An intelligent and highly competitive company should launch successive advertising campaigns to disclose to the four winds that one of its greatest values is the high regard they show for the time of their customer-suppliers. A campaign like this, with real, flesh-and-blood employees, monitoring their performance and showing verifiable benefits and comparative advantages, would add many points to the favorable perception of its main audiences.
4. Start short.
I insist once again: let's avoid falling into the trap of believing that with recipes, indications, plans and generic forms, employees are going to commit themselves much more to the good administration of their time. Almost everyone, at some point, will appeal again to the excuse that "someone else" delays him and makes him waste his time. First of all, make sure that this "someone else" is not the one right next to you, or the three colleagues in the background on the left, or the supervisor, or the assistant to the boss, or the boss himself. Eagerly pursue the goal that a particular team (hopefully small) or a department show high rates of time use and stick with them. Show the organization as a whole that you can and do everything possible for that small production unit to congratulate itself on its achievements and project them.Turn those good results into a high-performance internal paradigm and move to a new team or another department. And keep that in mind: this new target group will have its own excuses and threats, more or less real, about the quality of their times.
And finally:
5. The wonderful five minute techicle.
Raise your left arm and look at your watch. What time is it? Insurance? No, no, I'm sorry, but it's not like that… From now on, you will have your own time, made to measure. From now on you will go five minutes ahead of real time. Five minutes. Five minutes, nothing more. Go ahead, set your watch right now. For having reached this point in the reading, you have earned five wonderful minutes, all yours, five minutes that do not yet exist, but they will be yours because your watch indicates this… Do you understand where I am going?
Add five minutes to your day every time you check the time. Don't hesitate, believe me. If you are not one of those who is distinguished by that precious punctuality tag, if your delays are frequent, I suggest a small additional adjustment: add another two minutes, or even another five minutes to your watch. And please leave it at that, don't make any changes for about fifteen or twenty days. I assure you that a few good things will happen.
Perhaps you will ask yourself: "But what object does it have, if I still know that it is a deception, an artifice?" Well, don't be so sure. When you go to a magic show, the least you think is that everything is a montage, a trick. The mind relaxes, you get carried away by the sensations and, best of all, you have a great time with it. I guarantee it is the same. Sometimes you will rationalize your little jump in time, sometimes not. It is normal. It is the wonderful game of the conscious and the unconscious in which all humans move on a daily basis. Don't worry about studying your reaction. Leave your watch like this and let that suggestion do its thing.
There are formidable and highly credible books that support the enormous value of these "suggestive hooks." One of them is the very interesting volume published by scientific doctors Brian Alman and Peter Lambrou, entitled Self-hypnosis techniques for health and personal development. This and many other subsequent works realize the enormous importance that these games of creative visualization and neuroplasticity represent for our life and our activities.
Finally, one more suggestion. So that it is not just "your" career for the best use of time, it would be highly recommended that your coworkers, partners and anyone who has a high incidence on their performance (the bosses!) Join the group of "Advanced in time". The charm of the technique is that all these people will engage, at the same time and every day, in a very brief and constant supraverbal dialogue with their own subconscious regarding the best use of time. Go ahead, invite them to experiment. I assure you that you and all of them will become enthusiasts convinced of the immense value of five minutes more.
