Are you protecting your most valuable resource?

Years ago, I was complaining to a friend about how many people were not respecting my time. She said something that I will never forget:

Someone can borrow $20 from you and repay you. But no one can borrow your time and repay it.

So simple yet so powerful. Time is a finite resource; yet many of us don’t ensure we’re applying it to its highest and best use.

Many of my clients start our coaching engagements telling me that they don’t have enough time to get their work done and they’re not able to focus on the things that move the needle in their jobs. One of the first things I have them do is a simple exercise of logging their time for a week or two and categorizing it. Guess what we usually find?

On average, most of my clients realize that about 20% of their time is spent on activities that they shouldn’t be doing. Think about that: 20% that equates to one whole day of work. Imagine what could you get done in work and life if you had a whole extra day,

Time management is not only about how you organize your task list or work through your email. It’s about making sure you’re applying your time in a thoughtful way. Often, we get into habits of doing things without questioning if this is where we should be spending our time. The result of this is we’re trying to control too many things, getting burned out, and not empowering our teams to do their best work.

I recommend taking stock of how you’re spending your time at least once or twice a year and ask yourself a few questions:

What activities are not advancing your goals? Why are you doing them?

What activities should be handled by people on your team? Why are you doing them and how can you empower your team?

Is your team resourced to handle its workload? If not, how can you get the right resources or reduce the work?

Ensuring you’re focused on the highest and best use of your time is a key principle in modern leadership and will trickle down to the rest of your team to make your function more effective, efficient, and your teams happier at work.

You can learn more about these and other key concepts of modern leadership by joining my loglab Facebook community where I do a weekly livestream.