By John Paschall, Servant Leader
Stop Moving the Glass – The Time Management Secret of Compartmentalization
I hope that all of you are having a great start to your 2013 and are taking some time to enjoy our recent stretch of good weather. Being from Southeast Texas, we all know that this stretch of 70-ish highs, low humidity, and abundant sunshine, is the brief precursor to our 8 months of summer! It is a great time in our area with a variety of popular events going on – Nederland Heritage Festival, Bass Master Tournament in Orange, and the South Texas State Fair all this month!
We are also looking forward to some big events at the BBB just over the horizon. Our Second Annual Laws of Life Banquet will be held on April 16, closely followed by our 16th Annual Torch Awards Banquet on May 7, celebrating 50 years of serving Southeast Texas as your BBB. With all of these events and great weather at hand, we face the challenge of balancing the many demands of work, home, church, civic, and volunteer activities, usually at the same time – no wonder our minds are still racing when we lay down at night!
This month, I would like to touch on a Time Management Tip that has come up around our office recently. This is a wonderful and time proven technique. It is also one that I am still working on and have not mastered – the Compartmentalization Technique.
Let me lay out the problem for you, an all too common one for most of us. I would venture to say that we start our days with a plan as to what we are going to do and when we are going to do it. How long that plan lasts can vary widely from person to person and day to day – 5 minutes, 2 hours…some of the best among us are able to stick to their plan all day – I admire them greatly and every office needs 1 or 2 of those people. For the rest of us, we are faced with a great plan that gets “blown up” fairly early in the day. We are then left with adjusting and scrambling the rest of the day just trying to get the most urgent items crossed off before we try to get 5-6 hours of sleep before starting again. Many of us are defeated before we start, because our plan is faulty – we attempt to multi-task throughout the day, doing 2-3 things at once, thus stretching our normal 10-12 hour day into 18-20 hours of productive work.
Now really…let’s be truthful with one another…. how insane is that? You and I both know that multi-tasking at its core has a bit of fallacy to it. As humans, we really only CAN do one thing at a time. REALLY! When we try to do 2 or more at the same time, we end up not focusing on any one thing. Instead of simultaneously doing 2-3 things well, we end up taking twice as long to get those done, but not doing them very well.
How do I know this? Because we are all guilty. Checking e-mails while we are at another meeting or gathering (often during the meeting itself – not even at breaks!), returning calls, and even texting while driving – all in the name of multi-tasking. We can be at an event with our mind, attention, and focus somewhere completely different.
Zig Ziglar has put it this way: When many of us are at work – our mind is back home or at play. When we are at home or at play, our mind is back at work on our job thinking about the tasks we need to accomplish. Wherever we are, our mind is elsewhere and we are wasting time! Some people say they never have time for anything…. no wonder, it’s because their mind is always traveling! Our technological age makes us susceptible to this – no matter where we are, we are accessible and can access others (phone, e-mail, text, Skype, etc., etc.) It is easy to lose focus.
So what is the answer? An old school time management technique called compartmentalization – in other words, wherever you are – be all there!
Pretty simple concept - here is how it works. When you are at home, be at home. Relax, spend time with family, talk to your spouse and kids. Put down the phone, don’t answer e-mails, and don’t be focused on the concerns of work. When we focus on work when we are at home, we are often fretting about things that we can’t fix or even do anything about – AT THAT MOMENT. Thus all we are really doing is worrying and robbing time from ourselves and our family.
The same thing is true when we are at work. If we are in the office, let’s be in the office – body, mind, and soul – focus on the task at hand, and knock it out – one thing at a time. A secret time-waster here is a cluttered desk. If we have 3 or 4 separate projects out on our desk at the same time, we end up moving randomly between the projects for 2-3 hours and we find that we didn’t get much done on any of them because we spent the last 3 hours dissipating our energy among them all.
If we do have something to take care of for our family – maybe a call to make, or some research to do – take the 10-15 minutes you need to do it, focus on it, get it done, then go back to your work task at hand. It’s when we try to slip it in among the rest of our day that we get frustrated. Plan the time, and then work the plan.
If you are at a meeting, training, on a client visit, be all there. Focus on what you doing at the moment and why. Surprisingly, you’ll get more out of it, and feel less stressed, and get more accomplished because you have focused your attention and energy on that single topic. If I sound like I am speaking to you as someone who knows – I do. What I know is that I am seldom able to master this concept! When I do, I usually get a tremendous amount of work done and still feel refreshed at the end of the day.
The other benefit here is sneaky, but might be more important. How do you think the people we are with during the day will feel when we can be fully present; when we have our complete focus and attention trained on them, their needs, emotions, words, etc? How would your family feel?
The basic science we learned when we were kids taught us this lesson a long time ago: We took a magnifying glass and some paper or dry leaves and went out to the nearest hard surface on a sunny day – remember this? As long as we kept the glass moving nothing happened. But if we were able to keep the glass absolutely still and focus the sunlight on 1 specific point – it wouldn’t be very long before the smoke and fire would follow. This is exactly the same concept!
So wherever you are, be all there. Stop letting your mind travel throughout the day. You and I will get a lot more done, and we will have a lot more fun and less stress along the way.
Let us know how we can help you as your BBB. Have a great month and keep building your better business!
