7.2KB
The 12 Week Year — Chapter-07: Intentionality
- Source: /library/The 12 Week Year/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 43–46
- Pages without text: none
Chapter 7 Intentionality Everything you want to accomplish in life requires an investment of your time, so when you want to improve your results, you must face the fact that your supply of time is completely inelastic—and perishable. Even in this era of rapid innovation and technological advancement, time, more than any other resource, still limits our results. When we ask our clients what keeps them from achieving more, most often we hear that it’s a lack of time—and yet, time is the most squandered of all personal resources. A study conducted a few years ago by Salary.com found that the average person wastes nearly two hours of every working day! The Importance of Yes and No The reality is that if you are not purposeful about how you spend your time, then you leave your results to chance. While it’s true that we control our actions and not our outcomes, our results are created by our actions. It stands to reason that the actions that we choose to take throughout our day ultimately determine our destiny. In spite of the priceless value of time, many people engage each day on its own terms. In other words, they satisfy the various demands of the day as they are presented, spending whatever time is needed to respond without giving much thought as to the relative value of the activity. This is a reactive approach in which the day is controlling you, and prevents you from performing at your best. To realize your potential, you must learn to be more mindful about how you spend your time. Living with clear intention goes against the powerful natural tendency to be reactive because it requires you to organize your life
around your priorities and consciously choose those activities that align with your goals and vision. When you spend your time with intention, you know when to say yes and when to say no. You are probably aware when you are procrastinating or engaging in low-level activity to avoid tackling a less comfortable high- payoff activity. When you use your time intentionally, you waste less of it and spend more of it on your high-value actions, but to do this you must be willing to be disciplined and structure your days and weeks. The best way to do this is to use your 12 week plan to drive your activity so that in the end, you set your goals for the day instead of letting the day direct you. Intentionality is your secret weapon in your war on mediocrity. “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” —Henry David Thoreau Blocking Your Time Benjamin Franklin said, “If we take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.” That is wise counsel. The challenge in applying this wisdom is that throughout the day things come up—things that you didn’t anticipate that will eat up your valuable minutes. Trying to reduce these interruptions usually doesn’t work well and it can be more difficult than just dealing with them. In our opinion, the key to successful time use—intentional time use—is not trying to eliminate these unplanned interruptions, but instead to block out regular time each week dedicated to your strategically important tasks. We call this Performance Time and find that it is the best approach to effectively allocating time that we have ever encountered. It utilizes a simple time-blocking system to regain control of your day and maximize your effectiveness. There are three primary components of performance time: strategic blocks, buffer blocks, and breakout blocks. Strategic Blocks: A strategic block is a three-hour block of uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each week. During this block
you accept no phone calls, no faxes, no emails, no visitors, no anything. Instead, you focus all of your energy on preplanned tasks—your strategic and money-making activities. Strategic blocks concentrate your intellect and creativity to produce breakthrough results. You will likely be astounded by the quantity and quality of the work you produce. For most people, one strategic block per week is sufficient. Buffer Blocks: Buffer blocks are designed to deal with all of the unplanned and low-value activities—like most email and voicemail— that arise throughout a typical day. Almost nothing is more unproductive and frustrating than dealing with constant interruptions, yet we’ve all had days when unplanned items dominated our time. For some, one 30-minute buffer block a day is sufficient, while for others, two separate one-hour blocks may be necessary. The power of buffer blocks comes from grouping together activities that tend to be unproductive so that you can increase your efficiency in dealing with them and take greater control over the rest of your day. Breakout Blocks: One of the key factors contributing to performance plateaus is the absence of free time. Very often entrepreneurs and professionals get caught up in working longer and harder, but this approach kills your energy and enthusiasm. To achieve greater results, what’s often necessary is not actually working more hours, but rather taking some time away from work. It’s not by chance that people often quote the famous proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” When we don’t take time off from work, we can lose our creative edge. An effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work. It is time scheduled away from your business during normal business hours that you will use to refresh and reinvigorate your mind, so that when you return to work, you can engage with more focus and energy. “If you are not in control of your time, you are not in control of your results.”
Performance time applies to more than just strategic, buffer, and breakout blocks. The more you can create routine in your days and weeks, the more effective your execution will be. The best way to accomplish this is to create a picture of an ideal week. The concept of an ideal week is to plan on paper all the critical tasks that occur in a typical week and organize them so you can be most productive. If you can’t fit all the things you do on paper, there is no way you will get them done in reality, so the exercise of strategically planning your week will cause you to make some hard choices about how you use your time. As you create your ideal week, it helps to schedule routine tasks at the same time, on the same day each week, if possible. Consider when you tend to be at your best. Are you a morning person or are you better in the afternoon or evening? Schedule your most important activities during your prime time. We will walk you through how to create your model week in Chapter 17. For many of our clients, performance time has had an immediate impact on results. Just gaining control over a few hours each week often has a dramatic effect. Learn to use your time with greater intention and you will not only be more effective, but you will also feel a greater sense of control, less stress, and increased confidence. For more on time blocking join the 12 Week Year community at www.12weekyear.com/gettingstarted. It’s free!