How to Make the Time That It Takes to Get Things Done
Don't confuse activity
with productivity. And don't be in such a rush all the time. Here are four ways
to help you balance time and effort.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1
MAR 5, 2024
Queen Elizabeth I of
England probably didn't say "all my possessions for a moment of
time," the deathbed quote popularly attributed to her. Yet that doesn't
make the sentiment any less important. Especially today, when it's
abundantly clear that time for most of us is far more important than money.
Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time and spending it the
way you want.
We live in a hurry-up
world where access, speed and convenience are the most critical competitive
vectors for virtually every business. Providing immediate access, rapid
responses, and ease of use are the baseline deliverables for any product or
service vendor if they want to succeed.
But the Queen, who died in 1603 at age 70, wasn't talking about
trading her worldly goods for a faster Amazon delivery. She was looking for a
life extension and the quote actually refers to a different aspect of the
relationship between time and money, which is also something we're all
confronting on a daily basis especially as we become more senior, (and older),
in our organizations. While you may know exactly how much money you have, you
never know how much time you have left. And if you waste money, you can always
make it back if you're lucky and hard-working; if you waste time, it's gone
forever.
Most of us want to try
to make a difference in our lives and others while we're here. We don't want to
waste our time doing or trying to fix things that won't matter in the long run.
We don't want our lives controlled or driven by an overstuffed inbox or by a
reactive and constant focus on urgent matters rather than the important ones
which surround us.
It's way too easy to
fall into the trap of non-stop activity in the belief that activity is a proxy
for productivity when, in fact, it's as often simply a performative masquerade
that's not even useful. Busyness isn't the same as business. If you allowed it,
per Parkinson's Law, busy
work and other wastes of time can easily expand to fill your days with lots of
nothing of value.
Today, we're all
struggling with the best ways -- personally and in our businesses - to handle
the overwhelming flow of information, obligations, competing demands and
conflicting priorities. We've got plenty of clocks, but never enough time. And
the trick isn't to throw up our hands in frustration, it's to roll up our
sleeves and figure out how to make sense of the mess we find ourselves in.
Because how we spend our days determines how we spend our lives.
Here are four keys to
coping with the clutter, noise, and crap streaming over the transom every day.
You Don't Save Time by
Hurrying.
Take a moment and take a
breath. Tell your team to take their time. Control your calendar so you're
driving the bus rather than dodging inbound traffic and reacting to other
people's desires, requests and demands. Filter the flow of emails, information
and materials that end up in front of you. Admit that you can't do it all, read
it all, or reply to everyone. Pick a few prime and trusted sources of input and
make a point to review them daily. Bag the click bait and the rest of the junk.
The real key is to learn
to be there in the moment, to focus on the matter at hand, and to concentrate
deeply for an appropriate and uninterrupted period of time. Learning how to
ignore distractions, sit still quietly, and get into the flow is a huge advantage.
But it takes practice - like yoga or meditation - to avoid getting twitchy,
becoming impatient or FOMOed, or letting your mind drift to the other things
you also need to be attending to. Get the thing you're doing done well and then
move on.
There's Always Enough
Time to Do the Important Things.
When you say that you
don't have the time to do something, what you're really saying is that it's not
a priority for you. We make time for what we're interested in. If a task is
something that's truly important and the desire to address it is also present,
you'd be amazed at how the required time to take care of it magically appears.
This is not really about the time anyway; this about getting your priorities in
order. If you honestly want to do something, you'll find a way; if you don't,
you'll find an excuse. Waiting for the "perfect" time is simply a
flawed justification for procrastination. It also makes no sense to decide to
do nothing because you claim you can't do it all. Not everything happens
overnight, but nothing happens if you don't get started. Excuses will always be
there for you, opportunities won't.
Spend More Time Learning
& Thinking and Less Time Running & Gunning.
In our impatient times,
startups are all too quick to adopt the "ready, fire, aim" mindset.
But even Mark Zuckerberg - the author of the famous "move fast and break
things" operating credo at Facebook -- has taken a step back and admitted
that a more mature, realistic, and practical formulation is to "move fast
with stable infrastructure."
Speed in execution can
certainly save you time if you're headed in the right direction and everyone
loves to think of themselves as an aggressive first mover. But a little
patience and a commitment to invest in a secure and stable operating
environment or to invest your time in building a knowledge advantage is a
better bet in the long run than simply running and gunning.
This isn't an easy sell
to a bunch of over-caffeinated, Type A young entrepreneurs because it feels
somewhat passive and less aggressive to be spending time reading, learning, and
implementing the critical knowledge that's requisite to making smart choices
and decisions further down the line. But it's the smart way to proceed.
If you don't care where
you end up, any path will take you there, but if you want to succeed, you need
a vision, the required knowledge and resources, and a plan to turn that dream
into a reality. Spending a little more time upfront to figure out where you're
going, how, and why will help successfully differentiate your business from the
competition.
If You Don't Have the
Time to Do It Right, When Will You Have the Time to Do It Over?
Another temptation in
the frenzy of starting a new business is the appeal of trying to do things
cheaply, so you can flood the zone and cover the waterfront, when you shouldn't
try to do them at all. Sometimes it's mainly a matter of nerves and the desire
to keep moving and do something. What you're really doing with partial,
piecemeal, and half-hearted efforts is wasting precious time to get you through
the day. As the famed football coach Lou Holtz said: "if you're killing
time, it's not murder, it's suicide." That's also true for you and your
business. Figure out the tasks that matter, go deep into them, and don't quit
halfway. You'll find that it's the time, energy, passion, and commitment that
you devote to these matters that gives them the most meaning and the most
value.
Bottom line: the
regret that we feel about things we did will, over time, be softened,
memory-holed, and tempered. We don't always get over some things, but we get
through them eventually. Sadly, it's the things that we never found the time to
do or even attempt to accomplish that we'll regret forever and all times.
