Tinaye Agere
WHAT is it that occupies your day most of the time? If you were to honestly evaluate yourself, can you say that you are pleased with how you spend your days, weeks or months?
Changing Perspectives
Rutendo Gwatidzo
What do you do during your spare time?
And do you really have extra time in your life?
Remember, we all have 24 hours per day, so I am not sure where the extra time comes from?
Most people often waste time through what they call spare time.
In life, there is no spare time.
Rather, it is more apt to call it flexible time because you get to do what you like during that period.
But be careful how you spend your flexible hours.
For example, while some may sleep during their flexible time, others may play golf and discuss deals.
Some might spend the time catching up on community gossip, while others will be studying and adding value to their lives.
What is your goal in life?
To achieve goals, you need to break them down into objectives.
So, what are your daily, weekly or monthly objectives?
If you happen not to have any, especially daily objectives, you need to begin having them to avoid wasting time on irrelevant things.
One author once said: “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that should not be done at all.”
Organisational status
The challenge with many organisations is that they have teams that excel in doing the wrong things.
In some cases, these teams do things that may not be a priority on their to-do list or things they should not have done at all. Sadly, they expect their managers to recognise their efforts.
This is why we have bitter teams and managers that feel unappreciated by those they think should recognise them.
I did a survey this past week on five organisations that happen to be my clients. My team and I picked four subordinates and one manager from each organisation.
We discovered that 17 subordinates and two managers who were part of the sample group felt unappreciated.
We then dug deeper to understand where this issue was emanating from.
I asked them to write down the things they had achieved over the past three months. We discovered that most of what they had “achieved” was outside their key performance indicators (KPIs).
If you are not organised, you may not realise how much time you are wasting doing irrelevant things.
Interestingly, time wasters will always be available in abundance.
Time wasters can be people or unnecessary activities.
In most cases, they are noisy and speak loudly, and if you are not careful, you end up giving them attention.
Be guided by a proper to-do list as you face each week and month.
You will see where you need to align in order to achieve better performance.
Teams need to understand that performance evaluators are more interested in results and achievements than effort.
It is, therefore, important to categorise work activities to see which ones are critical.
If you are not careful, you may end up spending the entire day or month doing nothing.
If you are not careful or if you are not strategic in how to respond to things, you will realise that you spend a significant amount of time reacting to being wronged or what you regard as being wronged.
Imagine, if you react by retaliating, this means a greater deal of your time is going towards what is not on your to-do list.
I strongly believe that no one allocates time to react to situations.
There is a difference between reacting to situations and responding to situations.
In most cases, when you react to situations, you tend to waste a lot of time compared to when you respond.
Response brings solutions while reaction is likely to make the situation worse.
General facts
Time wasters can be tempting and saying no to them can be challenging.
Time wasters are not necessarily bad people and boring things around us, they can be things and people we like.
Be inspired to come up with a to-do list for your life and you will realise that there are probably more time wasters than you thought available.
Be encouraged to plan even for your flexible hours and you will probably achieve much more.
For instance, if you have three flexible hours per week, you may plan to have one hour for taking a nap, another for chatting and catching up with friends and another one for visiting relatives.
It might sound easy, but if you are not intentional about it, you may be surprised to find that you spend all the three hours on social media.
Can we then say social media is bad? Social media becomes a time waster when we spend time reserved for other things on it. The same applies to different aspects of life. Many authors and scholars believe that life is too short to waste.
Be challenged to avoid wasting time and you will lead a more productive and fulfilling life.
Rutendo Gwatidzo is managing consultant at The HUB HR Consultancy, a culture and change management organisation. She is a multi-award-winning consultant, speaker and mentor. She is also author of the books “Born to Fight” and “Breaking the Silence”. Contacts: +263 714 575 805/ [email protected]/ Facebook: Rutendo Gwatidzo Official.
Online Reporter