With time, the people you teach will improve. As they improve, you will improve – “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Those you teach will teach you more than what you teach them, and you will feel fulfilled because you made this beautiful world a little bit better.
Time management and productivity are skills that we all must become adept at. Life has become more complex, with more and more tools and demands. Combine that with the fact that we all have limited amounts of time, making for a recipe for disaster. The idea is to get better at this and to be able to maximize what we can do with the time we have available for work.
We are here to learn. Sometimes we don’t want to stray because it will take us out of our comfort zone, and we have so much to do anyway that who has the time? But do it anyway. You will not regret it.
I have learned so much, mainly about myself, and through that growth, I have learned of others, my friends and family, and my community. And so, I want to close this year with a summary of the main lessons that this year has left me in the hopes that they might be useful for you.
If we repeat something often enough, people will absorb it, but if people find the insight themselves, the process will probably be quicker and more effective.
If we are growing as business leaders, I guarantee we will be making mistakes. If we knew everything about what we are doing and could do it perfectly, we would not grow.
It takes a balance of strengthening the fundamental, proven workflows while leaving room for innovation and creativity as you continue to grow.
Last year I had the immense honor of participating in the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI), a fellowship that brings together leaders from different spheres to interact and learn how to be better leaders. There are four participants from each of six Central American countries, who in most cases, have never met before. I cannot describe the magic that took place when they brought together these musicians, filmmakers, public service leaders, and entrepreneurs to discuss leadership models based on prior case studies.
The program is built to take you out of your comfort zone by having conversations about leadership as well as participating in different types of team-building activities that challenge your perceptions. CALI is a very specific type of program, and not everyone may wish to participate in something similar, but its lessons are universal: getting outside your comfort zone and looking at your life and work from an entirely new perspective can help you transform your world.
Rituals are a powerful practice that can help you both conserve energy and achieve your personal and professional objectives. With practice, the actions you take to achieve your goals can become automatic. As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz write in their book The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (public library), rituals are an effective tool that can help you get the results you want and mold your life the way you want.
Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action—to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors.
– The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
There are so many ideas and projects that we dream about doing. Some may be more immediate plans, such as launching a project at work, while others are more long-term, like writing a book. In so many cases, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day. The demands on our time, which include work and our personal responsibilities, are so many. It can often feel overwhelming, yet some people can do so much with the amount of time they have.
If we all have the same amount of time available in the day, then the only way to be more efficient is to make better use of the hours we do have. Efficiency will come from focusing on the work that will best give us the results we are seeking and from organizing your time as best as possible. This is not an exhaustive list of strategies for how to best organize your time, but they can help you start improving the impact of the time you have available.