Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
- Goethe

Anchoring Time in Your Core Values

The challenges of time management are indisputable; take, for example, the available sea of books, seminars and management programs that focus on time management.How are we doing?With all of these systems and theories, have we come any closer to getting a handle on our time?

Each morning, you may be asking yourself questions like, “What can I do today, right now, with the phone ringing and three people waiting for a return call or meeting? How can I organize my calendar more efficiently?How can I pack more productivity into my day?”The truth is this:You can adhere to whichever system works for you, as long as it is rooted in this one, simple concept…

Prioritize and implement around your core values.

The term time management itself is aptly named, since it's about managing time.Let’s take a moment to consider an alternative concept: managing ourselves. We all have plenty of experience with the time management processes that help us get through the day; they start with notes and checklists, and then graduate to calendar systems, appointment books and even electronic storage devices.You may have even gone so far as to prioritize your tasks. –But it’s time to make a paradigm shift.

Managing yourself, and therefore, slicing through the daily “productivity” grind, starts with clarifying your core mission and values.This will help you discern between what is important and what is urgent.The urgent issues that you are confronted with each day are a distraction from what is important.

Over time, the perceived increase in efficiency you may experience in your rush to address urgent issues will often be at the expense of important issues, such as relationships, spontaneous moments, and most of all, growth.(See the 80/20 Rule, in The Performance Report archive.) Is all of this work you are doing just to run in place?Of course not.

Lean in to this paradigm shift by gaining a clear knowledge of your personal mission.This is the hub which all your decisions should stem from.With each situation that surfaces, use your personal mission as a barometer for its importance.Granted, there are many urgent problems that seize your time and energy and, at the same time, are clearly not important.But as you learn to work from a place of core values, you will spend more of your resources dealing with prevention versus prioritizing crises.

How can you begin to peel away layers of urgency in order to reach the essence of what drives you?

Whatever organizational tool you use, it should be in harmony with your mission statement and encourage balance in your life, in order to be sustainable and promote long term development. Whatever method keeps you focused on the “values hub” is what will pay off in the long run.

So where do we start?As Stephen R. Covey states in his landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.This is a fundamentally different concept than creating a to-do list.Begin by making your typical list.Now look at each item.Ask yourself if it is aligned with your core values.

If not, your job is not to accomplish the task, but to figure out how to get it done in another way, or simply get it taken off of the list. You might have to do this by going back to its source for reconsideration, delegating it, working with others to get it accomplished, or simply by learning to say “no.”Granted, at first you will still have plenty of urgent issues to deal with, but they will gradually fade as you begin to use the “values hub” as your scheduling source.

Now that your list only contains items that really matter, begin to schedule your time.Instead of making a daily schedule, consider using a weekly schedule.It will give you the ability to handle (and recover from) unexpected interruptions without feeling that you have sacrificed your goals.Elasticity is the key to turning the temperature down on the pressure cooker.The white space offered by a weekly schedule will give you a fighting chance at thinking on a macro scale.

Schedule blocks of time to accomplish or support your mission.During these periods, keep yourself from getting distracted by those pesky “urgent matters.”Are you writing a proposal or creating a business plan?Wait to answer the email messages that pop up until the allotted block of time has been spent.After all, now that your activities are aligned with your core values, each task you schedule is important.

You will find that your primary focus is on relationships and results rather than time.Since we either delegate to time or people, you will learn that delegating to time increases efficiency.Just as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you can cram more into a day this way.However, if you delegate to people, you will be capitalizing on effectiveness.Then you can spend your time on higher-leverage decision making that speaks directly to your mission statement.