Value Your Time & Take Back a Wee Bit of Control

Posted on January 14, 2025 in #Leadership. Reading time: 4 minutes

The Problem

Here is one that most of us will be familiar with. The work keeps piling up, there are people wanting/needing us and pulling us every which way. Our agenda is full of meetings and we find ourselves working later and later into the evenings. We start to feel thin, our head is pounding with that constant buzz of being overcrowded. Our personal relationships start to suffer. We want things to be different, but somehow we just don’t seem to be able to. Sound familiar?

The Root Cause

This seeming inability to change our circumstance has to do with our perception of the root cause. If we misdiagnose the disease, the treatment we apply won’t be effective. In the scenario of “too many demands, too little time”, I’ve heard clients point towards their own poor time management abilities. I’ve heard them say that it is unreasonable expectations from senior management and nothing can be done about it. One might even become a tad existential and proclaim that it just comes with the territory of being a leader and the life partner just has to accept the lack of availability. However, the true root cause often has nothing to do with this. It has to do with how much or little we value the time we have available.

The Path to Intentional Leadership

Intentional Leadership requires courage, and in this case courage to accept that the root cause resides within ourselves. We do not value our time, and so we do not fight for it and allocate it intentionally. We become a figurative carpet for everyone to strut upon.

This is an exercise that may seem benign but is actually an incredibly hard one, and a difficult mindset shift to achieve. That’s why the title says “a wee bit”, it is about getting started and making incremental advancements.

Here is what you can do to get reacquainted with a sense of value for your own time:

Step 1 – Analysis

For a few days, take a tally of how you spend time at work. This is an exercise free of judgement, we simply want the time we allocate to different types of tasks. In short: we want the data.

Step 2 – Reality Check & Big Vision

If we want to be intentional with how we use our time, we need to actually know our intention. Take time out of your day and start answering some of the big questions for yourself:

• What kind of impact do you want to have for the company you work for?
• What kind of impact do you want to have on the people around you?
• What makes you feel alive and is yours to accomplish?
• Where is this that you really want to spend your time, but have the sense that you don’t get to?

Importantly, do you believe you are dedicating sufficient time to some of the above? How much time should you be spending on it to actually make a difference?

Step 3 – Overlay & Smart Pruning

This is where Step 1 and 2 come together. Compare your notes and look at how you spend your time. How much time do you spend on tasks not relevant to your goals identified in Step 2? Exactly. That’s when you start thinking about delegation, support system or any consideration to diminish as much as you can those unfulfilling time consuming tasks. Start pruning.

Step 4 – The Hard Stuff: Implementing Meaningful Change

A classic way is to start with low hanging fruit to build success and confidence in your ability to transform. I am agnostic as to where you begin, it will be very context dependent. But the important thing is to begin – now! Begin somewhere, but begin, even if you cannot entirely predict the outcome. It is better to start and “discover” the changes as you go along than not to change at all for fear of not being entirely sure what will happen.

Bonus Tip

Build a support system around you to win. Engage your assistant, your family or friends in cheering for you and understanding your efforts. Make them part of your challenge and the solutions. A senior executive that I coached recently couldn’t have changed certain aspects of his time management without the active support of his assistant. She started saying No to meetings on his behalf, with full authority. She was his accountability buddy.

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The Intentional Leadership Series aims to help leaders elevate their craft by learning how to identify and address the root cause of a problem, as opposed to dwelling on the symptom. Often the root cause of leadership that is not intentional but reactive, lies within the leader themself. A lot of this has to do with fear in its many shapes and colours. While acknowledged as fundamental to many of our challenges, this series is not a psychological exploration of our existential angst. We are looking at the attributes and behaviors of Intentional Leadership in practical work-place scenarios. This kind of Intentional Leadership is trust-based, courageous & vulnerable, committed, accountable and impactful.

I also want us to remember that the article you just read is an example only and will never be able to do the complexity of your unique situation justice. If its practical lessons end up helping you in your life, awesome! If this scenario doesn’t sound like your life, but inspires you in one way or another, equally as awesome! And if it just makes you realize that your challenges are so complex that no one person could plausibly be expected to solve them on their own, genius! You are allowed to get support, from a leadership coach like me or any other within your reach. Take care!

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