Effortless Thursdays #12: “I don’t have enough time”

When your Outlook calendar looks like Jackson Pollack is masquerading as your PA

I could tell I was different to the other kids at school.

When I got home in the afternoon - when my classmates were playing football or meeting up - I would settle in to half an hour of watching a clock tick-tock away for 30 seconds whilst two contestants battled it out round after round to come up with the longest word from nine randomly selected letters.

I loved those anagrams on TV.

What words could I come up with?

What would the contestants come up with?

Could I beat the words that the "dictionary corner" team had found?

Those of you who are familiar with Countdown, the TV show that's been broadcasting in the UK every weekday since 1982, will know the suspense that's created by the 30-second jingle. 

Here's that last five seconds of suspense that culimnates in the "boing" of the timpani.

And time ticks on ...

I like to do things differently when it matters. I think it’s one of my strengths. 

This edition is about thinking differently about our time.

Do you want more time?

You know the importance of time already.

We seem to be able to take back control, but we can't take back our time. And so we try to make the most of it.

And yet our daily lives become filled with countdown clocks that we don't even notice it.

We cram meetings and appointments into our calendars like we're solving a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle every day. I take my hat off to my PA at my last job when my weekly meeting and travel schedule was like Jackson Pollack decorating my Outlook calendar.

What do we need instead of time?

Often we think about what we want: a promotion, a new car, to go on holiday.

But frequently the outcome doesn't meet our expectations; we're left a little bereft. The travel and politics of a promotion drains us. The technology in a new car gets quickly superseded, and the novelty of the new car smell fades.

We forget that what matters is what we need - satisfying our fundamental human needs, like for safety, connection, health.

So what about what we need?

Over the past couple of weeks I've noticed a few things about time that have come up when coaching my clients, having conversations at a birthday party this week and going into the second module of my "Effortless Leadership for Lawyers" programme: unlocking your courage to change.

I'm sharing them with you in case they might inspire you to think differently about your relationship to time.

1. You don't need time; you need permission

When you're working flat out to meet a deadline, it can be counterintuitive to take a break.

Taking a break = "wasting time"

Satisfying your urge to do more to meet your deadline feels better, even if you are aware of the science-backed benefits of taking a break:

• allowing our brain’s default mode network to come up with Eureka! solutions or

• taking our foot of the work-intensity pedal so we can get back into a deep flow state

• ending a day without feeling frazzled

But what if you were to give yourself permission? A generous, kind act to respect yourself.

What if someone in your team, or at home, said to you: "take a break for five minutes".

Dr Robert Biswas-Diener, one of the leading lights in positive psychology research, inspired me with an exercise he runs in his teaching sessions.

When I've run this experiment in my webinars or group coaching sessions - stopping in the middle of a session and asking everyone to take five minutes to do something that makes them happy - everyone comes back with a better mood and feeling a sense of lightness and ease.

Some hug their loved ones. Some go outside for a walk. Some attend to an email.

With that comes the realisation that while time ticks by, often what we need is to give ourselves permission to focus on the other things that are also important to us, like:

• connection to ourselves and others

• our wellbeing

• how we want to show up in the world

2. Creating time and space

The entrepreneurs and professionals I coach are smart and have full lives.

They are always - without fail - able to identify what needs to be done for their next breakthrough: expanding into new markets, exiting their business or making their leadership effortless.

What they need for themselves is the time and space to slow down.

Coaching creates that space.

It's a commitment to yourself to think in a way that you wouldn't ordinarily because you "don't have the time".

3. What would a time-abundant person do?

In one of the live sessions in my Effortless Leadership programme, one senior leader shared her situation. It's one that I see frequently.

I spend 80% of time at work.

20% of my time is spent at home.

I have 0% time left for myself.

She then went on to say - without prompting - that she needed to build her team, equip them with the skills and support to take on some of the responsibilities she was juggling.

She already had the answer of what a person who has time would do.

If you put yourself in that future state, as if it is already happening now, you might be surprised what you come up with.

Like all high-achievers, you might then think of all the obstacles in the way. That's when the fun part comes in: how do you strategise to meet your needs and the needs of others (your team, management) to create the future state you want.

• Maybe it’s giving yourself permission

• Maybe it’s asking yourself whether all the obstacles are truly obstacles - or if they are, instead, the stories we tell ourselves that prevent us from achieving what we want?

• Maybe it’s something that you can only see when you have the time and space to tap into your creativity and resourcefulness.

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Over to you

What resonated with you?

What is your relationship with time?

What inspiration can you draw to experience time differently?

If you have any ideas you’d like to share, email me, share your thoughts in the comments below, or reach out via Twitter or LinkedIn.

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That’s it for this week!

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